【推荐2】Little New Year, or Xiaonian, is usually a week before the lunar New Year. It fell on the 18th day of the first month in 2020. It’s also known as the Festival of the Kitchen God.

The Kitchen God is also famous as Zao Jun. He watches over the moral character (道德品质) of each house. He spends only a few days in heaven (天庭) every year. He’s in control of the farm animals, the servants, and most of all, the cooking oven. He listens to the fights among people and sees how servants hide food for themselves. For those reasons, when it’s time for him to report to heaven on the 24th day of the last lunar month, every family is suddenly worried and offers good food to make him happy. The humans hope that the Kitchen God will say good words for them so he’ll return with the blessings (赐福) from heaven in the new year.

The tradition to serve the Kitchen God lasts for the longest time, as far back as the Xia Dynasty. Xia is the first dynasty in Chinese history, so the Kitchen God may be around even longer than that.

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Chinese culture has great attraction for people both at home and abroad. We have seen many people from around the world express their love for Chinese culture in different forms. A growing number of foreigners have even chosen to live in China for its culture.

Interested in Chinese classical literature, Canadian artist Brandon Collins-Green or Lin Buran in Chinese expresses his understanding of A Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin and Chinese poems through thousands of paintings. Often painting throughout the night, he has created more than 4,200 works. Living alone in the center of Nanchang, he has come a long way since he first came here in 2015 to study ancient Chinese literature.

Brandon loves learning about the lifestyle of ancient Chinese people. “So far, I have read the novel three times, translated most of its poems, songs, lantern riddles (谜语), and dialogues into English, and completed over 1 million words of articles and 2,000 related paintings during my PhD studies,” said Brandon with pride and satisfaction.

Timur Kuvatov, director-general and editor-in-chief of the Kazakhstan Today News Agency, is a Chinese kung fu fan. He has won kung fu championships a lot of times and also served as a coach for the Kazakhstan kung fu team. “Chinese kung fu is a treasure of Chinese culture. It is not just a sport but also reflects the Chinese way of dealing with people, their understanding of life, nature, and the world,” he said.

Vincent Cazeneuve, known as Wensen Qi in Chinese, is a French artist devoted to lacquer (漆器) creation. He came to live in Chongqing in 2009. His works have been shown in art institutions both in and outside of China, and his fans have even collected some of them.

What is the charm of Chinese culture that attracts these people? It lies in its richness and openness. Also its cultural background differences make foreigners curious about the lifestyles, way of thinking, and values of the country.

【推荐1】In the southeast of the Tengger Desert in the city of Zhongwei, Ningxia sits a new desert library. The 24-hour library welcomes book lovers and visitors with its beauty and culture. Zhongwei was an important place in China in history. The city of Zhongwei did a lot for many years to make its culture known to people. And the library is part of the desert culture of Zhongwei.

As Ningxia’s first library built in the desert, the new library has three floors and can keep 40,000 books. It opened in June, 2022 and quite a few visitors have come to visit it. Some people like it for its special shape. “The library is a great success,” Jin Weiqi, a visitor to the library said. “Seen from the sky, the chocolate brown building looks like a boat that is left on the beach.” Others love the special reading experience there. Yang Fang is one of them. The primary school teacher brought her 8-year-old daughter to the library. With stars above their heads at night, they can enjoy reading when listening to the sounds of the wind in the desert.

“Lost Treasure Box(丢失的宝盒)”, the name of the library, shows us part of Zhongwei’s history and culture. “The library has a lot of stories to tell,” said Liu Huiling, a worker of the library. Many important historical events took place there in the history of China. So visiting the library is a good way to learn about local history and culture.

【推荐3】Taihu Lake is a famous place of interest. If visitors look at Taihu Lake, they will see much clean water. Boats run under the white clouds and the blue sky. However, 15 years ago, the lake looked very different.

The lake is part of the Yangtze River and covers more than 2,000 square kilometers. About 17,000,000 people get water from it, but the water was not so clean before. Since 2007, our country has done many things to clean the water of the lake. So far workers have taken lots of algae out of the lake.

The water of Taihu Lake is much cleaner than before. After more than 10 years’ hard work, our country has thought of a scientific way to treat the algae. Now few algae grow in the lake. There are 23 kinds of water birds and more than 50 kinds of plants in Taihu Lake.

Our country will try other ways to protect (保护) the lake and make the pollution less. Taihu Lake will be cleaner in the future.

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