Weekly News Collection

ARCHAEOLOGY

Liao Dynasty tombs located

Recently, the qianling and xianling, the tombs of the emperors of the Liao Dynasty of ancient China, were found in the No 2 Ridge and No 3 Ridge of Mount Yiwulv, one of the famous “Five Grand Mountains” of ancient China. This is one of China’s most important archaeological discoveries in recent years. Since the 20th century, scholars, like Jin Yufu and Li Wenxin, have frequently conducted archaeological expeditions in an attempt to discover the where­abouts of the qianling and xianling. Limited by a lack of resources, few advances have been made until now. Thanks to new guidelines for excavations in the mountain region complied by the Institute of Archeology, the problem of scarce resources is being addressed for the first time in more than a century.

HISTORY

Quantification matters for historical study

Quantitative methods are increasingly important to historical study, noted Li Bozhong, chair of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Tech­nology, in an address before the Second International Symposium on Quantitative Historical Research. The introduction of quantita­tive research into historical study is of revolutionary significance, Li said. Appropriately applied, research with this method has the potential to reveal more facts in history that are hard to uncover by other means.

LITERATURE

The Annals of Modern Chinese Novels published

Recently, the Annals of Modern Chinese Novels was published by People’s Literature Publishing House. The compilation of the An­nals is one of the programs sponsored by the National Social Sci­ence Fund, Ancient Books Collation Committee under the Chinese Universities Fund and the National Press Fund. The total word count for the six volumes of the Annals exceeds 3 million. Cover­ing a wide range of modern Chinese novels, the Annals makes a list of the published works, prominent writers and their opinions. Policies on novel publishing in the Qing Dynasty, the distribution of publishing houses and journal presses are also mentioned.

COMMUNICATION

Chinese language globalization gains momentum

The Chinese language is increasingly spoken worldwide, noted Lu Jianming, professor from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University. From July 12 to 13, the First Interna­tional Symposium on Cross-cultural Communication of the Chinese Language took place in Shanghai. Li Yuming, secretary of the Party Committee said the effectiveness of Chinese language globalization depends on how many people learn and use Chinese as a second language. Lu said, “The current priority for the international commu­nication of the Chinese language is to help foreign learners master written Chinese in an effective way.”

SOCIOLOGY

Green development essential for western social economy

The Ninth Annual Conference of the Consortium for western China Development Studies was convened in Guiyang, China. Some scholars remarked that western China, as the birthplace of China’s main rivers, is a crucial ecological base and functional zone for resource supply. However, it is also a region with a weak ecological environment. The sustainable development of western China is also of essential importance to the social economy of cen­tral and eastern China. The eco-compensation mechanism in China has made headway in converting cultivated lands into forests and compensating for water source areas. However, an effective and complete ecological compensation mechanism has not been es­tablished yet. And one of the feasible solutions is to make better use of forests as carbon dioxide sinks, a form of carbon offset.

INTERNATIONAL

Minds race at running symposium

At the First International Festival of Running, hosted by Univer­sity College London last week, academics gathered to explore the scientific, spiritual, cultural and political sides of running. “Run­ning has become socio-cosmic,” anthropologist Allen Abramson said to his attentive audience, a group of artists, academics, writ­ers and runners who gathered at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. “The idea of the conference was to bring people together and really see what all the difference disciplines could learn from one another,” said artist Kai Syng Tan.

(Edited and tranlated by Bai Le)