On Sept. 30th, New York welcomed the grand finale of the first-ever NTD Global Chinese Beauty Pageant. It was part of a series of international cultural and arts events hosted by New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV).
As visitors meander the streets of New York City, their first sight is undoubtedly the city’s wild assortment of buildings. From the history-filled red-brick houses to the towering skyscrapers, a location can, in many ways, be defined by its architecture.
“Gentle” and “graceful.” Those are the words used to describe an ideal woman in “Fishhawk,” the first poem in the Classic of Poetry, China’s oldest poetry anthology. For nearly the entirety of China’s 5,000 years of history, gentle and graceful have been the definitive qualities of a beautiful woman.
Floriography, also called the language of flowers, has been a means of cryptological communication for centuries. Through arrangements of specific flowers, coded messages could be delivered to recipients. In addition, plants have traditionally represented metaphors for virtue or vice.
America’s first great landscape painter, Thomas Cole, was a pivotal figure in the development of a distinctly American artistic identity in the early 19th century. Cole’s masterful landscapes range from picturesque compositions of America’s pristine wilderness to imaginative historical and allegorical scenes. The revered artist’s devotion to seeking the presence of God in nature inspired him to create depictions of divinity within the world and the human experience.
Most of us know some sort of bare-bones history about the origins of Thanksgiving, that three-day feast in 1621 at the Pilgrim colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It included some of the colony’s Native American allies from the Wampanoag tribe and their chief, Massasoit. Having been taught how to plant corn as well as other survival skills by English-speaking Squanto (a member of the confederation of Wampanoag tribes), the Pilgrims wanted to celebrate both their survival and their successful harvest.
A harsh winter causes most plants to wither and fade, but plum blossoms can withstand the cold. They bloom humbly during the night, signalling to dormant flowers that spring is right around the corner.
A poetic season is around the corner. In many regions, the arrival of autumn overturns nature’s color palette, leaving a multihued landscape of orange, yellow, scarlet, and brown. Maple forests, vibrant at first and shriveled in the end, forecast both the advent and departure of autumn.
Since Biblical times, we’ve been searching for our other halves, wanting to ride into the sunset with our one true love, and marrying the love of our life. But marriage traditions through the ages have ranged from joyous to somber.
Bright pink cherry blossoms against a brilliant blue sky is a sight unlike any other in the world. “Sakura” is the cherry blossom’s name in Japan. They flutter slowly to the ground as crowds mill about, taking in springtime’s beauty.
as the Japanese poet Fujiwara no Okikaze lamented, “Hundreds of flowers and thousands of grasses all flourish yet all will wither.” In order to hold on to each invaluable instant, the Japanese carved their observations of the subtle changes of each season into a wide variety of delicate confections named “wagashi.”
When Liu Xitong was asked by a film crew to write four words in Chinese calligraphy, he agreed immediately, heartily, and for reasons the crew did not yet know. Once a famous calligrapher back home in China, Liu had since left the country where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persecuted him for his faith. In doing so, he had set aside his art in his quest to pursue justice after he moved to the United States.
