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Thanks to Western missionaries, the existence of North and South America and even Antarctica was known in Ming China. But bad news is the emperor of this period was Wanli (万历): although he won three major battles in his youth, in the latter part of his reign he "went on strike" for almost 30 years. I don't think he would have thought that the Americas would have any wealth, given the somewhat "traditional view" that the kings and emperors of feudal China at the time generally had of their own country: my Kingdom has everything. This notion persisted until the Qing Dynasty. Brits: knock knock* Fun fact is, Queen Elizabeth I wrote a personal letter to Wanli in 1596, expressing her desire for trade and other areas of exchange between Britain and China. Unfortunately, however, the messenger was killed on the way and the letter reach China in 1984 when Queen Elizabeth II visit China. That's even some kind of historical joke hahaha Zheng He's fleet was quite large. Unlike the route westwards along Southeast and South Asia all the way to Africa it is much more difficult to obtain adequate supplies between the islands on the eastward route than on the westward route. Meanwhile, Zheng He's last journey was in 1430, and Matteo Ricci, the Italian missionary who mapped the globe, arrived in China in 1581. Too late buddy!

Unlike elsewhere, in many parts of Africa the choice between "feeding poor children or developing expensive rocket science" is often no more important than ensuring peace and stability in the country. I always thought that Gabon and Somalia were the best places to launch rockets, but I think we all know what Somalia is like.

Kirov reporting Meanwhile, in Weifang (where last year we see the CSS kites):

It's unlikely to happen in couple days later: the accommodation of this damn place is already fully booked

Speaking of Han, put some funny thing again: rare history photo: Han Empire soldiers found His Majesty's golden cookies

Books Lazy is the ladder of human progress (nope

As someone can play piano and viola (what a typical asian kid), that's what I always think!

With the lifting of China's covid control policy, tourist traffic during the Labour Day holiday nationwide was simply horrendous. Then I watched a video today of the Labour Day holiday at my city's airport. Excellent work, airport tower staff!

I don't have a good understanding of the historical perspective of Western civilisation, and frankly, I've always wondered why our Western friends would call a period of their history the "dark age". A little correction: it was the Han Dynasty. Fortunately, both sides of the two empires have a good impression of each other. Although neither is accurate.

Is time to save some money to make a trip to Wenchang to watch the rocket launch

#EverydayLearnSomethingNew

Reminds me there's one company in China whose owner said in his introductory video "in addition to this, we can make these satellites form a dot matrix in space so that we can even broadcast commercial ads in the night sky" Don't worry, the comments below are all scolding him if I remember correctly. Emmmm... not sure put this to science thread or here, but: Is China’s Korla laser ASAT site hacking Western satellites? Don't really want to say anything about that, but I do wish this company could keep an eye on one of the facilities with a long runway near JSLC for us: with any luck, we might see the "little space shuttle" land. Just no one knows when it back home though.

Anyone wants the raw scientific data, here's the link: https://moon.bao.ac.cn/web/enmanager/mars1. Good news is English available, and the latest data released on 25 April are 391.8GB in total. Bad news is it's "bit of a pain" to download them.

Large fossilised dinosaur bones were found at a site in Jiangxi in June 2021. After the initial cleaning was completed recently, experts tentatively identified the fossil specimens as coming from a Titanosauria that lived more than 90 million years ago. "Yang Ling, former deputy director of the Jiangxi Geological Museum, who participated in this work, believes that the fossil dinosaur specimen is well preserved, with at least 29 vertebrae remaining, its bones are robust and the vertebrae and vertebral arches of the cervical and caudal vertebrae have complex chambers typical of lizard-footed dinosaurs. According to preliminary estimates, the recovered fossil specimen will be over 15 metres in length." Source: http://www.news.cn/2023-04/27/c_1129574158.htm (It's a Chinese link) But however, when I was looking for did Xinhua make an English story about that, bad news is they didn't. Good news is I found this: Across China: Scientists validate "restaurant dinosaur tracks". "For some lucky people discoveries can come from unlikely places - even while you're having a bite to eat." Yeah, there're also fossilised ancient marine life on the marble slab washbasins in the mall toilets and on the marble floors in numbers of other different places.

Someone shares his/her mission patches for several CSS related missions. And they can shape as: via. comment below https://weibo.com/2645044133/MEcMYEZWF

Previous Tianzhou were also brought fruits up there including apples, grapes and oranges. However, the orbital module of Shenzhou also has some cargo capacity. Some fresh but unstorable food can also brought to the station. Add: the original interview by CCTV (no English subs, sorry) said that the TZ-6 will bring a set of xenon cans for HET. TZ-6 will also carry 1.75t of fuel this time, and 700kg of it will be refuelled to CSS. The reason for being able to carry 70kg more fruit, apart from tapping into TZ's potential from its improving the original design, was also thanks to the experience of previous cargo sent by the previous TZs. Which allowed the CMS team to gain relevant experience with intolerant storage foods: as they previously weren't known exactly how long these could be stored and consumed in the space environment.

Put some funny thing: If you know a little about ancient Chinese history then you will no doubt know that Xi'an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Hangzhou, Anyang, Zhengzhou, Datong, Chengdu, Nanjing and Beijing were the capitals of many of China's ancient regimes. Then the effects of dynastic changes, natural and man-made disasters, wars and famines can lead to a city that now has a different dynasty still pressed underneath it. In Kaifeng, for example, six cities have now been found 'stacked' underneath. And then it's common for historical figures to be unintentionally unearthed from time to time during construction, such as the tomb of Zhang Tang (张汤), the one of famous jurist from the Western Han Dynasty, was found at the Northwest University of Political Science and Law. Yet this is not the most outrageous of all. As the development of these cities progressed, the urban areas of the cities gradually extended to the places where the dead were once to be buried locally, while at the same time the traffic problems needed to be solved. And so the metro was needed. Good news is the artefacts is basically be buried in the soil no more than 10m deep: if the tunnelling shield is below this depth which around 15 to 20m, it would be able to bypass all soil layers here there have any artefacts. Bad news is you need to dig and build the stations. So, in historic cities like Xi'an, we don't know whether the metro construction department is busier, or the archaeological teams of the culture bureau is busier when they dig the metro: Line 8 found 1,356 ancient tombs and four ancient kilns. Line 5 found the capital city of Zhang Han, King of Yong. Line 2 found 13 ancient city sites, 38 ancient tombs and six discoveries of important cultural relics, with a history spanning nearly two thousand years. add: when you switch to different the metro line in Xi'an, you can see ancient wells from the Yuan and Qing dynasties. Yes, the originals. I visited this city when I was a kid, around 2006 if I remember correctly. I do think it's time to visit Xi'an again.

The five-day official holidays of Labour Day begin. I had planned to wander around the city such as the coast and mangroves with my gf. But when I headed across town to a dental clinic for a follow-up appointment today, I found it packed with people everywhere and traffic jams are basically everywhere. We both have our annual leave anyway, so we won't be crammed in with everyone else at the scenic spot these five days.

Discussed the topic of words with my gf because her undergraduate major is the history of ancient Chinese literature. I asked her if there were very few words before the oracle script was found. And her answer is did you forget somewhere called Jiahu? Then we had a little "academic discussion": mainly was she reminded me of some high school history. Thing is, the recognized origin of the Chinese language is the oracle bone script. This is a script that originated in the Shang (商) dynasty. According to the Shang Shu (《尚书》), the first historical record of ancient China, "the ancestors of Yin (殷, it's the name of the capital of the Shang dynasty) were already have booklets (惟殷先人, 有典有册). The Jiahu site originated around 8,000 years ago, and many experts believe that these symbols can only be proven to have been consciously carved at present, but are not fully conclusive as writing. So I think that these symbols, along with knots and gradually simplified paintings, formed a systematic script during thousands of years of intermingling with various tribes and civilisations that followed. That is, many Neolithic sites between the 8,000-year-old site of Jiahu and the Shang dynasty in the sixteenth century BC have been found with written symbols on pottery. Such as Peiligang (裴李岗) culture, Yangshao (仰韶) Culture and Liangzhu (良渚) culture. Therefore, it's reasonable to believe that Chinese went through a developmental process of at least six to seven thousand years before the emergence of a truly systematic script. Many historical records from ancient China indicate that there were two other ancient regimes before the Shang dynasty, the period when the oracle bone inscriptions appeared. That is, Yu and Shang. But still no solid evidence has been found, although the site of Erlitou - which many scholars believe to be the capital of the Xia dynasty - has been excavated in the Shang dynasty layer.

This reminds me of the "world's earliest letter of complaint" from Mesopotamia that I saw in the British Museum again hahahahahah

I have a few ideas: first of all, "knowledge" is some kind luxury, even now, but it is often difficult for people like us who live in modern countries to perceive it. So for these prehistoric people who lived with systematic writing, it was more important to do more work in the tribe than to know how to draw those strange symbols. Secondly, I'm not sure if other civilisations have a legend that 'some god created writing', but China does. For a long time, writing and even the object on which it was written were sacred. So, it is quite possible that these carriers of systematic writing were destroyed in various ways, for example by witchcraft fire divination. It is also possible that the carriers of systematic writing did not exist either before systematic writing came into existence - they drew the symbols on something that was not something easy to preserve for thousands of years. As an example, at the recently excavated site of Sanxingdui, archaeologists have discovered their method of ritual sacrifice: after the sacrifice all the ritual objects were smashed and thrown into a pit and burned. The objects are included, but were not limited to, ivory, bronze, gold masks, and possibly silk weaving. So I would not rule out the possibility that there were also objects bearing written symbols that were destroyed in the process. I do think that the evolution of writing had a lot to do with the extent to which knowledge was spread among ordinary people, the extent to which religion developed and the extent to which economic trade was widespread, on the one hand. After all, writing and language are both tools, and the evolution of tools is that they become simpler and easier to use. And as a handy tool, if neighbours find it handy too, it is natural that they take it and later adapt it to their local needs. Of course, I feel pathetic with places which in modern world, for some reasons, have to say that "everything in the mother country of culture is actually of their origin". And not worthy of discussion.

And some interesting bots designing for CSS:

Ideographic characters, like those in Chinese, have evolved from patterns and divinatory symbols. But although 4,500 oracle bone script characters has been discovered, two-thirds of them are still uninterpretable.

Friend: I really don't understand why my gf is so happy to put a facial mask. You see, the skin acts as some kind of excretory organ, why expect that place to absorb anything. And that thing not cheap at all! Me: Don't look at things so absolutely. You see I really love to buy her this s*t. Because I can reap at least two hours of peace when I give it to her, and 30 to 45 minutes of quiet time every day later on.

The CSS orbit adjustment has not yet been completed, so it isn't yet known what method of docking will be used for this time. What is certain is that the "fast docking" method will be used, but it is not clear whether this will be around two or three hours like last time or around six hours.