The Five Chinese Cereals are a group of five grains that were regarded as sacred in ancient China. The Five Chinese Cereals were so important for the ancient Chinese that they had their own god, Houji.
The Five Chinese Cereals are listed in Fah Shên-chih Shu, a text on farming written by Fah Shên-chih around the year 2800 BC. This list contains soybean, rice, wheat, proso millet and foxtail millet. In the Classic of Rites, one of the Five Classics of the Confucian canon, rice is substituted with hemp.
Soybean is not actually a cereal grain, but all the other ones are. Sometimes, the Five Chinese Cereals are instead referred to as the Five Chinese Grains or the Five Chinese Crops.
Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum) is believed to have been domesticated independently in both China and Transcaucasia roughly 7000 years ago. It is known under several different names, such as common millet, hog millet broom corn, and white millet. It contains no gluten and can therefore be tolerated by people who are gluten intolerant. The crop is still common in countries such as India, Russia and Ukraine.
Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) has been grown in China since the sixth millennium BC and is referred to as Xiao Mi (小米) which means ‘Little Rice’. It is still very important source of nutrients for poor people living in the dry northern part of the country. It requires little water and is quickly ready for harvest.
The Totonacos are believed to be the first ones to cultivate vanilla orchids. This group of people traditionally lived in the Vera Cruz region of Mexico. In order to give off its wonderful smell, vanilla must be cured for a long period of time and the Totonacos probably found vanilla pods that had been naturally cured by the heat and humidity of the tropical rainforest. They realised what the plant had to offer and commenced production of vanilla.
According to Totonaco myths, the very first vanilla vine was formed when the blood of two lovers where spilled onto the forest floor. Vanilla was considered a gift from the gods and was strongly associated with love.
Oleg Vassiliev is a Russian painter educated at the V.I. Surikov State Art Institute. Born in 1931, Vassiliev graduated at an age of 27. From the 1950s through the 1980s, he collaborated with Erik Bulatov as a celebrated illustrator of children’s books. Together they developed their very own style which combined realist elements with graphic elements, e.g. texts.
Since Oleg Vassiliev could support himself by illustrating children’s books, it became possible for him to take part in the Soviet Nonconformist Art movement. The art was labelled “dissident art” by the government.
After the death of Stalin in 1953, the Khrushchev era commenced and the Soviet Union became more open for Western cultural elements. Oleg Vassiliev was one of several notable Russian artists that benefited from this change and it was during this period that he developed what is considered to be his mature style; a mixture of traditional 19th century Russian realism and 20th century Russian avant-garde.
Oleg Vassiliev paintings typically incorporate elements from his life, such as family, friends, forests and houses. He is experiments with a lot with light and shade; where light is used as a symbol of consciousness and dark as a symbol of the subconscious.
Do you like World of Warcraft? Do you like musicals? Do you like the Internet? If you can answer yes to these three questions, you will probably LOVE this neat little video that I found online. It is one of my all-time favourites.
