What's on

Culinary culture

A Chinese saying goes: "Food is the paramount necessity of the masses." China has developed a thriving, diverse culinary culture that is reflected in the ways such as how food is cultivated, prepared and served, with food rituals related to politics, social well-being and family relations, as well as connections between China and the rest of the world built on food, tea and ceramics. The National Museum of China in Beijing is now hosting the touring exhibition Chinese Culinary Legacies, on the food culture in ancient China, at Ningbo Museum in Zhejiang province. Linked to social strata, for example, rice, meat and beverages were presented in different kinds of bronze ware at royal ceremonies during the Shang (c.16th century-11th century BC) and Zhou (c.11th century-256 BC) dynasties. Delicate crockery and tea sets formed part of high-society lifestyle in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Culinary arts were depicted and hailed in traditional music, classic painting and poetry. Many intellectuals and artists were themselves gastronomes, such as Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo who is said to be the creator of the popular braised-meat dish dongporou. The exhibition, running through to April 2, celebrates the scope and depth of the Chinese culinary culture and people's creativity in making it a national brand.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays. 1000 Shounan Middle Road, Yinzhou district, Ningbo, Zhejiang province.0574-8281-5588.

Export fans

Among the many old export items from China, the fan is viewed as a special product that blended Eastern and Western cultural elements. Canton Export Fans, an exhibition now underway at Chengdu Museum in Southwest China's Sichuan province, shows beautiful fans shipped from South China's Guangdong province to clients mostly in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. There are folding, round and rectangular fans made of paper, cloth and sandalwood, sometimes inlaid with shells or attached with wood carvings. Some fans were painted with Chinese landscapes and life scenes, opening for the users in the West a window to the East, its cultures and artisanship. Some other fans were ordered to depict Western motifs that exposed Chinese people to different cultures far away. The exhibited fans are from the Guangdong Museum, and on display until March 31.

9 am-8:30 pm, closed on Mondays. 1 Xiaohe Street, Qingyang district, Chengdu, Sichuan province.028-6827-7011.

Yangzhou school

Over the 17th and 18th centuries, Yangzhou in Jiangsu province boomed in economic activity. Its prosperity as a trading center and openness in culture attracted artists and cultivated many art patrons. That was how the Yangzhou school, a loose group of artists in the realm of classic Chinese painting, rose to notice. Rejecting orthodox ideas of painting, they embraced a reformative spirit to create highly individual styles, reflecting a scholarly temperament and popular taste at the time. At the center of the Yangzhou school were the "eight eccentrics", who marked their brushwork with brief sketches and renditions of the smaller aspects of nature. An exhibition now on at Shanxi Museum, in provincial capital Taiyuan, surveys the formation of the Yangzhou school and its revolutionary ideas that cast a long influence on Chinese painting. It shows paintings from the collections of Shanxi Museum and Tianjin Museum. The exhibition ends on March 19.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays. 13 Binhe West Road North Section, Taiyuan, Shanxi province.