Look Up
Print Edition
Years ago, I joined a “Look Up” tour to see “Milky Way” in Alxa Desert in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
When I looked up at the sky in the desert in a crystal night, the Milky Way was clearly hanging there across the sky over our head. Millions of stars with different colors were incredibly blinking in the dark blue sky. That stunning picture was far more beyond the imagination of a young girl from Shanghai. I feel myself was like a dust in the boundless universe under the star-filled sky.
A knowledgeable tour instructor showed us where Altair and Vega were. We also reviewed the beautiful traditional folk tales with these two stars. These Chinese IPs accompanied the growth of Chinese people generation after generation, built romantic genes and curiosity and love of the stars into the blood of Chinese.
Our ancestors started to explore the sky and universe long time ago and Chinese never stopped the exploration. I proudly learned that China has the world’s earliest star charts, the oldest observatory, and the most complete astronomical records.
Hegel said, “When a nation has a group of people looking up at the sky, that nation has the future.” From the star-filled sky, I saw those great ancient Chinese looking up — Zhang Heng created Armillary Sphere and simulated the stars running 1,000 years ago, Zu Chongzhi calculated the exact time of solar eclipse and moon eclipse, and Guo Shoujing formulated one of the most precise calendars.
Nowadays, modern Chinese people inherited their exploring spirits and developed our own technology to continue the exploration — Yutu and Chang’e have been sent to the Moon “Palace,” Changzheng rockets have been successfully launched many times, BeiDou Navigation System has been developed and are under continuous improvement, Tianwen No. 1 opened China’s planetary exploration with its successful landing on the Mars, the world’s biggest Radio Telescope “FAST” is leading us to explore the distant unknown universe.
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