Zhihua Temple Beijing Music

Beijing Zhihua Temple was first built in the ninth year of the Zhengtong Period of the Ming Dynasty (1444). It was originally built by Wang Zhen, the eunuch in charge of ceremonies during the reign of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty. In 1961, it was listed as one of the first national key cultural relics protection units by the State Council. Zhihua Temple Beijing music has been passed down for more than 560 years and is known as the "living fossil" of ancient Chinese music. Zhihua Temple Beijing music has distinct artistic characteristics: the music style is solemn, simple and elegant, the structure of the music is huge and standardized, the performance techniques are rich, and the repertoire is huge. It has high requirements in terms of inheritance, does not arbitrarily add, delete or change, and pays attention to protection and inheritance. Zhihua Temple Beijing music faithfully preserves the basic style of traditional Chinese music and provides a typical and vivid example for studying the connotation and changes of traditional Chinese culture. From the existing data, most scholars believe that Beijing music is related to the ancient music of the Tang and Song dynasties. It preserves the old system of the Song and Ming dynasties in many aspects such as repertoire, musical instruments, palace tunes, and performance methods. Traditional repertoires include "Happy Autumn Wind", "Taking the Swan", "Qingjiang Yin", "Plum Blossom Yin", "Xiao Huayan", "Zui Wengzi", etc. Since the 1950s, many famous musicians in my country have conducted research on Zhihua Temple Jing music and achieved fruitful results. Since the 1980s, Zhihua Temple Jing music has been discovered and rescued by the government, music and Buddhist circles, but there are still many problems that are difficult to solve. Most of the 26 generations of old monks in Zhihua Temple have passed away. The current surviving Benxing and Fu Guang are both old, and the 27th generation of inheritors urgently need to improve their skills. The huge changes in the current society have made the development of Zhihua Temple Jing music difficult. In the past two years, with the efforts of many parties, the 45 existing pieces of music have been recorded in time. However, the number of inheritors of Zhihua Temple Jing music is still very short, the band cannot reach the original scale, the timbre and content are single, and it is far from expressing the style of the original ancient music. Zhihua Temple Jing music is still in danger of being lost and urgently needs further rescue and protection.

Beijing

Living fossil

Dorset and East Devon Coast

The cliff outcrops along the Dorset and East Devon coasts provide an almost continuous sequence of rock formations spanning the Mesozoic Era, about 185 million years of Earth's history. The region's important fossil sites and typical coastal landform features have contributed to the study of Earth history for over 300 years.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Fossil Sites

Messel Pit Fossil Site

Messel Pit is the richest site in the world for understanding life during the Eocene Epoch (57 to 36 million years ago). In particular, it provides unique information about the early stages of mammal evolution, including well-preserved mammal fossils, from complete skeletons to stomach contents of animals from this period.

Germany

Fossil Sites

Mistaken Point

The fossil site is located at the southeastern tip of Newfoundland Island in eastern Canada. It consists of a 17-kilometer-long narrow, rugged coastal cliff. These cliffs originated from the deep sea and date back to the Ediacaran period (580 million to 560 million years ago), making them the oldest known collection of large fossils. The fossils illustrate a watershed in the history of life on Earth: the emergence of large, biologically complex organisms after nearly 3 billion years of evolution dominated by microorganisms.

Canada

Fossil Sites

Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh / Naracoorte)

Riversleigh and Naracoorte, located in the north and south of eastern Australia respectively, are among the world's top ten fossil sites. They provide excellent examples of key stages in the evolution of Australia's unique fauna.

Australia

Fossil Sites

Joggins Fossil Cliffs

Joggins Fossil Cliffs is a 689-hectare paleontological site located on the coast of Nova Scotia in eastern Canada, described as the "Galapagos of the Coal Age" for the abundance of fossils found during the Carboniferous Period (354 million to 290 million years ago). The rocks at the site are considered the landmarks of this period in Earth history, the world's thickest and most comprehensive record of Pennsylvanian stratigraphy (dating back to 318 million to 303 million years ago), and contain the most complete record of terrestrial fossils of the time. These include remains and footprints of early animals and the rainforests in which they lived, all left in situ and undisturbed. The site, with 14.7 km of sea cliffs, low cliffs, rock platforms, and beaches, consists of remains of three ecosystems: estuarine bays, floodplain rainforests, and fire-prone forested floodplains with freshwater pools. The site contains the richest known fossil assemblage of each of these three ecosystems, including 148 species of fossils from 96 genera and 20 footprint assemblages. The site is listed as an outstanding representation of the major stages of Earth history.

Canada

fossil

Stevns Klint

The geological site includes a 15-kilometer-long fossil-rich coastal cliff that provides exceptional evidence for the Chicxulub meteorite impact at the end of the Cretaceous period, approximately 65 million years ago. Researchers believe this caused the largest mass extinction event ever recorded on Earth, resulting in the loss of more than 50% of life on Earth. The site preserves a record of the ash cloud created by the meteorite impact—the exact location is off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. An exceptional fossil record can be seen at the site, showing a complete succession of fauna and microfauna following the mass extinction, documenting the process of species recovery.

Denmark

fossil

Wadi Al-Hitan (Whale Valley)

Wadi Al-Hitan, the Whale Valley in Egypt's Western Desert, contains priceless fossil remains of the earliest, now extinct whale suborder Archaeoceti. These fossils represent one of the main stories of evolution: the evolution of whales from land animals to marine mammals. This is the most important site in the world showing this stage of evolution. It gives a vivid picture of the form and life of these whales during the transition. The number, concentration and quality of such fossils here are unique, and they are easy to find and located in a beautiful and protected environment. The fossils at Al-Hitan show the youngest Archaeoceti, which are in the final stages of losing their hind limbs. Other fossil material at the site allows one to reconstruct the surrounding environment and ecological conditions at the time.

Egypt

fossil

Dinosaur Provincial Park

In addition to exceptionally beautiful scenery, Dinosaur Provincial Park, located in the heart of Alberta's badlands, has yielded some of the most important fossils from the "Age of Reptiles," specifically about 35 species of dinosaurs dating back about 75 million years.

Canada

fossil

Miguasha National Park

The paleontological site of Miguacha National Park, located on the south shore of the Gaspé Peninsula in southeastern Quebec, is considered the world's most outstanding representative of the Devonian period, known as the "Age of Fishes". The Upper Devonian Eskouminak Formation represented here dates back 370 million years and contains five of the six fossil fish communities associated with this period. Its importance stems from the discovery there of the largest number and best-preserved fossil specimens of sarcopterygians, the origin of the first four-legged, air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates - tetrapods.

Canada

Lobe-finned fish fossils

Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh / Naracoorte)

Riversleigh and Naracoorte, located in the north and south of eastern Australia respectively, are among the world's top ten fossil sites. They provide excellent examples of key stages in the evolution of Australia's unique fauna.

Australia

Mammal fossils

Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa

The Taung Skull Site is an extension of the site inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1999, where the famous Taung skull, a specimen of Australopithecus africanus, was discovered in 1924. The Macapan Valley is also located within the site, where many archaeological caves show traces of human habitation and evolution dating back to about 3.3 million years ago. The area contains important elements for determining the origin and evolution of humans. The fossils found there have allowed the identification of several early ape specimens, especially Paranthropus, dating back to 4.5 to 2.5 million years ago, as well as evidence of the use of fire by humans between 1.8 and 1 million years ago.

South Africa

Ape fossils

Archaeological Site of Atapuerca

The caves of the Sierra de Atapuerca contain a rich record of the earliest human fossils in Europe, dating back nearly a million years and extending into the Common Era. They represent an exceptional repository of data, the scientific study of which can provide valuable information about the appearance and lifestyle of these distant human ancestors.

Spain

Human fossils

Baocheng Stone Garden

Baocheng Stone Park is located in Baocheng New Village, Shuangqiaohe Town, Jinnan District, Tianjin. It is the largest natural Lingbi stone artificial stone forest in the world. It has dozens of kinds of strange and famous stones, totaling more than 4,000 pieces, mainly Lingbi stone, known as the "No. 1 stone in the world", and petrified wood and Taihu stone, the treasures among the rocks. The strange stones collected in this park are based on the principle of coming from nature and being higher than nature, and the overall layout is based on their natural shapes. They have high ornamental and collection value. The most eye-catching one is "Buddha Enlightenment Zen", which is 10.07 meters high and weighs 73 tons, known as "Asia's No. 1 Boulder".

Beijing and surrounding areas

Fossilized Wood

4A

Lingshan Julong Cave

Lingshan Julong Cave, also known as Lingshan Karst Cave, is located at the foot of Lianhua Mountain, 2 kilometers northeast of Lingshan Town, Quyang County, Baoding City, Hebei Province. Because the cave body resembles a long dragon and the landscape inside the cave is mostly dragon-shaped, it is named Lingshan Julong Cave. According to experts, the area around Julong Cave is a typical northern karst landform, belonging to a group of fissure-type natural karst caves formed by crustal changes over hundreds of millions of years. The cave body resembles a long dragon, with a total length of 2,800 meters, and the landscape inside the cave is also mostly dragon-shaped. The temperature in the cave is warm in winter and cool in summer, with a constant temperature of 17 degrees Celsius to 18 degrees Celsius. Julong Cave is divided into three parts: the Ape Man Cave, the Julong Hall and the Underground Maze. The Ape Man Cave is hundreds of meters long, and the ash deposits left by the ancient ape man in the cave are 12 meters long, 3 meters thick and 2 meters deep, which is rare in the country. Deep in the cave wall, there are deposits of ancient animal fossils that were extinct 260,000 years ago. This is the first discovery in Hebei Province and is of great significance in archaeology. On the wall of the cave, there is the original calligraphy of Su Shi, a great writer of the Northern Song Dynasty - the two characters "Penglai". The Julong Hall has white dragons competing for supremacy, which is magnificent; the underground maze has winding corridors, which is mysterious. The landscape inside the cave is characterized by magic, wonder and wonder, and more than 100 scenic spots such as Yunxi Flower Path, Dinghai Magic Needle, Little Three Gorges, and Jinshan Yingu are naturally formed. According to the investigation and demonstration of national tourism experts, the cultural relics such as stone paper, goose pipe, stone canyon, and stone hair in the cave are rare in China.

Beijing and surrounding areas

Ancient animal fossils

3A

Nihewan National Archaeological Site Park

Nihewan National Archaeological Site Park (Nihewan for short) is located in Datianwa, Yangyuan County, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, in the Yangyuan Basin in the upper reaches of the Sanggan River. It is built according to the national 5A scenic spot standards and is an internationally calibrated representative site of the Quaternary strata. Investigations and discoveries have proved that the Nihewan site is an important area for finding early human fossils. Archaeologists in Hebei Province call the Nihewan site "the holy land of Paleolithic archaeology." At the same time, the Nihewan National Archaeological Site Park was approved by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage as the fourth batch of national archaeological site park scenic spots, a national key cultural relic protection unit, and the State Council approved it as a national nature reserve. It is worth mentioning that on the eve of the opening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the Nihewan National Archaeological Site Park once again became the focus of the world. The first stop of the torch relay in the Zhangjiakou competition area is here. Through the lens, Nihewan showed its charm to the global audience.

Beijing and surrounding areas

Early human fossils

2A