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Near a forest of skyscrapers in downtown Beijing, four dragons have combined their strength to lift a replica of the solar system. In Chinese culture, no image is more auspicious than the dragon, which symbolises power, wealth and fortune. It is fitting, then, that those mythical creatures are depicted by this steel statue as trying to come to grips with the universe. Because this is just what the Chinese
have been attempting to do for thousands of years.
This metallic model, called an armillary sphere, is one of many historic scientific instruments scattered through the grounds of the 579-year-old Beijing Ancient Observatory. An offbeat tourist attraction,
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Hidden in the remote valleys of southern China are 1,000-year-old villages where time seems to have stood still. These Dong minority communities consist of intricate wooden buildings, host unique festivals, and are home to people who worship nature, don elaborate outfits and favour ancient lifestyles.
Stilted homes and time-worn pagodas line the car-free streets of these villages, which are surrounded by fields that produce the wheat, rice and vegetables that feed its residents, and the tea, cotton and rapeseed they sell. Chengyang is a cluster of Dong communities in a far-flung region of Guangxi province. Courtesy Ronan O Connell
The Dong are one of 55 ethnic minorities in China, and emerged more than a
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As Malaysia battled the pandemic this year, its anxious citizens sought guidance from religious deities, with many generating small plumes of smoke in their homes in honour of these gods.
For more than 1,000 years in Buddhist and Taoist cultures, people have lit incense as a means of connecting with higher powers in times of crisis.
While the coronavirus ravaged the world, a 93-year-old man continued labouring in his workshop on the Malaysian island of Penang, crafting handmade incense,
exactly as he’d done for 70 years. Incense by Lee Beng Chuan. Courtesy Ronan O’Connell
Penang once brimmed with independent joss-stick-makers, but factories now dominate this industry, leaving Lee Beng Chuan as the island’s last incense artisan.