Archive for April 20th, 2009

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China Travel – Zhengyang Gate

Monday, April 20th, 2009

The Zhengyang Gate is located in the central south of Tian’anmen Square in Beijing.

The gate, commonly known as the Front Gate (Qianmen), was the front gate of the inner city of Beijing during the Ming (1368-1644)-Qing (1644-1911) period. It comprises two parts: the city gate tower and watchtower. Built in 1421 during the Ming Dynasty, the gate is 42 meters high and seven bays wide. It has a double-eaved gable and hip roof covered with gray, semicircular tiles and a tall, solid base. The watchtower was built in 1439 during the Ming Dynasty in a style resembling that of the city gate tower. Altogether there are 82 embrasures open to the east, west and south sides. The Zhengyang Gate was burnt down in 1900 when the Eight Allied Forces invaded and occupied Beijing, but it was later restored. A small town was built outside the gate for defense purposes, and was demolished and rebuilt in 1916. The Zhengyang Gate underwent two large-scale renovations in 1952 and 1976.

(Source: chinaculture.org)

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Beijing Olympic – Archery Day 1 Preview: Ranking round kicks off

Monday, April 20th, 2009

The world’s top archers will battle it out at the Beijing Olympic Green Archery Field from August 9 to 15. The archery competition consists of four events, including men’s and women’s individual and team categories.

The preliminary round of the Olympic archery competition will begin on Saturday August 9 with all 128 archers in contention; 64 women from 35 countries will compete in the first session 12:00–2:00 p.m. local time and 64 men from 37 countries in the second session 3:00–5:00 p.m.

The ranking round consists of 72 arrows shot in 12 ends of six arrows at a distance of 70 meters on a 122cm target face. A perfect score is 720. The shooting time limit will be four minutes for each end of six arrows.

From the scores shot in the ranking round, archers will be ranked 1-64 and teams will be ranked 1-16. Then the 64 ranked archers will enter the elimination round, where No 1 is matched against No 64, No 2 against No 63, and so on. The Women’s Team elimination rounds will begin Sunday, August 10.

Here is a look at the top Archery contenders:

Women’s Ranking Round Favorites

• In the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, the Republic of Korea (KOR) women earned three of the top four spots in the Ranking Round.

• Athens 2004 Gold medalist Park (KOR) is expected to be in the top three, if not in first place at the completion of the Ranking Round. At the Athens Games, Park shot a world record of 682 out of a possible 720 points in the Ranking Round. She is ranked No. 2 in the world.

• Ranked No. 1 in the world, Yun Ok-Hee (KOR) poses the strongest threat to Park.

Women’s Ranking Round Contenders

• Natalia Valeeva of Italy (ITA) is the reigning world champion and ranked No. 3 in the world. Valeeva has been in the top 10 in the Olympic Ranking Round in the past two Olympics.

• Natalya Erdyniyeva of Russia (RUS) is ranked No. 4 in the world.

• Justyna Mospinek of Poland (POL) is ranked No. 5 in the world and at Athens 2004 she finished the Ranking Round in seventh place.

• Zhang Juanjuan of China (CHN) is ranked No. 6 in the world and at Athens 2004 she finished the Ranking Round in fifth place.

• Dola Banerjee of India (IND) is the winner of the 2007 World Cup final in Dubai and is ranked No. 12 in the world.

• Other potential top-10 finishers include Jennifer Nichols from the United States (USA), Yuan Shu-Chi of Chinese Taipei (TPE), and Joo Hyun-Jung (KOR).

Men’s Ranking Round Favorites

• Im Dong-Hyun of the Republic of Korea (KOR) is ranked No. 1 in the world and at the Athens Games he finished the Ranking Round in first place, setting a world record of 687 out of a possible 720 points.

• Park Kyung-Mo (KOR) is ranked No. 3 in the world and at the Athens Games he finished the Ranking Round in fourth place.

Men’s Ranking Round Contenders

• Baljinima Tsyrempilov of Russia (RUS) is ranked No. 2 in the world and at the Athens Games he finished the Ranking Round in seventh place.

• Romain Girouille of France (FRA) is ranked No. 4 in the world.

• Alan Wills of Great Britain (GBR) is a double bronze medalist in both the Individual and the Team events at the 2007 World Championships in Leipzig, Germany, and is ranked No. 5 in the world.

• Kim Sky (AUS) is a newcomer to the international scene but at the Beijing 2007 Test Event he finished the Ranking Round in first place.

• Magnus Petersson of Sweden (SWE) has successfully finished the Ranking Round in the top 10 in the past two Olympic Games and is expected to continue that trend at Beijing 2008.

• Other potential top-10 finishers include Brady Ellison (USA), Lee Chang-Hwan (KOR) and Ilario Di Buo’ (ITA).

(Source: en.beijing2008.cn)

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Chinese Culture – Lin Bai(1)

Monday, April 20th, 2009

“Lin Bai has always stuck to revealing women’s sexuality, relentlessly grasping readers’ attention through her insights into women, women’s experiences, lesbianism, sexual topics such as masturbation, and sexual feelings throughout history. Much of her work is new, with thought-provoking ideas emerging from a female perspective.”

Lin was born in southwestern Guangxi Province. She began writing in the 80s and migrated to Beijing in the early 90s. Lin is largely recognized in China for her personal, autobiographic style full of private revelations. Her work is deeply romantic, employing the novel in a distinctive style to describe the deep psychological and emotional desires of women. Her works are bold and fearless, with some reproached for inappropriate revelations of private issues.

Recurring motifs in Lin’s work are irreducible personal differences, self-doubts, and self-denial. Paradoxically, as can be seen in One Person’s War, a salient lesbian identity by her main character is called into being by repeated utterances to try to negate that identity.

Lin’s latest novel The Records of Women’s Gossip won The Third Media Awards for Chinese Literature. Critics describe the story as a turning point in the writer’s style. Written in natural colloquial language, Lin depicts the deepest and subtle inner feelings of Chinese women in rural areas. Soon after its release last year, it became a countrywide best seller.

Lin’s One Persons War

Lins short stories, novellas, and novels are noted for their sensitive treatment of female sexuality. They have been acknowledged by national literary critics as fine Chinese feminist writing examples. Although Lin’s daring explorations of female sexuality are not limited to the desires between women, lesbianism is one of the recurring themes.

Years before cosmopolitan gay activists became vocal about lesbian issues in the media, Lin’s fiction had already challenged homophobia as a form of internalized social discrimination.

For example, Lin’s One Person’s War had to be rewritten before it could pass the censors and be published as a full-length book. Duomi, the protagonist of Lin’s autobiographical novel, One Person’s War, details the instinctual urges as a child exploring the sensations of her own private parts and does so by enlisting another girl’s assistance. It begins by relating the experience of a girl’s masturbation. It ends with the girl, Duomi, selling out her own marriage. In between the novel relates how she gets pregnant out of wedlock, has a miscarriage, and these sorts of experiences.

As Duomi grows up, however, she learns to consider intimacy with other women as abnormal and comes to identify her childhood same-sex play as shameful. Even though Lin does not explicitly criticize homophobia as a social construct, her depiction of a protagonist who constrains her own spontaneous polymorphous desires because of society’s prejudices against homosexuals sets the stage for future critiques of lesbian self-denial.

At one level of meaning, this novel subverts male-dominated society. However, male critics really welcomed the work, and enthusiastically praised it.

（Source: chinaculture.org）

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