Australia China Friendship Society

Tasmanian Branch Inc

February Newsletter 2016

Est. 1951

Tasmanian Patron

Prof. Wong Shiu-Hon

Web: www.acfs.com.au/tasmania

jan7777@bigpond.com

Tasmania 7004

PO Box: 186 South Hobart

Promoting friendship between the people of Australia and China

Lunar New Year Celebrations

The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily represent those of the ACFS.

Want more info? Contact jan7777@bigpond.com

Launch of the Lunar New Year Festival The 2016 Chinese Community of Tasmania’s (CCAT), Lunar New Year Festival was launched at Wrest Point Casino on

21st January, by the Premier of Tasmania the Honourable Will Hodgman.

A reception was held at the Hobart City Council, for

the Shaanxi Folk Music Orchestra which preformed at

the Hobart Town Hall, on Saturday 23rd January 2016,

as a prelude to the Chinese New Year.

The event was followed by a dinner at “Written on

Tea”, for members of the orchestra where the

conductor among others entertained the diners with

karaoke.

Shaanxi Folk Music Orchestra

Left: Cultural Consul Madam He and the Minister for Arts Vanessa Goodwin. Right Sir

Guy Green Zhou Fen, Elise Archer, Daniel Chan Lily Chan and Shelley Keyes

CCAT Lunar New Year Festival, Chairperson James Lee, Premier Will Hodgman,

Speaker of the house Elise Archer, CCAT President Lily Chan and Master Wang.

Lunar New Year Festival

The Chinese Community Association of Tasmania (CCAT), held its 4th Lunar New Year Festival on Parliament Lawns, on

Feb 7th which was attended by approx. 6,000 people. The festival incorporated food and entertainment from a diverse

number of our many Asian Communities in Hobart.

Master Wang and Buddhist Community New Year Celebrations

Master Wang celebrated the Lunar New Year of the Fire Monkey with a dinner at Wrest Point Casino. The Buddhist

Community also preformed the lion dance for casino patrons on four consecutive afternoons. .

Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival is a Chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunar solar Chinese

calendar. It marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations.

Families gather to enjoying lanterns, lantern riddles, eating yuanxiao (ball dumplings in soup), lion dances and dragon

dances.

The Lantern Festival can be traced back to 2,000 years ago. In the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220),

Emperor Hanmingdi was an advocate of Buddhism. He heard that some monks lit lanterns in the temples to show

respect to Buddha on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Therefore, he ordered that all the temples, households,

and royal palaces should light lanterns on that evening.

This Buddhist custom gradually became a grand festival amongst the people.

Hobart celebrated Lantern Festival with a concert at Wrest Point Casino arranged by the Tasmanian Chinese Business

Association. The room was decorated with a huge array of lanterns, a fitting end to the Lunar New Year Festivities.

Asian Institute Speaker

Opportunities for Tasmania and the China market in the CHAFTA era

Australian Consul- General Dominic Trindade, was guest speaker on Tuesday 16th February, at

the University of Tasmania, hosted by the Asian Institute.

Mr. Trindade was appointed Australian Consul-General to Guangzhou in February 2014.

Mr. Trindade has previously served overseas as Australia's Deputy Permanent Representative

to the WTO in Geneva, Deputy High Commissioner in Singapore and Second Secretary in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He has

been a Legal Adviser to the Department on international, trade and domestic law and has also worked on trade policy

and negotiations. Mr Trindade speaks Mandarin.

Mr. Trindade spoke of Tasmania’s three decade sister state relationship with Fujian Province and how Tasmania can

continue to build on the success of the Fujian relationship in the China Australian Free Trade Agreement in areas such

as dairy and aquaculture.

Tasmanian artist Chen Ping was instrumental in bringing the Zao

Hua Exhibition to the Salamanca Art Centres Long Gallery. The

exhibition curators were Professor Zhao Li, and Chen Lin from

Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Art. The exhibition showcased

fifteen of China’s best young artists, exploring the multifaceted

meanings of zao hua (nature)

In the Chinese language, "zao hua" is a word that carries broad

meaning. Primarily divided into two main categories, the first of

which refers to luck or fortune, while the second refers to the natural world, naturally occurring phenomena, as well as

related ideas. "Zao Hua", an exhibition of Chinese contemporary art, draws its title from this second meaning.

The mountains, rivers, trees and rocks found in natural "zao hua" show mankind the rhythm of nature, its order and its

mystery. It "has no permanent shape, but is subject to perpetual rules." As

time has passed and art has evolved organically, "zao hua" has come to

take on a wider meaning and has come to include buildings, parks and

other man-made objects and scenes as well. "Zao Hua" - Chinese

contemporary art exhibition, hopes to show the changes in interpretation

of "zao hua" in as it is employed in contemporary art, as well as provide a

survey of Chinese culture and thought today.

The exhibition

was opened

by the Lord Mayor of Hobart Sue Hickey and formed part

of Hobart’s Lunar New Year Festival events.

Tibetan

Chinese Contemporary Artists Exhibition

Top left: Ji Danchun My home is your home

Above: Meng Zhigang Awaiting south wind

Left: Lord Mayor Sue Hickey

Tibetan Sand Mandala

Sand Mandalas, also known as Tibetan sand

painting is an ancient Tibetan art form. It is a

Tibetan Buddhist tradition in which sand mandalas

are created from coloured sand and then ritually

destroyed by performing a ceremony. These

mandalas have many themes and portray many

deities. Creating a sand manadala is a very

specific, meticulous task involving many steps

requiring deep dedication and patience. There is a

certain way the mandala is destroyed. A ritual is

performed and sometimes a portion of the sand is

given away to observers of the ceremony as

blessings of health and healing.

Myopia in China

Five years ago it had become clear that the Guangzhou’s Zhongshan

Ophthalmic Centre the largest eye hospital in China, needed to expand. More and more children were arriving with the

blurry distance vision caused by myopia, and with so many needing eye tests and glasses, the hospital was bursting at

the seams. So the centre began adding new testing rooms and to make space, it relocated some of its doctors and

researchers to a local shopping mall. Now during the summer and winter school holidays, when most diagnoses are

made, thousands of children pour in every day.

East Asia has been gripped by an unprecedented rise in myopia, also known as short-sightedness. Sixty years ago,

10–20% of the Chinese population was short-sighted. Today, up to 90% of teenagers and young adults are. In Seoul, a

whopping 96.5% of 19-year-old men are short-sighted.

The condition is more than an inconvenience. Glasses, contact lenses and surgery can help to correct it, but they do not

address the underlying defect: a slightly elongated eyeball, which means that the lens focuses light from far objects

slightly in front of the retina, rather than directly on it. In severe cases, the deformation stretches and thins the inner

parts of the eye, which increases the risk of retinal detachment, cataracts, glaucoma and even blindness. Because the

eye grows throughout childhood, myopia generally develops in school-age children and adolescents. About one-fifth of

university-aged people in East Asia now have this extreme form of myopia, and half of them are expected to develop

irreversible vision loss.

This threat has prompted a rise in research to try to understand the causes of the disorder — and scientists are

beginning to find answers. They are challenging old ideas that myopia is the domain of the bookish child and are

instead coalescing around a new notion: that spending too long indoors is placing children at risk. “We're really trying

to give this message now that children need to spend more time outside,” says Kathryn Rose, head of Orthoptics at the

University of Technology, Sydney. China today

ACFS Tasmania Branch AGM

When: Thursday 17th March 2016

Time: 7:00 for 7:30 pm start

Location: Migrant Resource Centre

49 Molle St Hobart

ACFS National Conference

The National body of the Australia China Friendship Society will be holding its biennial

conference in Hobart, Tasmania, on the 20th 21st and 22nd of May 2016.

The conference will be held at the Best Western Hotel, Hobart.

On Friday night there will be a reception for our guests from Fujian, Shanghai and Beijing’s

Chinese Peoples Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) followed by the

Bill Morrow Memorial Lecture.

Bill was a railway man, union official, peace activist and a founding member of ACFS.

Bill was a member of the Bureau of the World Peace Council. He was awarded the

Joliot-Curie Medal by the World Peace Council in 1959, and in 1961. In 1969 he was awarded

the Lenin Peace Prize, a gold medal, now in the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.

The opening ceremony of the ACFS National Conference will be on Saturday 21st May 2016

at 9:00 am.

The National Dinner will be held at Mee Wah on Saturday night at 6:45 pm.

Further information will follow.

Blood Vessel Printer

A Chinese biotechnological company claims to have created the world’s first 3d blood vessel bio-printer, which

could pave the way, in theory, to producing personalised, functional organs. One of the major stumbling blocks in

tissue engineering is supplying artificial tissue with nutrients, and scientists around the world have been working

for years on trying to create artificial blood vessels.

With two nozzles working alternately, this bio-printer can finish a 10-centimetre blood vessel within two minutes.

“The core of the printer is the Bio Brick, in which there are stem cells. Given certain environments and certain

conditions, stem cells can, according to our needs, differentiate into the cells we need,” says Revotek chief

scientist Kang Yujian.

At the heart of the technology is a stem cell culture system that consists of seed cells and bio-inks filled with

growth factors and nutrients. When combined with other materials, the 3D bioprinter creates layered cell

structures that can be cultivated to form tissues with physiological functions.

“The achievement here in producing a 3D blood vessel bio-printer is not just that we can print a blood vessel, but

we have found a way of keeping vascular cells and other substances active. The method can be used to print

blood vessels, but also livers, kidneys and other organs,” says Dai Kerong of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

While the prospect of a 3D-printed kidney, liver or heart remains years off, as creating entire organs involves work

that is impossible today, the good news is that 3D printing does have the potential to help patients today in so

many ways. Beijing Review

Chinese Yutu Rover

China’s Yutu rover and the Chang’e 3 stationary lander are still alive after two years on the lunar surface, waking

up in late December to mark two full years spent inside Mare Imbrium having already passed their life

expectancies by far. However, it remains unknown what degree of functionality both the lander and the small

rover have retained over the past months in the extreme environment on the Moon where day and night last

approximately two weeks. Chinas National Space Administration

ACFS Tasmania’s 35th Anniversary Tour to China

In 2011, ACFS Anniversary Tour to China celebrated 30 years of co-operations between Tasmania and Fujian.

As 2016, marks the 35th anniversary of this long standing relationship ACFS will again tour China and also Taiwan in

August to celebrate this friendship. If you would like to join our 35th Anniversary Tour bookings are now being taken.

The tour dates are from 20th August to the 4th September 2016. Cost of this is $5.565:00.

If you are only interested in visiting the China part of the tour the cost is $4,105:00, this includes air fares, coach and

train fares, accommodation, transfers and most meals.

Some of the cultural activities we will be seeing are: Ink stone carving, paper making and creating ink stick.

Places to see: Old villages, great walks and breathtaking scenery.

Travel on the bullet train, raft and cruise on the river and fast ferry to Taiwan.

ACFS TASMANIA’S 35th ANNIVERSARY TOUR to CHINA and TAIWAN

To celebrate the 35 years of Tasmania and Fujian’s Sister State/Province Co-operation.

to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of sister state/ province co-operating between Tasmania and Fujian.

PLEASE NOTE

Full tour $5,565 pp

Full tour CHINA ONLY-$4,105

(Excludes Taiwan)

Australia China Friendship

Society (Tas.) Inc.

ACFS Tasmania is an independent, voluntary

organization that was founded in 1964 with the

aim of promoting friendship and understanding

between the peoples of Australia and the People’s

Republic of China. There was also the aim to

secure the diplomatic recognition of the Chinese

government by the Australian government. This

objective was achieved in 1972.

The Society consists of people with interests in the

diverse aspects of life in China and furthering

strong relations between our two countries.

We aim to stimulate and help satisfy Tasmanian’s

interest in China, past and present. We aim to

know what is happening between Tasmania and

China in any sphere (education, trade, adoption,

tourism, food, language, medicine, music, and art,

crafts and sister state relations).

We aim to have an attractive program that helps

our members keep in touch with as many of the

Tasmania – China – Tasmania links as possible.

We offer hospitality to visiting and newly arrived

Chinese.

ACFS Tasmania is a supporter of the teaching of

mandarin in schools, colleges and universities.

ACFS has supported its inclusion in Tasmanian

education system since 1995. We maintain close

ties with the Chinese Community Association of

Tasmania.

We are connected to ACFS member branches in

Australian states and territories. We receive

invitations to join official delegations to China.

There are special interest tours to China that are

available at discounted prices to members.

Membership of a branch is open to any person or

corporation who agrees with the objectives of the

Society and makes payment of the membership

fee.

Australia China Friendship

Society (Tas.) Inc.

Member of ACFS Ltd.

PO Box 186

South Hobart Tasmania 7004

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