Dressed in a white gown with pens in his pocket, 53-year-old Diarra Boubacar was welcomed by the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital in the Xindu district of Chengdu, Sichuan, as a specially invited expert.

Boubacar grew up in a small town in south-central Mali, a country in West Africa, which finds it challenging to provide affordable healthcare to its 19 million people.

Boubacar first came to China in 1984 on a student exchange program majoring in Chinese language and culture at Beijing Language and Culture University. After the two-year course, he decided to study traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) at Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine.

Since TCM is also related to Chinese history and culture, students have to study ancient Chinese literature as most of the medical texts were written in ancient Chinese characters. “That’s a subject even the Chinese find difficult; so think of me, a foreigner!” he said.

What inspired him to continue were the similarities between TCM and traditional African medicine, such as using certain herbs to treat the same diseases and letting out blood.

However, the greatest challenge for him was to convince people that even though he was a foreigner, he could still treat them effectively with TCM.

In 1997, he became the first foreigner to receive a doctoral (博士的) degree in acupuncture (针灸) from Chengdu University of TCM.

Besides his work in a private hospital, Boubacar has also been helping patients in remote villages in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. A major part of his work was treating leprosy (麻风病) patients.

Due to his work in the community, Boubacar is also known as the “African Norman

“I want to build not only a hospital but also an educational center where people can come and learn about Chinese medicine,” he said. After 10 years, his dream is becoming a reality.

“If they learn TCM, they will be able to treat people in Africa in a very cheap and effective way,” said Boubacar.

2 . Discover World Heritage (遗产)

Heritage is treasure from the past — what we live with today and what we pass on to future generations. To preserve it, UNESCO safeguards hundreds of natural and cultural World Heritage sites around the world.

Here are 5 World Heritage sites:

Looking forward to seeing you.

Yours,

Li Jin

5 . Live music fans all over the world are constantly on the lookout for live musical events and concerts. There are indeed a great number of festivals that take place all over the globe to cater to this great demand for music and entertainment. Among these events one of the more popular festivals is the UK Cardiff Big Weekend, which is famous for its featured talent that includes famous musical bands and artists and much revelry that has made a popular audience draw.

The event has taken place every year since 1995 and it is organized around by Cardiff Council. It is known as the country’s largest free music event, thus attracting hundreds of thousands of music lovers and enthusiasts. The celebrations go on for three days featuring different styles of live entertainment. What is more, the occasion also features a number of lively outdoor events that are celebrated around Cardiff’s Civic Centre. The participants can also look forward to the fireworks display every night that takes place during the closing of the performances.

It features not just budding talent, but also established artists as well as those who have made a name for themselves on the international entertainment scene. Generally, on Friday nights, the concert features Welsh Bands. For those who take part in the event, they can look forward not just to good music but also a fun-filled fairground atmosphere with all the attractions of a fair. Thus it is a popular spot for not just the young but also those who are young at heart looking to have a great time and hear a wide range of musical styles.

Festival participants can make use of the different hotel packages on offer from various UK hotels. Hotel chains such as Millennium & Copthorne Hotels UK have a number of attractive offers such as rooms with breakfast, long-stay packages and advance booking packages. Even if you are a last-minute planner, there are great deals not to be missed.

6 . Africa is a large and varied continent containing some of the oldest civilizations on earth. It is home to a wide diversity of religions and cultures, and this colorful diversity is reflected in its diverse and colorful weddings traditions.

An African wedding is, more than anything, the bringing together of two people as a single family, or the combining of two families or even the mixture of two tribes into one family unit. The concept of family is one of the unifying ideas of the African continent. There are more than 1,000 cultural units in Africa and each culture, each tribe has its own wedding and marriage traditions, many of which can trace their origins back hundreds or even thousands of years. There are also many different religions represented in Africa. Many northern Africans, especially, have been influenced by Muslim traditions, while further south there are more Christian, Hindu, and even Jewish traditions with more ancient traditions. 

In many places in Africa young girls are trained to be good wives from an early age. They may even learn secret codes and secret languages that allow them to talk with other married women without their husbands understanding what is being said. 

Depending on which part of Africa you are in, wedding ceremonies can be extremely elaborate, some lasting many days. Often huge ceremonies are held during which many couples are united at the same time. 

In Sudan and in other areas along the Nile a man must pay his wife’s family in sheep or cattle for the loss of their daughter’s labor in support of the family. A wife may cost a man as many as 30 to 40 head of cattle. In Somalia a man is allowed to have as many as four wives if he can support them all, and it is not uncommon for a girl to be engaged before she is even born. 

Bright festive colors, song, dance, and music are vital elements of many African wedding ceremonies. Common to all wedding ceremonies is the concept of changing between childhood and adulthood. In many African cultures children are encouraged to marry as young as 13 to 15 years of age, as soon as they have reached physical adulthood.

7 . “You’re going to the United States to live? How wonderful! You’re really lucky!”

Does this sound familiar? Perhaps your family and friends said similar things to you when you left home. But does it seem true all the time? Is your life in this new country always wonderful and exciting? A great many facts show that it’s not easy for newcomers to adjust to life in a new culture. They have to experience culture shock.

What causes culture shock? Maybe the weather is unpleasant. Perhaps the customs are different. Perhaps the public service systems such as the telephone, post office, or transportation are difficult to figure out and you make mistakes. The simplest things seem difficult. The language may be difficult. The food may seem strange to you. If you don’t look similar to the natives, you may feel strange. You may feel as if everyone is watching you. In fact, you are always watching yourself.

Everyone experiences culture shock in some form or another. But culture shock comes as a surprise to most people. A lot of the time, the people with the worst culture shock are the people who never had any difficulties in their own countries.

They were active and successful in their community. They had hobbies or pastimes which they enjoyed. When they come to a new country, they do not have the same positions or hobbies as they already had in their countries. They find themselves without a role, almost without an identity. They have to build a new self-image.

Culture shock produces a feeling of disorientation (迷惘), which may be homesickness, imagined illness, or even paranoia (妄想). When people feel the disorientation of culture shock, they sometimes feel like staying inside all the time. They want to protect themselves from the unfamiliar environment. They want to create an escape within their room to give themselves a sense of security. This escape does solve the problem of culture shock for the short term, but it does nothing to familiarize the person more with the culture. Familiarity and experience are the long-term ways to settle the problem of culture shock.

I’m glad to     

Yours,

Li Hua

10 . The French author Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once wrote, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” Put more simply, this means “You are what you eat.” Most people today relate this saying to healthy eating. However, Brillat-savarin was actually referring to our personality, character, and culture.

Certainly, in many ways this seems to be true. Chinese cuisine is a case in point. Prior to coining to China, my only experience with Chinese cooking was in America, with Chinese food that had been changed to suit American tastes. For example, America’s most popular Chinese dish is General Tso’s chicken, which consists of fried chicken covered in a sweet sauce, favoured with hot red peppers. This is probably not an authentic Chinese recipe, however, so it cannot tell us much about the Chinese. On the other hand, it does tell us a lot about Americans. It tells us, for example, that Americans love bold (敢于冒险的), simple favours.

Later, I had a chance to experience authentic Chinese food by coming to China. When my family and I had just arrived in Shandong Province in the eastern part of North China, we went looking for a good place to eat. My favourite dish there was boiled dumplings served with vinegar. I observed that family is important to the people there. It has become a favourite traditional dish of the people in North China, where making dumplings has always been a family affair with everyone—from the youngest to the oldest—joining in to help. Later, I leamt that the most famous food in Shandong is pancake mils stuffed with sliced Chinese green onions.

Our travels then took us to South China, and then on to central China. In each place we went, we experienced wonderful local dishes, from Guangdong’s elegant dim sum—small servings of food in bamboo steamers—to the exceptional stewed noodles in Henan. Everywhere, the food was as varied as the people. However, one thing is always true: Through food, Chinese people everywhere show friendship and kindness.

At a minimum, the kinds of food local people consume tell us what they grow in their region, what kinds of lives they lead, and what they like and do not like. Could we also say, for example, that those who like bold flavours are bold themselves? Or, that those who like spicy food tend to have a hot temper? Maybe. Maybe not. What we can say, however, is that culture and cuisine go hand in hand, and if you do not experience one, you can never really know the other.