When we see some people showing amazing skills, such as in sports, playing instruments, juggling, acrobatics, etc., we might talk to ourselves: Geeez, I can never do this!

However, you might not know how many months and years they have been practicing the skill off the stage. They failed frequently and painfully in the beginning. Then they failed less. Someday they started to shine. And finally they made it on the stage in front of you. It’s a matter of practice.

Welcome to the January 21, 2010 edition of china carnival.

We have four posts today. Zhu continues to tell us her Beijing stories and this time it is about the well known Tian’An Men. Devin presents one of his days traveling in China. Matt talked about the interesting habit of Chinese to ask other people’s income. In the end, “Watch me eat” shares some good Chinese food somewhere in NY state.

Let’s take this Jade Cong of Liangzhu culture as an example. It is square outside and round inside, with a middle hole. Experts have speculated that it may represent our ancestors’ “hemispherical dome” belief. The square means earth, the round circle means heaven. And Cong has both of them; it is a symbol of connection between heaven and earth.

At the time, every time when a good harvest, or memorial day, they held a grand sacrificial ceremony. Liangzhu ancestors would use this Jade Cong to communicate with heaven and earth gods.

Once the list was published, the Central Conservatory of Music was commissioned to collect information for later text, sound publication. Then the first published plan was on the “People’s Daily” overseas edition. On June 5 1993 in Beijing, the official awarding ceremony was held at the Great Hall of the People. Representative works from Mainland China, Hongkong, Taiwan were performed at the opening ceremony.

Fruit flies like a banana, time flies like an arrow. A year ago, on Jan 7th, 2009, ChinaBlog.cc came online. I’d like to make an annual review here and share some thought about my experience of authoring this blog.

I still haven’t achieved amazing traffic or readership, but at least I have successfully posted continuously for a year, I haven’t abandoned this blog and am making progress. That’s good enough!