The Context

On August 21, the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, DC celebrated the first birthday of panda cub Xiao Qi Ji, which translates to Little Miracle. The zoo had held an online contest where the public could vote on a list of names. He “shared not one but two delicious fruitsicle cakes with his mother, Mei Xiang,” the zoo said on its website. 

The cub’s birth definitely comes as a little miracle during the Covid-19 pandemic and tensions between China and the US.

The first pair of pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing , arrived in the National Zoo in April 1972, three months after former US president Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China. 

Historically, animals have played significant roles in China’s foreign relations. Sometimes they were gifts, like pandas. Sometimes they started wars. 

Another animal that once served as a national gift was the giraffe, as ancients believed it to be a qilin, a mythical and auspicious creature on par with the unicorn in Western cultures. . 

Today we discuss how a ferocious, exotic beast, lion, has become an auspicious, cute cultural icon in ancient China.
The lion originally came from Africa. It trekked from Egypt into Europe and Asia Minor from the Mediterranean, and into the Iranian Plateau and India. There was no human intervention in their migration. There are two sub-spices of Asian lions: Persian lions and Indian lions. 
When the Silk Road developed in the late 2nd century, lions were imported to China through the Silk Road as a gift from other countries to Chinese emperors. They were raised in emperors’ palaces so few people could see a lion with their own eyes. 
Ferocious animals are revered and feared by people. When lions became a magic animal which could eat tigers and bring good luck, their image changed in people’s imaginations, and it evolved so it became different from reality. They became very cute. So how cute are they, and why?

On August 30, China announced a policy that restricts the time minors can play online games to three hours a week. The new rules limit those under 18 access to online gaming platforms to one hour from 8 to 9pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and on official holidays.

 However, on Saturday 8pm that week, many complained they could not log on their accounts for Arena of Valor, a popular game by Tencent. Two hours later, Tencent said that its servers were down and it had already fixed the problem. The company did not explain what had caused the problem. But players believed the rush of underage players logging on at the same time crashed the servers.

As in the rest of the world, online gaming addictions among children have become a serious social issue in China. Some children sneak their parents’ debit cards to pay for online games. When denied access to gaming, some children become violent and hurt their parents. Some cases have ended in suicide. There are cases where parents are addicted to games, setting a poor example for their children. 

Some questioned the necessity of restricting online gaming, as children’s playtime is not of national importance.  But history tells us that games are important to a nation and society as a whole. 

 As a very popular folk song during the Tang dynasty goes: 

“you don’t have to send your son to school; a boy good at cock fighting has a much better future than a well-educated one; look at the boy from the Jia family, he was only 13 years old, but has more wealth and honor than big rich families.”

How could roosters, stones, and even cranes be of any harm? When powerful people indulged in them in excess, they ruined everything, including the power they held.

If Wuhan was the place in China that received most attention in 2020, Henan Province has certainly captured its share of attention this year. Henan in history is repeatedly referred to as the “zhongyuan,” or “central plain.” It is the thousands of years of its history as the “zhongyuan” that has created and shaped the land as the symbol of the most glorious – and the most painful memories of China.  

So where and what is the “zhongyuan?” Geographically, “zhongyuan” in a broad sense includes today’s Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces in China’s northwest, central China’s Henan and the east coast Shandong Province, all in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. “Zhongyuan” in a narrow sense refers to the part of Henan today that’s south of the Yellow River, mainly from Luoyang to Shangqiu, about 350 kilometers west of Luoyang. Henan has four ancient capitals, including Luoyang, Kaifeng, Zhengzhou and Anyang, more than any other Chinese province. Among the four, only Anyang is to the north of the Yellow River. 

We can see central China’s Henan is the zhongyuan in both the narrow and broad sense. But it is important to note that “zhongyuan” is much more a cultural concept than a geographic location on a map. It played a central role in the history of Chinese civilization and in shaping the core of Chinese culture. 

Even if we trace archaeology back to da Vinci and Raphael, there is another related discipline that began much earlier. Epigraphy, the study of ancient inscriptions, was first developed in ancient China. Unlike archaeology, it aimed to challenge and verify interpretations of classical Confucianism texts. 
A movement similar to the Renaissance blossomed in China during the 9th and 11th century. Leaders of the movement sought inspiration from ancient traditions. Part of their efforts was   research of inscriptions on ancient metal and stone artifacts. The most remarkable achievement in Chinese epigraphy was made by a couple at the end of Northern Song dynasty. The couple’s story is as well-known as their achievements. 

By August 2, at least 302 people had died and some 50 were registered as missing due to the catastrophic floods that swept through parts of central China’s Henan Province after days of torrential downpours in mid-July. By 7am on August 9, nearly 15 million people in Henan had been affected by the floods. In Europe, about 200 people died in the flood which hit Germany and Belgium also in mid-July.

 For thousands of years, China suffered from severe floods. Ancient Chinese people dealt with the problem in two ways. One was scientific. They built big hydraulic projects like the Dujiangyan Irrigation System in today’s Sichuan Province which has been in operation for more than 2,000 years, and still works today. It made the Chengdu Plain a land of plenty. The other is superstition. They believed that animals, typically the ox, had magic powers that enabled them to contain floods. 

This belief, or expectation that something magic can overwhelm evil has a long history.  

At one time, archaeology was not a place for outsiders. But in recent years, it has captured the public imagination in China with movie blockbusters about tomb raiding like The Lost Tomb and the mysterious new findings of the Sanxingdui excavations. There is even a popular toy that lets children play archaeologist: a box containing a Terracotta warrior replica buried in dirt and tiny excavation tools. You have to clean it with the tools to discover what kind of Terracotta warrior you got. It could be a standing or a kneeling warrior, or even an emperor. 

 Archaeology involving excavation, scientific research and modern techniques started in the West only 150 years ago, and was brought to China about 90 years ago. 

Like in the West, archaeology in China was also the shared dream and passion of a businessman and a group of scholars, a dream that was also fed by Western-led expeditions in China.  

Humans in prehistory period relied on hunting and gathering to survive. When agriculture was developed, hunting became an important sport and entertainment for elites. It often carried military and political significance. 

 The construction of the Hangou canal began in 486 BCE, 1,090 years before Emperor Yang launched his canal project. It became the earliest part of what became the Sui Grand Canal. Its initiator was a ruler who was as ambitious and ill-fated as Emperor Yang. 
Cities along the Grand Canal also were affected as the length and contour of the canal changed. At 1,800 kilometers long, the Yuan canal is about 800 kilometers shorter than the previous canal.  Suzhou and Hangzhou earned  the name “paradises on Earth.” Suzhou was the largest city during the Ming. But prosperity also brought disaster to the cities.

 “The same water either supports or overturns boats on it,”  Li Shimin, the second emperor of the Tang in the 7th century, often  cited these Confucius’ remarks which compared water to the people and boats to sovereigns.  He did this to repeatedly remind himself of the lessons he learned from the fall of the Sui. He founded a golden age in China's history.  The Grand Canal witnessed and even underwrote the rise and fall of power and wealth of dynasties, cities and people for thousands of years  in ancient China.  The first person people think about in connection to the Grand Canal is Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty about 1,400 years ago. The Grand Canal was his project. But it was also in a city on the Grand Canal and largely because of the Grand Canal that he lost his empire and his life.