A Pilgrimage to Famen Temple

Qujiang International Shadow Art Festival 2010 attracted numerous photoqraphers from around the world. Participant photographers were offered various photo tours through which they were greatly inspired by gorgeous sceneries and historical sites of Xi＇an. Following the tour around Qujiang Site Park, my fellow photographers and I embarked on a pilgrimage to Famen Temple, a Buddhist temple that dates back more than 1000 years.     

Peregrinatio sive expeditio: Why the First Crusade was not a Pilgrimage

Introduction Since Hans Eberhard Mayer published his Geschichte der Kreuzzüge in 1965 in which he called for a definition of the concept of crusade the issue has been much debated. I was not personally present at the first conference of The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East that was held in Cardiff in 1983, but according to one eye-witness account the issue was “hotly debated”, and has indeed continued to be so. Central to the discussion has been the question of whether or not crusades only went to the Holy Land or should the term be more generally applied to all papally proclaimed wars, that is between a traditionalist view and a pluralist view. Recently the debate has taken a d0ifferent turn and it has increasingly become a debate about whether the definitions given by modern historians are at all congruous to the medieval phenomenon. In the twelfth century at least there did not exist a term that is congruous to the modern construct of crusade and as John Gilchrist has pointed out, the elements that we are told constituted a crusade – indulgence, pilgrimage, the vow, the remission of sin, an enemy defined by the church – are absent from the canonical collections of the twelfth century. I would not like to say if this modern construct has become “tyrannical”, but it has led at least one English historian, Christopher Tyerman, to ask the question: “Were there any crusades in the twelfth century?” and then conclude in the negative. His conclusions are in fact parallel to the conclusions reached within the study of feudalism, where it has been argued that the concept of feudalism was “invented” by lawyers at the end of the twelfth century under the influence of new-style bureaucratic governments. Historians of the twentieth century, it is possible to argue, used the legal definitions that emerged towards the end of the twelfth century to create the modern concept of crusade. It is, however, obvious from the contemporary sources that people believed that something new was initiated by Urban II (1088–1099) at the council of Clermont in 1095. It is also apparent that the call to arms against the infidels made by Urban II contained some sort of institutional characteristic in the form of new privileges granted to people who wanted to embark upon the expedition to the Holy Land. This, I believe, should be ample reason for us, as historians, to use a word like crusade. But the main conclusion we have to draw from the work of Christopher Tyerman, I think, is to keep in mind that it is not possible to create a matrix of a crusade that applies to the whole crusading period: “The crusade cannot be adequately defined in its own terms because it only existed in relation to the dictates of its shifting western context”.     

妈祖信仰在台湾

台湾妈祖庙最多 台湾是一个信仰多种宗教的地区，正式登记有组织的宗教活动有道教、佛教、回教、基督教、大同教、轩辕教等11种。由于宗教多，所以寺庙也多。据台湾媒体报道，目前全台湾3．6万平方公里的土地上，就有2万座寺庙，平均每1．8平方公里就有一座。而在这些寺庙中，妈祖庙又最多，     

中国狱神庙探佚

在中国广袤的土地上，历代凡属县一级行政单位的监狱内均设立一座神庙，这种神庙便称狱神庙。但它只是被偶然地、片言只语地记载在一些献资料中，从《尚书》、《史记》、《汉书》，到关汉卿的剧作、《红楼梦》脂批，乃至不入流的吴语小说等。笔试从能寻觅到的点滴史料对狱神庙的历史记录，狱神庙的作用等进行探寻。按照我国的传统制度，自秦代设郡县政体以来，县级以上的施政单位才设有监狱司法体制，而县以下的乡级政府，只能设置拘押室(这种政体至今仍     

拯救生命的复仇之路

1941年,摩尔达维亚一个犹太小家庭变得支离破碎,纳粹德国的铁蹄践踏了他们的家园,全副武装的士兵对付手无寸铁的妇女和儿童,坦克对付马车。别尔斯基兄弟图维那、祖斯和阿斯贝觉得,世界已经面目全非。纳粹开始有组织地屠杀街上、路上、城里以及森林里的犹太人,短暂的停歇只为等候那些受害者为自己挖掘坟墓,此时的别尔斯基兄弟面临着一个选择:被杀还是反抗。     

Master Artist in Interior Painting in Snuff Bottle

He is an ordinary Chinese artist but his creations stunned former British Prime Minister Thatcher and Danish Queen Margaret Ⅱ, He was invited to many countries like USA, Japan, South Korea, Italy , Spain and Canada, His artistic career was covered by such prestigious International media as CCTV, Washington Post and BBC. AS a young artist, he was granted the title of ＂Chinese Folk Affist＂ by UNESCO. He was hailed as ＂Chinese Plcasso ＂ by Western art critics. His name is Gao Dongsheng.     

诸葛村的明清建筑

浙江省兰溪市诸葛村是全国最大的诸葛亮后裔聚居地。这是一个群山环抱、绿树掩映、隐蔽静谧、美丽富饶的古村落。这里自然环境优美,地理位置独特,村落布局精巧,至今仍完好保存着200余座明清建筑。无论是礼制建筑、民居建筑、商业建筑,还是建筑形制、建筑风格、建筑装饰,都充分体现出诸葛氏家族独特的文化意蕴,具有极为重要的历史研究价值。诸葛村村落布局没有中轴线,也不注重均衡对称,而是围绕钟池这个中心分布建筑群,道路呈放射状,构成八卦形,单体建筑缘势而建,星罗棋布,高低错落,井塘点缀,极富诗意。从该村《诸葛氏宗谱》(以下简称《宗谱…     

清代寿阳祁氏之文化

清代中后期，山西寿阳祁氏是享有盛名的望族，与常熟翁家齐名，时称“南翁北祁”。前者的代表人物是翁心存、翁同龠禾；后者为祁韵士、祁寯藻、祁世长。与翁家相比，祁氏虽无“状元门第”之荣，却亦有“帝师”之誉，且三世之中，代有翰林。或以史地之学名动天下，开一代学术新风；或以诗文书法领袖群伦，     

Changes in cultural consumption: ethnographic collections in Wikipedia

Visits to museums have been studied as hedonic and utilitarian forms of cultural consumption, though limited attention has been given to the access of museum collections online. We perform a unique historic analysis of the visibility of collections in a museum of ethnographic collections and compare 100 years of onsite visits to 5 years online visits. We find two main results: first, access to collections increased substantially online. From a selection of objects available both onsite and online, access grew from an average of 156,000 onsite visits per year to over 1.5 million views online per year. Onsite, the museum received 15.5 million visits in a span of a century while online, collections were viewed 7.9 million times in only the last 5 years. Second, we find a difference in consumer preference for type of object, favouring 3D onsite and 2D online (photographs of objects, particularly when showing them being used). Results support understanding of online heritage consumption and emerging dynamics, particularly outside of an institutional environment, such as Wikipedia.     

元朝帝居仪规采摭

蒙古国时期,蒙古大汗和后妃等大多住在草原地区,只在出征作战时才涉足农耕地区。窝阔台即位后,建哈剌和林城为都城,蒙古大汗及王公贵族仍常居耳朵     

Weibo in China

<正>Weibo is a Chinese word for "microblogging". Over the past two years, this new Internet service has attracted users from every sector of the society. Message...     

Shanghai in Foreign

“Shanghai in Foreign Artists' Eyes” is an art exchange event jointly organized by the Information Office and the Foreign Affairs Office of Shanghai Municipal Government. 23 foreign painters from 23 countries and regions, including Australia, Finland, Singapore and the United States, were invited to stay in Shanghai for a while and create artworks that are involved with this rising international metropolis. Their works were then displayed in an exhibition entitled "Shanghai in Foreign Artists' Eyes".     

歷史上的中國

建設具有中國特色的社會主義,實現現代化,需要瞭解中國的國情.中國的國情,不僅是中國的現狀,也包括現狀所由發展而來的歷史,因此需要瞭解歷史上的中國. 瞭解歷史上的中國,有許多途徑,其中之一,是從整體上,從歷史發展的全過程的角度,看看中國在歷史上有些什么值得注意的、屬於中國所特有的現象.或者説,與其他國家的歷史相比較,歷史上的中國有些什么樣的特色.     

郑州商城:外郭城的重大发现

自1953年郑州二里岗发现商城外城墙至今已经50年，在这长达半个世纪的时间内，商城的田野考古一直没有停顿，距今3500余年的商城的神秘面纱逐渐被层层揭去。近年来，随着新的考古发现的增加以及考古研究的深入，可以确定郑州商城是一座由宫城、内城和外郭城组成的规模庞大的城址，其总面积应超过16平方公里，是我国目前发现的最大的商城。