This CC-licensed book is written by Mr. WU Shiqiu, a 74-years-old retiree in Qingyuan, Zhejiang Province. WU has been a worker in a small local factory until he retired in 1996. He has never had higher education than elementary school, yet he managed to finish this great study all by his own effort.

In 1996, WU learned that two Japanese scholars had come to his town for a research in Qingyuan dialect, as it is a unique dialect that reserved an abundance of ancient Chinese idioms and pronunciations. WU was greatly impressed and he then decided to make a study himself.

From then onwards, WU spent all his energies on this study. He walked every street in Qingyuan, visiting old folks, listening to and recording quarrels, bargaining and any other conversations made in public. Without a printer, scanner or even a computer, WU finished most of his work by handwriting. He studied linguistics, philology and phonetics, and international phonetic alphabet to mark his beloved dialect.

The book is published in May, 2010 and is highly regarded by scholars home and abroad. And Mr. WU has embraced Creative Commons, he decided to publish this book under CC-BY-NC-ND.

Creative Commons and the Inheritance of TCM Culture
- An Interview with Mr. Kong Lingqian, Founder of Kong Bohua TCM School

Mr. Kong Lingqian

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is an essential component of traditional Chinese culture. Its importance is not only clinically proven in the medical field of China, but also progressively recognized by the outside world. The culture behind this science is also getting more and more attention. Now Kong Bohua Clinic and Kong Bohua TCM school have made the decision to release all their teaching materials under CC Licenses, in order for better promotion the TCM culture. These two organizations are founded by Mr. Kong Lingqian, grandson of Mr. Kong Bohua who was among the four greatest TCM masters of Beijing,

Liu Ping, journalist of CCQ just had an interview with Mr. Kong Lingqian, president of Kong Bohua Clinic and Kong Bohua TCM School, for his ideas towards the inheritance and development of TCM culture.

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CAO Fei, born in 1978 in Guangzhou, one of the most internationally famed Chinese contemporary artists, is among the earliest renowned Creative Commoner artists in China. From year 2000, she started to gain a significant position by a series of exquisite works including San Yuan Li Project, Cosplayers, HiP Hop Guangzhou, Hip Hop Fukuoka, Hip Hop New York, PRD Anti-Heroes, Father and Whose Utopia. From 2007 she started to create I. Mirror and RMB City based on Second Life, an online 3D virtual world. Those works have received international recognition, being praised as epics describing the digital era.

CC China Mainland interviewed Cao Fei, for her own world of art, her stories with CC and her ideas towards art in a digital era.

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Open Party is a monthly social activity co-organized by a number of Beijing communities with technical background. It is intended to create a platform whereby all the participants can express and exchange their ideas through a special means of “Unconference”. The topics of these activities are however not technical-limited, subjects like living, traveling, art, entrepreneurship, business, investment and marketing are also welcomed here. Its March gathering was named “Warmth of a Bright Spring”, which took place in ThoughtWorks Office in Beijing Guohua Plaza, Dongzhimen. Project member of Creative Commons China Mainland, Zhu Handong and He Xiaolin was invited to take part in this gathering.

Open Party takes an “unconference” form, which features freedom, openness and interactiveness. The guests and participants are made equal in delivering their ideas in an open atmosphere. For each gathering of this activity, there are invited guests providing fresh topics for participants to decide which one to take part in. While the speakers sharing the topics, the listeners are free to participate in any brainstorm any time they want. They are encouraged to join whatever topic discussion they are interested in, or to walk along through different groups and just listen to the discussions. They can also write down their own topics that may just jumped into their minds and call for a discussion themselves. Their pace in the venue are essentially a resourceful pool of creativity, offering more and more new ideas.

It’s the second time CC participating in Open Party gatherings. This time, in the “Warmth of a Bright Spring”, Mr. Zhu Handong of CC China Mainland shared his understandings in the impact of Internet sharing movement to artistic creations, as he is an active artist himself. He also gave introductions of the artistic promotions of CC China Mainland. A good many participants had certain knowledge of CC licenses, especially those from LUPA(Leadership of Open Source University Promotion Alliance), who had already embraced CC’s concept of share, remix, reuse – legally. The people with IT background were also highly interested in this global CC trend, for its task of resolving the controversy between information distribution and acquisition, and its mission to realize a productive interaction between creation and distribution. The participants had quite illuminative and delightful discussion with CC project members.

(For more information of this gathering, please click: http://www.beijing-open-party.org/)

Hosted by Songzhuang Art Center, the 2010 Screenage Art Document Exhibition will open on April 18, 2010. The exhibition is composed of multiple sections including the Field, the Domain, the Emotion, Natural – Unnatural, and Gathering – Recalling. After the opening ceremony, a forum of Contemporary Image Authoring and the Oriental Cultural View will take place in the Academic Hall of Songzhuang Art Center.

A number of CC-licensed photographic and video works are to be shown in this exhibition; and Creative Commons China Mainland, as one of the supporting organization of this event,  will have its representatives to present in the opening ceremony. Your support to this event will be highly appreciated.

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