Every Day Is Special: China

Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

July 25 - Yalong Cultural Festival in Tibet

Posted on July 25, 2022

This is an update of my post published on July 25, 2011:

National sports contests, singing, dancing, Tibetan opera, ethnic costume shows, and trade fairs are just some of the cool things offered during this important festival.

Tibet is located in the northern portion of the Himalaya Mountains. It is ruled by the People's Republic of China, but many people in Tibet and the world think that Tibet should be an independent nation. The Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism, lives in exile, and there is off-and-on political unrest and violence about Tibet's situation.

Here is a short You-Tube video about the growth of tourism in Tibet. Since the video was created in 2016, I checked to see how the global pandemic had changed the situation - and Tibet is booming with tourists, apparently, once again.

I also found an interesting music video by Tibetan singer Dowa Tskeyi. I found it cool partly because it shows a mixture of traditional and modern clothing and of urban and natural settings.

Also on this date:

Foundation of Guayaquil Day in Ecuador

National Holiday in Cuba

Republic Day in Tunisia

National Day of Galicia

Anniversary of the proclamation of the Norwegian Manifesto

Anniversary of a Swiss general ordering armed resistance

Anniversary of an Austrian dictator

Anniversary of Sea Venture running aground

National Merry-Go-Round Day

Constitution Day in Puerto Rico

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

July 17 - Total Solar Eclipse in China

Posted on July 17, 2022

This is an update of my post published on July 17, 2011:

The earliest record of a confirmed total solar eclipse happened on this date in 790 B.C. The record was written in China. The reason we can confirm the date, although we don't have any records of the event from any other civilization, is because knowledge of the movements of the sun and the moon allow us to compute eclipses of the past as well as predict eclipses of the future!

Historians give the ancient Chinese credit for being the most accurate observers of astronomical events in the world, before the medieval Islamic or Arab astronomers eclipsed them.

(Yeah, I used the word eclipse to mean “surpass” or “outshine” in an article about astronomical eclipses!)

One of the main reasons for all this careful observation was timekeeping. The Chinese used a lunisolar calendar which indicated both the lunar phases and the position in the solar year, with the four seasons depending on day length. Because lunar phases and the solar year are independent, the Chinese had to add leap days in order to keep the seasons in sync with the calendar—and so a lot of time was spent keeping tabs on constellations and the sun and moon.

Some ancient Chinese scholars conceived of the heavens as a dome-like hemisphere or as a celestial sphere like the one conceived by ancient Greeks. However, one school of ancient Chinese astronomers (the Xuan Ye school) viewed the heavens as an infinite space with stars and other bodies floating about “at rare intervals” (in other words, far from one another), and that each celestial body had independent speed and movement. In other words, these Chinese cosmologists thought of the celestial bodies as being not attached to anything.

The Xuan Ye view is very close to the theories of modern astrophysicists!

Also on this date:

Scopes Festival

Yellow Pig Day

Gion Matsuri in Japan

Wrong-Way Corrigan Day

World Emoji Day

Birthday of German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Constitution Day in South Korea

Anniversary of a nation-wide drinking age

Disneyland's birthday!

Robin Hood Festival

(Third weekend in July)

Woodie Wagon Day

(Third Saturday in July)

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

June 26 - Invention of the Toothbrush

Posted on June 26, 2022

This is an update of my post published on June 26, 2011:

People used chew sticks, toothpicks, and even cloths to clean their teeth.

They rubbed sulfur oil, salt water (saline), or baking soda on their teeth.

They even frayed one end of a twig from a nice-smelling bush or tree to clean their teeth and freshen their breath.

But, until this day in 1498, people didn't brush their teeth.

The Emperor of China patented a toothbrush made of bamboo with stiff hogback bristles attached at right angles to the bamboo. Tooth hygiene was much easier with a brush rather than a stick, and word of the invention traveled back to Europe and, eventually, all over the world.