After the Lantern Festival, the     1     (follow) joyous celebration in China’s traditional festival calendar is the Huazhao Festival, a traditional flower festival.

With a history of over 2,000 years, the Huazhao Festival is held in celebration of the flower goddess’ birthday. Since the climate     2     (vary) in different parts of China, people hold celebrations on the second, twelfth,     3     fifteenth day of February in the Chinese lunar calendar.

According to ancient beliefs, the flower goddess (女神) controlled the reproduction of mankind. Due to the primitive lifestyle and agriculture-dominated economy, people held that the more members a family had, the     4     (merry). Thus, it later became a custom to celebrate the birthday of the flower goddess for     5     (happy).

Once as significant as the Lantern Festival and Mid-autumn Festival, the Huazhao Festival has gone through stages of thriving (兴旺), declining and restoring. Nowadays     6     increasing number of people in various parts of China have begun to celebrate this flower festival again. Some of them,     7     (dress) in hanfu, a type of traditional Chinese clothing, perform a series of activities. Here is a list of relevant customs as     8     (inspire) for you to spend the Huazhao Festival: praying     9     the flower goddess; having a spring outing; fastening pieces of red cloth to flowers; picking wild vegetables believed     10     (have) the function of promoting health; going to fairs, etc.

As the sun rises over his tea farm in Ning’ er county in Pu’ er, Yunnan province, Li Xingchang walks around,     1     (examine) the leaves of the plants.

Last November, China’s traditional tea-processing techniques and their associated social practices were listed on the UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Pu’er tea     2     (include) on the list.

Li’s family began making Pu’ er tea during the Emperor Yongzheng period(1723–35). He is now the     3     (eight) generation with expert skills in the process.

When Li was a child, he would go to the plantation with his parents     4     (help) them pick leaves at harvest time.     5     a history of several hundred years, the ancient plantation was his playground. Most of his childhood     6     (memory) are associated with it, such as climbing tea trees and playing games with his friends.

In 1987, Li started learning     7     to make Pu’er tribute tea from his mother,     8     he said was very strict. From planting to the complicated processes of tea making, it took him 10 years to win his mother’s     9     (approve).

“If I didn’t do well, she would throw away the leaves or refuse to drink the tea I made. When one day, she smiled after taking a sip, I knew I     10     (make) it,” recalls Li.

Using needles to help life’s energy flow

For thousands of years, the Chinese have relieved pain and cured disease through acupuncture (针灸).     1     (evolve) from the discovery that using stone needles to prick specific points on the surface of the body could relieve pain and symptoms, acupuncture has become     2     integral part of traditional Chinese medicine, in line with the philosophy that promotes the harmonious coexistence of humans with nature.

According to Records of the Grand Historian,     3     (write) by Sima Qian about 2,100 years ago, Bian Que, a highly skilled     4     (physical) during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC), was famous for having saved a prince from “death” by using needles to stimulate the Baihui acupoint on the head of the unconscious man.

According to TCM (中医), there are a dozen meridians (经脉) in the human body,     5     the qi, or life energy, circulates to nourish the organs. Cold, infections or diseases can result in blocking of the energy, and so stimulating the acupoints can unblock stagnant (不流动的) qi, restore normal circulation and improve health. Today, acupuncture is still     6     (wide) used in China.

In 2010, UNESCO inscribed acupuncture and moxibustion of TCM on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Yet, the practice is not just cultural and historical,     7     a medical technique widely used and researched today.

For years,     8     the clear therapeutic effects of acupuncture in treating many diseases, there were few convincing studies that explained how acupoint stimulation worked, or what meridians were anatomically speaking, so the technique always seemed somewhat    9     (mystery).

However, as scientific research of acupuncture     10     (grow) in recent years, producing good quality results, the technique is gaining traction around the world.

9 . It’s been nearly two decades since the traditional clothing style Hanfu first started to reemerge in China. Since then it has gone from a small cultural movement celebrating an ancient fashion to a trend that is booming on social media, having been adopted by China’s Generation Z as a means of connecting with their past. Instead of following other cultures blindly, Generation Z now have different opinions about what trend is by promoting local culture while having an objective view of exotic cultural products.

The new tastes of Generation Z—young people born after 1995—are well represented on Bilibili. In the recent New Year’s Eve gala presented by Bilibili, it attracted more than 100 million views within 48 hours with a colourful set of programmes ranging from Peking Opera to classical Chinese cartoons. The same is also true of movie industry. Last year, for the first time, the top 10 most viewed films in China were all domestic films, while the ticket sales for imported films have dropped to only 16.28 percent.

”Generation Z grew up with the rapid development of China and under good economic conditions. With the development of the Chinese Internet industry, they have more access to diverse international information and culture, which bring them a much broader vision and makes them more open and confident in analyzing foreign culture. Apart from taking pride in China’s rapid development, this generation also pursues individuality and values devotion to the country,“ Professor Zhang Yiwu said.

He also noted that the popular rock and punk culture pursued by the 70s and 80s generation is more of a challenge against real life and local culture. Some people who were born in the 1970s and 1980s did not grow up in the Internet age—they experienced the transformation of China going from poor to rich first-hand. This kind of longing and admiration of the West came from a lack of confidence.

However, Generation Z now have the confidence to look at Western culture with equal status. This kind of cultural confidence will result in China being more active and creative in its development on the international stage in the future.