A Green Blog, that is a blog that attempts to raise awareness of the importance of the environment of the world and a blog that carries tidbits on things Chinese and on Chinese from all over the world....
Probably you'd think the above pictures depict a person who has been badly beaten but wait a minute, that 's the Chinese Guasha therapy. A special oil is placed on the skin and the skin is then scraped with a special scraper made of jade or horn. The scraping is painless but if you've health problems, hermorrhage-like red spots will appear in the skin. The spots will dissapear in 3 to 7 days time. This treatment supposedly diminishes stress, improve circulation, stimulate the immune system, relaxes, clears the mind and cures countless chronic diseases.
Many people believe in just one God but since there are also so many different people in this world, why not many Gods too if you consider Chinese deities Gods, that is! It is undeniable but the general conception is there are many Gods in a Chinese religion. And I am of the opinion that the number of these Gods will always increase. In Malaysia for example, there is this Tua Pek Kong(Chinese: 大伯公, Da Bo Gong), one of the pantheon of Malaysian Chinese Gods, to prove my point. It was believed that Tua Pek Kong arrived in Penang 40 years before Sir Francis Light, the British founder of the island. Tua Pek Kong was a Hakka man named Zhang Li (张理) and his Sumatra bound boat was struck by wind and accidentally landed on Penang island of Malaysia. After his death, local peoples began worshipping him and built the Tua Pek Kong temple there. Today Tua Pek Kong is worshipped by Malaysian Chinese throughout the country. I really wonder if he is worshipped in mainland China though. ..
While I wrote in a post that Leornardo Da Vinci invented the scissors, a YouTube video here certainly states otherwise.Have a look and be baffled by the many useful inventions introduced by the Chinese. If copyrights have been invented in the past, all these inventions would bring a fortune!
When I went to a shopping mall recently, I caught sight of some plastic juicers. Immediately, I thought of a jade juicer which I have seen atJade Carving Collection.Now, which would you prefer, modern plastic juicer or ancient jade juicer? Ancient jade juicer...
Walking on the street of Taiping the other day, I came across a little newly constructed stage. There was some kind of celebration in a temple and the stage has been erected for a puppet show! China is said to have a flourishing history of puppetry for 2000 years, originally in pi-ying xi, the theatre of the lantern shadows, or, as it is more commonly known today, Chinese shadow theatre. In Taiwan, there is this budaixior glove puppetry, a type of local opera using cloth puppets that originated during the 17th century in in Quanzhou or Zhangzhou, in China's Fujian province. I suppose the puppet show here in Taiping is of this type. The art however is dying in Malaysia. There is just a small audience, people waiting to kill the time, I suppose and of course me, who was more curious than anything else.
A Chinese temple in Taiping...
A stage for a puppet show... Puppets in action...
The cast behind the show...
The cast consists of people from the older generations...
The scissors, I suppose was invented by Leornardo Da Vinci or so I think I have read somewhere. Have you ever wonder then who invented the hammer or saw? I suppose these are Chinese inventions. Many useful inventions other than paper and gunpowder are introduced by the Chinese:
Doufu or bean is a food of Chinese origin made by coagulating soy milk, and then pressing the resulting curds into blocks. Tofu has very little flavor or smell on its own but is often used in Chinese recipe since it can be seasoned or marinated to suit the dishes In Berapit, Bukit Mertajam, a little town in Malaysia however, bean curd manufacturing plants are said to pose a hazard to health and the environment. The plants reportedly will be relocated to a site away from residential areas. The bean curd manufacturers there had used wood pellets instead of rubber wood pellets as fuel in an attempt to save cost. The pellets werechemically treated and hence cause residents to suffer from skin irritation, asthma, respiratory and nasal problems.
