New rules are being proposed to protect Suzhou City’s 2,500-year-old walls. The legislation includes a ban on advertisement boards, high-rise buildings and industrial and commercial structures being built next to the walls or in nearby neighborhoods. Experts will be invited to study the 15.5-km walls and repair brickwork. The city will also pay for the area’s […]
Cooperage, or barrel-making, is a traditional Chinese trade. Formerly regarded as an essential trade like carpentry and stonemasonry, it is now mostly known as an intangible cultural heritage. Qi Jianfei is one of just a few people who is still in the cooperage trade. “To me, cooperage is a family business. My father did it […]
If it had not been for archaeologist Fan Jinshi, 79, and her team, the world cultural heritage at Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes (敦煌莫高窟) in a remote Chinese desert might have long been destroyed by sand, weather or humans. Fan has spent half a century working to preserve the ancient Buddhist wall paintings at Dunhuang, in northwest […]
In the ancient Chinese capital of Nanjing, part of a Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) city wall collapsed due to a nearby construction. No casualties were reported following the collapse of the wall, built in Xiaotaoyuan Park, where residents regularly exercise. According to mainland laws protecting cultural relics, approval is needed before any infrastructure construction starts, but the […]
Anthropologists in central China are carefully preserving the mummies of a couple accidentally found in a tomb that is believed to date back some 500 years, according to media reports. The tomb was unearthed in Taikang county in Zhoukou, Henan province by a construction crew that was installing plumbing, the Dahe Daily reported. The buried […]
In 527 AD, the royal court of Northern Wei (北魏 386-534) appointed Cui Kai (崔楷) as the prefectural governor of Yin Zhou (殷州, in today’s Hebei province). Yin Zhou was newly established at the time. Food and weaponry were scarce. Cui Kai requested these items from the court but was not sent provisions. So some people […]
Last I checked, we still have a free press. Foreign media, especially, cannot be expected to keep quiet about and not report bad news. So, Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo should stop blaming the press and Vice President Leni Robredo for the difficulties in attracting tourists to our country. She should blame instead bad things happening […]
The China-ASEAN Tourism Cooperation Year was launched in Manila on March 16, with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang leading over 1,000 guests at the Philippine International Convention Center. Premier Li Keqiang, in a message read by Wang, cited ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)’s “pivotal role in regional cooperation” and noted that ASEAN and China […]
The richest Filipinos listed in Forbes Magazine are not the Philippines’ top individual taxpayers. The nation’s top taxpayers are those who paid the most on their reported personal incomes, says the Bureau of Internal Revenue. The tycoons pay more income taxes overall than other taxpayers, but much of that is final withholding taxes on interest, […]
Police busted an Indian-led kidnap-for-ransom group after a group leader and three gang members were arrested. The arrests – made separately in Lupao and Rizal towns, Nueva Ecija – were made after the group took the P600,000 ransom payment from victim Indian businessman Handvinder Singh, says Director General Ronald dela Rosa, chief of the Philippine […]