TAIYUAN, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) — Although launched to China from the Middle East, the artwork of glass-blowing has taken root in an historical Chinese county and advanced right into a vibrant specialty trade.

In Qixian County, north China’s Shanxi Province, glass-blowing has not solely built-in deeply into trendy trade but in addition preserved cultural heritage and achieved world attain because it upgraded its industrial chain.

Tian Jian, director of the Qixian County Jin Merchant Culture Research Institute, mentioned that the county’s reference to glass-blowing started by way of the “tea road” pioneered by Shanxi retailers in the course of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911).

While buying and selling throughout Eurasia, they introduced again glass merchandise and blowing strategies from Syria and different areas. After greater than a century of growth, Qixian has grow to be China’s core manufacturing space for hand-blown glassware, accounting for over 60 p.c of home output. More than 70 p.c of its merchandise are exported to over 80 international locations and areas worldwide. Qixian can be a serious supply of blown glass imports for Middle East international locations, in accordance with Tian.

Beyond manufacturing, native glass enterprises have established intangible cultural heritage expertise facilities, attracting major, secondary and college college students to affix examine excursions, thereby selling and preserving this historical craft.

Beside a 1,300 levels Celsius furnace, waves of warmth wash over the workspace as artisans wield two-meter-long blowpipes, skillfully turning glowing molten glass into delicate cups and vessels by blowing, rotating and pulling. Children collect round, watching intently, and gasping in awe now and again.

This vivid scene unfolds on the examine tour classroom in Qixian’s Honghai Glass Cultural Industrial Park. The immersive heritage expertise makes the thousand-year-old craft accessible. Students watch promotional movies on glass-blowing, discover shows of beautiful glass artifacts, and be taught concerning the craft’s evolution.

Shanxi Qixian County Honghai Glass Co., Ltd., a famend hand-blown glassware firm, has innovated whereas preserving custom. Using distinctive strategies like hand-applied shade coating, patterned stems and shade mixing, its independently developed stacked-color approach has earned a nationwide patent. The firm creates merchandise aligned with Arab aesthetic tastes, efficiently coming into Middle East markets.

Li Jiansheng, the corporate’s chairman, famous that the corporate integrates manufacturing, exhibitions, and cultural tourism, working a 3 A-rated cultural industrial park and a heritage exhibition corridor. It receives round 100,000 guests and college students yearly, providing reside blowing demonstrations, DIY classes and glass portray, reworking historical expertise into tangible cultural experiences.

Xizun Glass, a number one firm positioned a couple of km away from Honghai, highlights the high-end worth of handicraft. With over 500 expert glassblowers, Xizun blends a long time of expertise with youthful innovation. General Manager Zhang Wenlei mentioned that by masterful “blowing, rotating, pulling and pinching,” every bit turns into each useful and creative.

In 2019, a sequence of Xizun’s glass merchandise was acknowledged by a style journal as a notable light-weight luxurious model. Its hand-blown goblets promote for two,000 yuan (about 288.19 U.S. {dollars}) to three,000 yuan every in European and American markets, shattering the stereotype of glass merchandise as “low-end and cheap.”

While preserving the essence of handicrafts, Qixian’s glass trade can be embracing technological innovation. Addressing the inefficiency and excessive power consumption of conventional manufacturing, Xifulai Glassware Co., Ltd. pioneered Shanxi’s first clever manufacturing line for borosilicate glassware.

Wang Naiwei, with the corporate, defined that three such traces can produce 32 gadgets per minute, with a day by day output exceeding 70,000 items, doubling conventional handbook capability whereas decreasing labor prices by 8 p.c. Sales income grew 7.5 p.c yr on yr in 2025, demonstrating the transformative influence of good manufacturing.

Products are actually offered in over 20 international locations and areas, together with the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

Today, Qixian has constructed a full industrial chain centered on 62 glassware producers, supported by over 230 upstream and downstream enterprises. Out of the county’s 249,000 residents, 30,000 are engaged in glass-blowing. Since 2024, 11 new native corporations have begun self-operated exports, with many increasing amenities or including manufacturing traces.

The county actively helps 5G-enabled good manufacturing upgrades and an built-in 5G+web system, and has established 11 digital transformation mannequin enterprises.

Moreover, a national-level glassware high quality inspection heart has been established in Qixian, giving it a stronger voice within the trade. A devoted glass trade academy trains craftsmen and live-streaming skills, injecting new power into the craft.

Japan’s wartime occupation of Myanmar left deep human, financial, and historic wounds that should not be forgotten.

by Zhou Xin

During World War II (WWII), to maintain its wartime industrial system, Japan formulated the Southern Expansion Policy, geared toward invading Southeast Asia and plundering strategic sources comparable to oil and rubber. After capturing Burma (present-day Myanmar) in 1942, Japan dedicated quite a few atrocities, inflicting catastrophic struggling on the native inhabitants.

RESOURCE PLUNDER

During its occupation, Japan conscripted younger and middle-aged individuals for compelled labor, seized giant numbers of livestock for logistical functions, and destroyed huge areas of rice paddies, inflicting a drastic decline in Myanmar’s agricultural output. By 1944, Myanmar’s whole rice manufacturing had plummeted to simply 3 million tons — lower than half of pre-war ranges.

The Japanese army enforced a grain requisition system, forcibly seizing 100,000 tons of rice between 1942 and 1943, which triggered a devastating famine. It additionally extensively plundered oil reserves and ruthlessly exploited timber, minerals and different sources to gasoline its warfare machine. Moreover, Japan recklessly issued invasion forex in Myanmar, resulting in extreme inflation and eradicating the wealth of numerous civilians.

According to data such because the War Damages Claimed by Myanmar housed within the Diplomatic Archives of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Myanmar suffered whole losses amounting to three.84 billion U.S. {dollars} throughout the Japanese invasion. This included 2.66 billion {dollars} in property and infrastructure injury and 1.18 billion {dollars} in losses from invalidated invasion forex.

MASSACRES OF CIVILIANS

On Dec. 23, 1941, the Japanese military launched its first large-scale air raid on Rangoon (now Yangon). Employing roughly 70 bombers and 30 fighter jets, the assault killed about 2,000 individuals and injured 1,500. Two days later, on Dec. 25, a second raid involving round 100 warplanes struck town once more.

In 1944, following a army defeat by the Chinese Expeditionary Force, the Japanese commander in Myanmar, Heitaro Kimura, was reported to have instructed his subordinates in anger, “For every Japanese soldier lost, we will kill twice as many Burmese civilians.” He subsequently ordered the mass execution of quite a few Burmese prisoners of warfare and civilians.

On Jul. 7, 1945, on the orders of Japanese Major Seigi Ichikawa, troops carried out a brutal bloodbath in Kalagon village. Villagers had been divided into teams of 4 to 10, led to wells, blindfolded, bayoneted to demise, and thrown into the wells. The complete village was razed, and ladies had been raped throughout the atrocity. An estimated 600 to 1,000 villagers perished.

FORCED LABOR AND “COMFORT WOMEN”

In June 1942, Japan started developing the Thailand-Burma Railway, mobilizing 62,000 Allied prisoners of warfare and forcibly conscripting over 350,000 laborers, together with about 180,000 from Myanmar. Driven by ruthless coercion, a challenge that will usually have taken six years was accomplished in simply 18 months.

Under excessive labor circumstances, extreme malnutrition, and rampant illnesses, some 12,000 prisoners of warfare and greater than 130,000 laborers perished, together with about 40,000 Burmese (estimates vary from 30,000 to 80,000). With almost 150,000 deaths general — a mortality fee of 37.5 p.c, equal to 1 life misplaced for each three meters of monitor — the railway turned infamously often called the Death Railway.

The 1958 Academy Award-winning movie The Bridge on the River Kwai displays this darkish historical past. Lin Yong Dylan, writer of A Personal Account of the Hard Labor on the Thailand-Burma Railway, witnessed Japanese abuse on the Thanbyuzayat focus camp. He described an aged laborer being crushed and kicked; when the person’s son tried to intervene, he was shot useless by Japanese troopers. Laborers subsisted on skinny bean soup with no oil or greens. Prisoners of warfare and laborers had been compelled to toil from earlier than daybreak till after 10 p.m. utilizing primitive instruments, and had been crushed for even a quick pause in work.

After occupying Myanmar, Japan stationed greater than 100,000 troops there and established “comfort stations” in about 60 areas throughout the nation. According to maps in Myanmar’s National Archives, there have been greater than 100 such amenities. “Comfort women” included native Burmese ladies in addition to ladies from China, Korea and Japan who had been trafficked throughout borders. Many had been coerced or deceived with false job affords, comparable to nursing positions.

IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL AND FALSE PROPAGANDA

Japan imposed a curriculum and educating supplies advocating fascist rule in Myanmar and enforced Japanese-language schooling. By the top of 1943, 25 Japanese-language institutes had been established. Japan additionally arrange an Army Junior School and an Army Officer School in Rangoon, which had skilled greater than 100 graduates throughout three cohorts by the warfare’s finish. Some college students had been chosen as government-funded “Southern Special Students” to review in Japan, a program designed to domesticate collaborators to help Japanese army rule.

To strengthen ideological management, the Japanese army established a Broadcasting Control Bureau beneath the Rangoon Broadcasting Station to advertise the so-called “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” It translated and printed books comparable to Bushido and Warriors and Troops, disseminating the false narrative that “Japan is the liberator of Myanmar.” Japanese forces even claimed that “the Japanese Emperor is the reincarnation of the Buddha,” exploiting Burmese Buddhist religion for propaganda functions. The Japanese intelligence unit Minami Kikan fabricated tales of heroic figures who “saved Myanmar,” deceiving individuals into offering info and intelligence.

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY MUST NEVER BE FORGOTTEN

Regarding Japanese warfare crimes in Myanmar, U Nu, Myanmar’s first prime minister, wrote in his e book Five Tumultuous Years in Myanmar: “For a nation like Japan, you would never believe how cruel and inhumane it could be until you have experienced it firsthand. Japan attempted to rule the whole world and implemented a genocidal policy of burning, killing, looting and raping in China. There are countless horrific stories that Burmese politicians are unwilling to read or dare to hear.”

Thakin Chit, a member of the Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association), recalled, “The Japanese were extremely cruel. They would arbitrarily arrest people based on any accusation, and the fate of those arrested was uncertain. The Japanese tied people upside down with their hands and feet bound, whipped them with iron rods, poured boiling water down their throats, and pried out their fingernails with bamboo sticks.”

More than 80 years in the past, Japanese militarism wrought bloody devastation throughout Asia. Today, greater than eight a long time later, right-wing forces in Japan are making strenuous efforts to whitewash and revive militarism. Faced with irrefutable proof of their crimes, they present neither regret nor reflection, and are accelerating army enlargement regardless of worldwide opposition. All peace-loving individuals worldwide should stay vigilant, see by their true nature, and resolutely safeguard the outcomes of the World Anti-Fascist War and the post-WWII worldwide order.

Editor’s be aware: The writer is an observer on worldwide affairs.

The views expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially replicate these of Xinhua News Agency.