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Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski attended the celebration ceremony.

Chinese musicians played some works of world renown composers using traditional Chinese instruments such as urheen, lute and koto. The programme featured works by Chopin, Karlowicz, Paderewski and Moniuszko, as well as mazurkas and Polish folk songs.

The Expo Center auditorium also showed a 45-minute song-and-dance performance —— “Let’s Dance Chopin.”

The Rozrywka modern dance group collaborated with noted director Piotr Jagielski to perform various dance styles, including solo and duo, ballet, modern dance and hip-hop, at the Europe Square.

Children could enjoy themselves on the National Pavilion Day, too. They played traditional Polish puzzle games and assembled jigsaws made from award-winning pictures in a Polish painting contest. A Polish dragon made of many shapes also interacted with the visitors.

The design of the Poland Pavilion, resembling a folded paper box, is inspired by its folk art: paper cut-outs. During daytime, the exhibition hall is filled with light filtering through the patterns, and at night it shines with different colours from within.

A Chinese boy and a Polish boy won the art competition for the Polish National Pavilion Day yesterday.

Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski awards the two boys their winner’s certificate.

The art competition was organized by Poland’s Pomeranian Voivodeship, and it collected applicants’ artworks for future cities in the voivodeship and Shanghai, a sister city.

Up to 635 students aged from 8 to 12 from Pomeranian Voivodeship and 235 counterparts from Shanghai joined the competition.

The prizes for each winner include a laptop and a trip to the other city. The Polish winner had visited the Expo site with his parents. The Shanghai winner will visit the voivodeship in September.

The Shanghai winner’s painting was the future city of Dujiangyan, a city badly hit by the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, and he said that he was inspired by Shanghai’s support for the rebuilding of the city in southwest China.

Part Broadway, part Asian steppes, the first modern opera from China’s Inner Mongolia is getting its premiere at the World Expo.

“The Heart of Love,” is directed chiefly by Don Frantz, associate producer of the big Broadway hits “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

The opera combines traditional Mongolian songs and dances developed by generations of herders on grasslands with typical Broadway performances.

It received long applause yesterday at its debut during the opening ceremony of Inner Mongolia Cultural Week, the fifth Chinese provincial week at the Expo.

Frantz got the main idea for the opera when living last year in Inner Mongolia and became inspired by the grasslands and the people there.

To the musical director David Caldwell, the music from the traditional Mongolian instruments such as the horse head fiddle and the sihu, or four-stringed fiddle, were the most fantastic sound in the world.

“I involved as many Mongolian instruments into the Expo as I could,” he said.

About 60 performers, most of Mongolian nationality, take part in the opera. Frantz said the performers were “incredible” singers and dancers.

The 40-minute “Heart of Love” tells the story of a young Inner Mongolian man who leaves his lover to go to Shanghai for his career. He resists all kinds of temptations of the modern city and finally goes back to the grassland to marry.

The opera will play at 10am and 3pm every day at the Baosteel Stage in the Pudong Expo site through May 28.

Caldwell said plans are afoot to prolong the run and perform the work in more places, including Broadway, after the Expo.

Lucky Tang Yunxiang said he would visit Taiwan with his 59-year-old wife next month to return the pavilion’s hospitality.

“I told the staff they had the wrong person when I heard I’d won the prize,” he said.

The couple telephoned their daughter after receiving the prize from the pavilion president. They said they would give her the television and recommend she and her family visit the Taiwan Pavilion.

Tang arrived in Shanghai on Monday with a tour group of 60 people. The couple waited for an hour to enter the Taiwan Pavilion.

“Apart from the national pavilion of China, the Taiwan Pavilion is the one that we most wanted to visit,” said Tang.

The Taiwan Pavilion will present more prizes, including computers and other products from its sponsor companies, to every subsequent 100,000th visitor to the pavilion, said Walter Yeh, president of the pavilion.

He said the activity was to help sponsors by giving their brands greater exposure to Expo visitors.

The total value of the prizes is more than US$3.12 million.

The pavilion gets 4,000 visitors a day and groups of only 40 people are admitted each time.

So, the 200,000th lucky visitor is expected to go through around June 19.

The other 39 visitors in the same group as the winner will also receive some smaller prizes such as audio speakers.

Yeh said the pavilion had no plan to increase the daily capacity to ensure “the best experience” for every visitor.

Staff allocate 3,000 tickets at 9:30am and another 1,000 at 6pm at the pavilion entrance every day. Long queues are common in front of the pavilion and the area where the tickets are distributed.

Wu Mingzhi, 78, sat on a bench at the ticket distribution area at 1:30pm yesterday to wait for tickets that would be given out more than four hours later.

A dozen other visitors were ahead of her. “I worry I cannot get the ticket if I come later,” Wu said.

The 658-square-meter pavilion – designed by C. Y. Lee, designer of Taipei 101, one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers – shows a 4-minute movie about Taiwan’s scenery and wildlife and visitors can participate in repeats of the lantern-flying ceremony.

Dimension: 19.7″ x 13.4″ x 7.9″

Monogram canvas, microfiber lining, natural cowhide trimmings
Golden brass pieces
Magnetic closure
Internal pocket with flap and press stud closure, cell phone compartment, internal D-ring (for attaching a purse or key-holder)
Carried on the shoulder
Wide adjustable strap Metal plate with LV Inventeur
Official Model number is M56381

Official price is almost 2000 us dollars

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A man ties a strip of yellow cloth on a tree to express his grief and remembrance for his lost relatives.(Photo: CCTV.com)

Qingming Festival, which means clear and bright, is also known as Tomb Sweeping Day. People visit their ancestors’ graves on this day to tidy them up, remove weeds and sweep away leaves.

Trees full of yellow ribbons(Photo: CCTV.com)

This year’s Qingming Festival falls on April 4th. In cemeteries in suburban Shanghai, people tie strips of yellow cloth on trees to express their grief and remembrance for their lost relatives.

People travel to rural areas to gaze at blossoming flowers. (Photo: CCTV.com)

Qingming is not just a day of remembrance, it is also a day to celebrate the coming of Spring. The custom of taking an excursion in the countryside was developed as early as one thousand years ago. People travel to rural areas to gaze at blossoming flowers and fly kites.

A volunteer dressed in Han costumes gives out willow branches and reminds people to insert them onto their gates.(Photo: CCTV.com)

In southwest China’s Sichuan Province, Qingming Cultural Week underscores the traditional activities surrounding Qingming Festival. Volunteers dressed in Han costumes give out willow branches and remind people to insert them onto their gates.

A bamboo zither player sings folk songs urging people to respect their parents. (Photo: CCTV.com)

A bamboo zither player sings folk songs urging people to respect their parents.

There will be a string of events held during Qingming Cultural Week, including a grand sacrifice ceremony and performances of ancient music.

Costumed participants march in the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in New York, June 23, 2007. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
Photo Gallery>>>

　NEW YORK, June 23 (Xinhua) — Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to Coney Island, Brooklyn on Saturday to observe the silver anniversary of the Mermaid Parade, one of the largest arts parade in the United States.

Organizers say the Mermaid Parade celebrates “the sand, the sea, the salt air, and the beginning of summer.”

The always colorful event features scantily-clad mermaids with wigs and plastic fins, bare-breasted sea creatures, as well as a celebrity King and Queen. This year’s King Neptune was Adam Savage of the Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters.” Patti D’Arbanville of “Rescue Me” was the Queen Mermaid.

The parade climaxed with a ceremonial ribbon-cutting at the shore, and a tossing of fruit into the Atlantic to appease the sea gods.

The event is considered one of the largest arts parade in America. It is also Coney Island’s biggest annual economic draw.

Parade director Dick Zigun expected over half a million spectators to flock to the boardwalk on Saturday.

“This is the event that started to turn around the image of Coney Island in the early 80s,” Zigun said, who founded the event in 1983 as part of the non-profit organization Coney Island USA. “We created a holiday to give spirit back to Coney Island.”

Charles Denson, director of the Coney Island History Project, credited the parade with bringing Coney Island back to the public’s attention.

“It was like a formal resurrection, reminding people how important Coney Island is to New York,” Denson said.

On earlier rumors that the parade is closing, Zigun said: “That is complete nonsense, like the rumors that all of Coney Island is shutting down after this year.”

“Without question, the parade will be around for its fiftieth anniversary. And beyond,” Zigun said.

The 10th China International Environmental Protection Exhibition and Conference, as known as the CIPEC 2007, is being held in Beijing, with 204 enterprises from 20 countries and regions taking part in the expo. The pictures were taken on June 22. (Source: Chinanews.cn)
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File Photo (Source: chinadaily.com.cn)

BEIJING, June 25 — A crowd of thousands, comprising both foreign and Chinese faces, gathered in Tianshui, Gansu Province, yesterday to honor Fuxi, revered as one of the ancestors of the Chinese nation.

Held outside the main gates of the 600-year-old Fuxi Temple, the ceremony was attended by Xu Shousheng, governor of Gansu Province, who personally read the funeral oration. This was the 19th Fuxi public memorial ceremony since their inception in 1988.

Tianshui, the birthplace of Fuxi, is considered a cradle of Chinese culture where such crucial skills as hunting, farming, fishing and the whole of Fuxi culture first blossomed in China.

Based on the wealth of documentary records and archaeological discoveries uncovered, Fuxi culture is estimated to have originated over 8,000 years ago. According to documents dating back to pre-Qin times (before 248 BC) and historical books from the Han dynasty (206 BC-220AD), Fuxi was honored as forming the bloodline of five other emperors (the Yellow Emperor, Zhuanxu, Ku, Yao and Shun) and the head of three august ones (Fuxi, Nuwa and Shennong).

Long admired as a vital region in China, Tianshui has had the good fortune of being the birthplace and dwelling of many forefathers of the Chinese nation represented today by Fuxi. Each year, thousands of Chinese flock to the city to honor the memories of their ancestors and hold ceremonies for Fuxi.

Prior to Qin Shihuang (259-210 BC) who is credited with becoming China’s first emperor by after uniting the country in 221 BC, ancient Chinese believed in an even older emperor who lived as much as six millennia before Qin.

Fuxi was respected by tribes from near and far, as he taught them to weave fishing nets, feed animals and farm. The wise forebear also established a rudimentary type of social governance, laid down original marriage laws and composed his community’s first music.

But among all of Fuxi’s accomplishments, that which Chinese lore holds in the highest esteem is the bagua, or the Eight Trigrams. The bagua is a fundamental ancient Chinese philosophical concept, generally depicted as an octagonal diagram with a trigram dominating each side.

(Source: China Daily)