Kite capital clarisonic mia
Weifang is home to two of the most colourful Chinese creations painted silk kites and woodblock printed new year pictures. THE world's first kite took to the skies as a tool of the military during China's tumultuous late Zhou period. Twentyfive centuries later, kiteflying remains a popular pastime in China and the country's colourful kites are some of the most creative in the world. Their ingenious hinged bamboo frames give Chinese kites (fengzheng) great flexibility and manoeuvrability, the silk birds, butterflies, dragonflies and goldfish seeming to come to life in the wind. Chinese kites suspended from the glass ceiling of the atrium lobby of Weifang's World Kite Museum ルイビトン.
Chinese fengzheng are crafted in a number of places but the best ones reputedly come from Shandong province's "World Kite Capital" Weifang. The International Kite Festival hosted by the city every April attracts thousands of enthusiasts from dozens of countries. The incredible creativity of China's kitemakers is on display at the Weifang World Kite Museum chan luu, the largest of its kind in the world Pandora Charms. The museum's galleries include not only kites from China's various provinces, but also different types of kites, from flat ones with intricate designs, to threedimensional kites with moving parts and ones with bells and whistles attached so they "sing" in the wind. The tiniest kite was not much bigger than a postage stamp while enormous ones suspended from the glass ceiling of the museum's atrium lobby seemed twice the height of a person. And in the gallery dedicated to kite festival champions was Malaysia's very own wau bulan, with its unmistakable crescent shape. While the World Kite Museum showcases the creations of China's finest kitemakers, Yanjiabu, a rustic hamlet turned handicrafts village lululemon, gave us a chance to observe their skills firsthand. The enterprising locals have moved to an adjacent village but some continue to practise their craft in the workshops. Their work is so highly regarded that a supervisor said a Japanese woman came and stayed six months to learn Chinese kitemaking tiffany uk. I stepped into one of the village's many halls to find a long table spread with pieces of special silk painted with a butterfly design, in different stages of completion. Using a flat traditional brush, a young woman diligently and painstakingly handtinted each wing in vivid shades of blues, greens, yellows and pinks. In the next hall, 20 or so young women sat intently stripping, bending and shaping slivers of bamboo to craft the frames and moveable joints while two girls tested a red phoenix kite in a grassy open space outside. Besides kites, Yanjiabu is famous for woodblock printed nianhua (new year pictures) vivienne westwood. Like kites vivienne westwood, printing was invented in China over two millennia ago and a 1,150yearold Tang dynasty sutra found at Dunhuang is reputedly the world's oldest printed book. While paper printing techniques were primarily used to reproduce scriptures and scholarly classics, the common folk adapted them for their own purposes. No one knows for sure when the first nianhua was created but they flourished in the Song dynasty a thousand years ago. Traditionally pasted onto doors and walls during the Spring Festival, nianhua is especially popular in the rural areas where fervent hopes for a year filled with abundance and good tidings are poured into the bright hued paper prints. An old master was patiently producing nianhua in a rather spare room in Yanjiabu. As we stood respectfully around him, he brushed yellow ink on a pair of engraved woodblocks, flipped thin, slightly absorbent paper over them and lightly tamped down the paper to ensure the ink was spread evenly. He repeated this process with each colour until two multicoloured vases appeared. Shandong is famous for pears and the master said the best wood for making the blocks come from the province's pear trees lululemon sale. He had been practising his craft for over 40 years and from his steady hands emerged images of flowers in vases for peace and prosperity, fat babies holding fish for abundance lululemon, protective door gods and auspicious divinities bringing wealth, happiness toms shoes, longevity and good fortune. Many of the buildings in Yanjiabu have obviously been rebuilt to meet the needs of tourism but a number of the farmhouses dating to the Ming and Qing dynasties have striking local features vanessa bruno. Typically chan luu sale, Chinese roofs are tiled but many of the residential roofs in Yanjiabu are thatched because, a local said, the village used to be too poor to afford tiles. Perhaps poverty drove them to greater inventiveness for another unusual aspect of the modest living quarters are the two small circular clay tiles inserted into the wall near the entrance lululemon, each with a dozen holes less than a centimetre in diameter. These quirky holes open into a niche in the interior wall vanessa bruno, allowing bees to fly in and nest to provide the family with a constant supply of honey. Not many places can claim excellence in two of the world's most celebrated inventions and it is to Weifang's credit that the crafts of kitemaking and block printing are being kept alive in Yanjiabu. Ziying makes frequent trips to China to refurbish a traditional family house in her ancestral village.Related：