Guqin-making is a process that takes patience and carefulness. Patience is one of the key parts in making a guqin.” It takes about two years to finish making one,” says Sui Yiyangg, 37, who, has been applying himself to guqin-making for over ten years.

The body of a guqin is made of two parts, a fat bottom and an arched (拱形) top. The body of the instrument is carefully and repeatedly covered with a thin layer of oil paint, which can take months to finish.

The strings (琴弦) of a guqin are traditionally made of silk; today they are often specially developed into steel-and-nylon strings.

Sui learned guitar as a teenager. He was introduced to the guqin when he travelled with his father. During the seven-hour drive from Beijing to the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, he listened to the guqin recording in his father’s car and was attracted.

“The beautiful and lasting sounds of the guqin are different from the Western musical instruments I learned,” he remembers.

After returning to Beijing, he started learning the instrument. Later, he learned how to make the guqin from HAN Tingyao, now 85, a Beijing-based master artist.

Sui travels nationwide and even abroad to buy high-quality materials and tools. For example the kind and quality of the wood is very important, so he often travels to Fujian and Jiangxi provinces in search of the right materials. He gets the paint, which is used to protect the guqin from corrosion (腐蚀)，from a single place — Rentoushan, a village in Maoba township, Lichuan city, Hubei province.

Years of guqin-making experience has gifted Sui with the ability to make high-quality instruments. “Each guqin has its unique sense of reality, which you can only get to know after you feel it with your own hands,” he says.

A diverse crowd of several hundred people queued up in front of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on Thursday morning for a ceremony that meant more to them than just the issue of a popular postage stamp.

The United States Postal Service’s launch of a special stamp for the Year of the Rabbit has come to symbolize more than just a collectors’ item for many. “We constantly talk about celebrations of our diversity as strengths,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said at thestamp’s launch. “The Lunar New Year represents thousands of years of history. It is the time to promote this (Asian) community in such an extraordinary way.” Breed emphasized that San Francisco is a place where discrimination(歧视)against Asians is unacceptable.

Inspired by decorated masks used in dragon and lion dances, USPS art director Antonio Alcala worked on the beautiful rabbit stamp design with artist Camille Chew.

Jay Xu, director of the Asian Art Museum, said the Lunar New Year celebrations and the stamp launch all reflect the recognition of “our community’s fine integrity(正直)and essentialism” to the United States. “It enables us to tell more stories—our past, our presentand our future,” said Xu, adding that people could strike up a conversation through the collection of artifacts(历史文物)such as stamps. “Stamps can go everywhere and can define friendship between different countries and cultures. This stamp is for all. The Lunar New Year is for all.”

Derek Kan, a member of the USPS board of governors, said, “For more than three decades, USPS has issued stamps highlighting the Lunar New Year, and they are some of the most successful stamp releases in our history.”

Chloe Chan, a second-generation Chinese immigrant, said the rabbit stamp is very “artistic” and worthy of her long wait in line. She has collected every stamp the USPS has issued for the Chinese New Year celebration. Chan is hopeful that her children and grandchildren will observe the Lunar New Year the same way she does, with housecleaning, holiday decorations, rituals(礼仪)and food to honor family roots and the Chinese culture.

The USPS issued its first Chinese New Year stamp for the Year of the Rooster on Dec. 30, 1992.

We will soon enter the Year of the Dragon. Or should that be the Year of the Loong? That is a question that has aroused heated debate.

Influenced by Greek mythology (神话), the dragon is often the keeper of treasure, so the dragon is often a symbol of greed and destruction. In addition to the image of “Saint George slaying the dragon” in the medieval manuscripts of Europe, there is also the Great Red Dragon in the Christian Bible’s Book of Revelation, which refers to Satan and the end times. For Europeans, dragon is usually a monster keeping distances away from people, a symbol of darkness. With four legs and two huge black wings, they can spit fire or even poison gas out of their mouth, with great destructive power.

Such symbolic resonance (共鸣) can be seen in the enduring appeal of dragons in Western popular culture today where they are important parts of fantasy literature, films, video games, and TV shows, often representing a mix of awe-inspiring and fearsome qualities that put them at the heart of struggles between good and evil.

Contrary to the evil image of European dragons, Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize different meanings. The loong has been a central symbol in Chinese culture for thousands of years, and its origins can be traced back to early Chinese civilization through mythology, folklore and religious beliefs. They even had jobs, as in Chinese legends dragons were appointed head of the four seas where they must keep order, as well as the job of bringing rain to the earth. Since loong were believed to have control over natural phenomena such as rain, storms and water, and were associated with the life-giving properties of water and the fertility of the land, loong became symbols of strength and good fortune, and they became associated with balance, harmony and the natural order of the universe.

The differences in perception of the mythical creatures in China and the West are rooted in their different cultural values. Thus the answer to the question at the beginning is clear: Whether or not to use loong instead of dragon is not important. What is important is that as we enter a new lunar year people globally appreciate the cultural values embodied in such Chinese symbols as loong.