The alarm rings. Violinist Ray Chen opens his eyes and gets up from his bed. After getting dressed, he says: "Today is a special day!" This is how a video which Chen directed unfolds.
"Susie, it's just so stressful!" my friend Marni complained to me at dinner a few weeks ago.
"It seems to me National Treasure is a hyperlink by which variety shows, museums and the public have been connected."
Puppetry troupes from across China staged a performance in Beijing in 1955, and in the audience was the Czech artist Zdenek Sklenar, who passed away in 1986. He was enthralled by the show that centered around the Monkey King, the powerful protagonist from the 17th-century Chinese classic Journey to the West.
Emperor Qianlong, whose six-decade reign in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was the longest in Chinese history, loved flowers in daily life, which was reflected in his gardens, poems, paintings and the decoration of the items he used in his bedrooms.
A Chinese wisteria vine sprawls along the north side of the road, while in the yard behind it - which once belonged to the man who planted it more than 200 years ago - a cherry-apple tree of the same age still thrives. While they used to share the space with the man who planted them, the trees now only have each other for company.
Ninety-four-year-old Louis Cha Leung-yung, perhaps better known by his nomme de plume Jin Yong, is probably the best-known and most widely read living author in the Chinese-speaking world.
Even for those who are not interested in Buddhism or sculpture, when they first arrive at the Yungang Grottoes, they can't helped being touched by the perfect combination of religion, arts and nature presented to them.
China has at least seven hanging temples, among which Xuankong Temple at Hengshan Mountain in North China's Shanxi province, is perhaps the most worthy of the title.
With hundreds of thousands of animals expected to arrive in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve to graze later this month, in a phenomenon in East Africa known as the great migration, the country's tourism officials have intensified efforts to attract Chinese tourists.
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