beijingtoday

[beijingtoday]

Dramatic China-related winners of World Press Photo competition

Winners of the 59th World Press Photo competition have been announced on Thursday. As one of the world’s most prestigious press photography contest, its jury has selected the best pictures that represent what has happened over 2015. Of the winning photos selected from 82,951 entries made by 5,775 photographers from 128 countries and regions, four are about China subjects, with two of them taken by Chinese photographers. Take a look.

[beijingtoday]

Learn to Make Braised Prawns

Spring Festival is when Chinese families come together to reunite and share delicious food. Prawns were pricy commodities in ancient times, and were considered a luxurious food reserved for the holidays. Today, prawns are more affordable, and people can have them at any time. But many families continue the tradition of having prawns during their holiday feast.

Ingredients

500g prawns

ginger, thinly sliced

scallions, thinly sliced

garlic

Chinese cooking wine

sugar

white vinegar

salt

The Steps

Clean the prawns. Add Chinese cooking wine to a bowl and mix in the prawns. Allow them to marinate for 10 minutes.

Mix the white vinegar, sugar and salt into a bowl and set it aside to use as the sauce.

Heat up a wok and add the prawns. Add the ginger when one side of the prawns turns orange. Add the scallions and then the sauce bowl.

Cover with a lid, and braise for 2-3 minutes before serving.

[beijingtoday]

A frosty beauty

The cold wave chilled people in northeast China but brought ice flowers “in bloom”. Blanketed in heavy snow, the windows of a building in Heihe, a city of Heilongjiang Province displayed the ice flowers. Glistened in the sun, these crystal-clear frost flowers became quite mesmerizing. The ice flower, or window frost, is formed when a glass pane is exposed to very cold air on the outside and warmer, moist air on the inside. Water vapor then condenses on the glass forming the frost patterns.

[beijingtoday]

Happy Chinese New Year from baby pandas!

It’s only days before the Chinese New Year arrives, and even pandas are excited about it. On Wednesday, giant panda cubs in Sichuan’s Ya’an Bifengxia Panda Base had their pictures taken at a New Year themed playground decorated just for them.

China’s Conservation and Research Center for Giant Panda, which is in charge of the base, says these panda cubs are at a crucial stage of learning survival skills. The staff give them toys to help them prepare for their development, and play with them to increase their activity.

The research center based in Sichuan Province currently has 218 captive-bred pandas, and is the largest such base in the world, according to chinanews.com. In 2015, a record 23 pandas survived among the total of 26 pandas born that year.

[beijingtoday]

Learn to Make Papaya Carp Soup

Eating fish at the beginning of a new year is a Chinese tradition. Like most holiday traditions, it involves a play on words in the phrase “Niannian you yu,” meaning each year in abundance. Since both fish and abundance share the pronunciation “yu,”eating fish is considered an auspicious way to start the year. Try this carp and papaya soup if you need a new way to prepare your new year’s fish.

Ingredients:

1 carp

half a papaya

4 slices of ginger

scallions

salt

The Steps:

Scale and gut the fish. Peel the papaya and remove its seeds. Cube the flesh. Peel the ginger.

Oil a pan and begin heating it on your stovetop. When it is 70 percent heated, place the carp in the pan and fry it until both sides turn yellow.

Add some water to a wok; add the fried fish and some scallions.

Cook the fish over a high flame until the water turns white.

Add the ginger and papaya cubes. Cover the wok and continue to boil for 40 minutes. Season with salt before serving.