Zao'er Lane

Zao Chun Er Yue (Threshold of Spring), 1963

ZAO CHUN ER YUE
China, 1963
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Director: Tieli Xie
Writers: Roushi (novel), Tieli Xie
Stars: Daolin Sun, Fang Xie, Yunzhu Shangguan, Xuepeng Fan, Bo Gao, Yan Han, Pei Wang.
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What harmony in some of the sequences between the musical accompaniment and the images! It is Romanticism of the highest order. The hero paces the landscape with a formidable energy, a rhythmic personage of increasing and decreasing size, powered forward by the germinal forces of the Earth. The trees and the flowers breathe through him, and his sadness is discharged with a rainfall. He is founding a new social order. The young pupils are prompted to think for themselves, and Lan(whom the hero loves), to oppose her spirit to the written volumes (in a Protestant fashion).
Playing the piano propels the hero (and the heroine) along a line of sonorous abolition. The torments of class injustice, and of all the hard realities come to crumble in flow of quanta where sound governs universes of synesthesia.

Ancient Chinese coinage

Ancient Chinese coinage includes some of the earliest known coins. These coins, used as early as the Spring and Autumn period, took the form of imitations of the cowrie shells that were used in ceremonial exchanges. The Spring and Autumn period also saw the introduction of the first metal coins; however, they were not initially round, instead being either knife shaped or spade shaped. Round metal coins with a round, and then later square hole in the center were first introduced around 350 BC. The beginning of the Qin Dynasty, the first dynasty to unify China, saw the introduction of a standardised coinage for the whole Empire. Subsequent dynasties produced variations on these round coins throughout the imperial period. At first, distribution of the coinage was limited to use around the capital city district but by the beginning of the Han Dynasty, coins were widely used for such as when paying tax, salaries and fines.
Ancient Chinese coins are markedly different from coins produced in the west. Chinese coins were manufactured by being cast in molds, whereas western coins were typically cut and hammered or, in later times, milled. Chinese coins were usually made from mixtures of metals such copper, tin and lead, from bronze, brass or iron: precious metals like gold and silver were uncommonly used. The ratios and purity of the coin metals varied considerably. Most Chinese coins were produced with a square hole in the middle. This was used to allow collections of coins to be threaded on a square rod so that the rough edges could be filed smooth, and then threaded on strings for ease of handling.


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