This article was seen on China Culture website. Under the column Chinese Way and entitled Secret of Attraction, it is talking about the Chinese perspectives on attraction and beauty. It covers from facial features to inner temperament. The picture of the ancient Chinese beauty is from the same article on China Culture.

Secret of Attraction

Feminine beauty has been celebrated over the centuries in China and the perception is ever-evolving, but an enduring beauty standard is as follows: a rosy plump oval face, new-moon-shaped eyebrows, delicate and soft limbs and fingers, and fine porcelain skin. More than skin deep, a Chinese beauty should also have good manners, temperament, tastes, and style of conversation.

Perfect Facial Features

Face

It is long held in Chinese ancient painting theory that an oval face makes for the best proportioned features.

According to this theory, the face can be transversely divided into trisections, or “Three Stops” – from the hairline to the eyebrow, from the eyebrow to the bottom of the nose, and from the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin. Vertically, the face can be divided into quinti-sections or “Five Eyes”- the distance between two eyes shall be the length of one eye, and the vertical distance between the outer canthus and the external opening of the ear shall be also the length of one eye. In addition, sweet dimples in the cheeks, or Jiuwo, literally a pit of wines in Chinese, are definitely a plus for female charm.

Eyebrows

Chinese people believe that the eyes and eyebrows of a woman can speak her mind.Shapes of eyebrows varied in different dynasties. In the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.), long, bushy and curved eyebrows were in vogue while the following Han Dynasty adored “八” shaped eyebrows. Tang women loved to trim their eyebrows into the shape of the half moon or arched willow leaves. Thin, long and slightly curved eyebrows have been the major trend since the mid-14th century.

Eyes

Chinese poets often compare beautiful women to peach blossoms in spring. The eyes are long and slightly upcurved at the corners. Under the eyelashes is a pair of misty black pupils.

Lips

Chinese people adore a small, rosy, glossy, and gently up-curved mouth, the so-called “Cherry-like-little Mouth.”

Timeless Appeal of Slender Waist

The traditional Chinese theory of beauty says that a slender waist and a small waist-to-hip ratio are vital for feminine beauty. The “belle curve” showcases the softness and tenderness of women, fitting in with the aesthetic tastes of Chinese.

In ancient China a girl with an hourglass-shaped waist made for the perfect figure. Many ancient poems and legends have linked attractiveness with a thin waist. A legend dating to more than 2,000 year ago says that the King of Chu States lusted for narrow waists, leading to starving palace ladies. The Chu Waist was hence added into the vocabulary referring to a slender waist.

An Oriental Sexy Idol

§ Read the rest of this entry »»»

The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节 zhōngqiūjié), also known as the Moon Festival, is a popular celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China’s Zhou Dynasty. This day is also considered a harvest festival since fruits, vegetables and grain have been harvested by this time and food is abundant.The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer’s harvest. In 2007, the mid-autumn festival falls on September 25.

In the Chinese lunar calendar tradition, the seventh, eighth and ninth months comprise autumn. During fall, the weather is getting drier, and the skies are commonly clear and cloudless and the nights crisp and sharp. Thus the festival celebrates the moon’s appearance as the brightest and most beautiful throughout the year.

The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake. Mooncakes are typically round, symbolizing the full round moon of the mid-autumn festival. The round mooncakes, measuring about three inches in diameter and one and a half inches in thickness are made with melon seeds, lotus seeds, almonds, minced meats, bean paste, orange peels and lard. A golden yolk from a salted duck egg was placed at the center of each cake, and the golden brown crust was decorated with symbols of the festival. The picture above shows a typical mooncake and its inner and outer packages.

Nowadays there are many different varieties of mooncakes, and there are even square-shaped ones. Last month, a super large mooncake was made in Shenyang, Liaoning, weighing nearly 13 tons. This mooncake is 8.15 meters in diameter and 20 centimeters in height, and has a coating weighing one ton, and filling weighing 12 tons, and took ten chefs more than 10 hours to make it.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, and the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Quoting from Xinhuanet.com, and pictures added by the Journal:

The poet, Qu Yuan, lived in the state of Chu during the Warring States period (475 B.C. to 221 B.C.). He drowned himself in the Miluo River in today’s Hunan Province in 278 B.C., on fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, hoping his death could awaken the king to revitalize the kingdom.

The date has since been remembered as the Dragon Boat Festival, or Duanwu Festival, on which local fishermen row dragon boats along the Miluo river to search for Qu Yuan and scatter glutinous rice dumplings in the water to prevent the fish from eating his body.

And,

The appeal of traditional Chinese holidays is alleged to lie in the eating: mooncakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival, sweet dumplings on Lantern Day, and glutinous rice dumplings for Duanwu, or Dragon Boat Festival.

The Lantern Festival (元宵节) is on the 15th day of the first month of the Lunar Year, taking place under a full moon, and marks the end of Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) festivities. For the year of 2007, it is today – the 4th of March. It is said that the Festival dates back to shrouded legends of the Han Dynasty over 2000 years ago.

The important festivity for this day is watching lanterns of numerous kinds, and “Guessing lantern riddles” is an essential part of the Festival. People write riddles on a piece of paper and post them on the lanterns (or write them directly on the lanterns). Visitors who work out the solutions to the riddles can tear it off (or remember the numbers) and take it the lantern owners to check their answer. Sometimes, if the solution are right, they will be given a little gift.

The special food for the Festival is Yuan Xiao (元宵) or Tang Yuan (汤圆), or rice dumplings. Yuan Xiao are balls of glutinous rice rolled around a filling of sesame, peanuts, vegetable, or meat. Yuan Xiao can be boiled or fried. Tang Yuan are often cooked in red-bean or other kinds of soup.

It is said that the custom of eating Yuanxiao originated during the Eastern Jin Dynasty in the fourth centuty, then became popular during the Tang and Song periods. The round shape symbolizes wholeness and unity.

Note: Some photos are from http://www.pingtan.com.cn/.

Today is the third day of the Chinese New Year. Most people are still on holidays enjoying themselves with family feast, delicious food, visiting relatives and friends, going to art performances, and firing fireworks and firecrackers. Spring Festival, known to the West more as the Chinese New Year and comparable to the Christmas holidays in the West, is the most important celebration for Chinese people every year.

There are various kinds of festivities during the Spring Festival period. Although the official holiday is usually about a week starting from the first day of the lunar New Year, the preparation and celebrations for the New Year actually starts from the last month of the previous year, as early as on the 8th day of the 12th lunar month when many families enjoy “laba porridge” (腊八粥) made with glutinous rice, millet, seeds of Job’s tears, jujube berries, lotus seeds, beans, longan and gingko, and will not end until the day of the Lantern Festival on the 15^th of the first lunar month.

Spring Festival Couplets

As a tradition, before the New Year comes, every people would completely clean the indoors and outdoors and beautify their homes with traditional ornaments. In many places particularly in the countryside, people would decorate all their door panels with Spring Festival couplets, putting down the best wishes for good luck, bright future, happiness and wealth, bright future for the New Year. The Spring Festival couplets are usually done with Chinese calligraphy with black or golden characters on red paper.

Reversed “Fu”

Among all the decorations, the Chinese character “fu” (福) is a must. This character, meaning blessing and happiness, would usually be pasted upside down. In Chinese, the “reversed fu” is homophonic with “fu comes” or “fu arrives”, both pronounced as “fu-dao-le” (福到了).

New Year’s Eve Family Feast

People attach great importance to Spring Festival Eve. All family members will be together, and have dinner together. Typically, this meal is more luxurious than usual. And the menu is a set of meaningful dishes, such as fish – “yu” (鱼), which is homophonic with ‘abundance’, would be a ‘must-have’. Others dishes like chicken and bean curd, pronounced respectively “ji” (鸡), and “doufu,” (豆腐), meaning auspiciousness (吉) and richness (富), will also be dishes for that dinner.

§ Read the rest of this entry »»»