The Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences recently held a youth salon themed "Living Intangible Cultural Heritage of Chinese Zhusuan" in Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily]
[Reported from China Daily] Chinese zhusuan, a time-honored traditional method of performing mathematical calculations with an abacus, is expected to make more contributions to the Chinese modernization, according to experts.
They made the remarks at a recent youth salon themed "Living Intangible Cultural Heritage of Chinese Zhusuan" in Beijing held by the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, or the CAFS.
Xu Yude, vice-president of the CAFS, said that, as a typical representative of fine traditional Chinese culture, Chinese zhusuan reflects the wisdom of ancient Chinese people for over 1800 years and is an important manifestation of national history, spirit, culture and innovation.
With high attention from the Party leadership and the strong support of the Ministry of Finance and other relevant departments, the high-quality development of abacus and mental arithmetic has achieved positive results, Xu said.
Cheng Beiping, executive vice-president of the Chinese Abacus and Mental Arithmetic Association, said that abacus and mental arithmetic have shown excellent results in improving children's cognitive and non-cognitive abilities.
The CAMAA will continue to deepen the protection and inheritance of Chinese zhusuan, popularize the development of abacus and mental arithmetic education, explore the creative transformation and development of the fine traditional Chinese culture, and contribute to Chinese path to modernization, Cheng said.
Niu Teng, deputy director of the Research Center for Abacus and Mental Arithmetic at the CAFS, gave a special report entitled "Protection, Inheritance, and Innovative Development of Chinese Zhusuan as Intangible Cultural Heritage".
At the event, Niu and Liu Qinying, deputy secretary-general of the CAMAA, respectively showcased the Ming Dynasty method and modern method of determining the square root and cubic root, showcasing the inheritance of intelligence through Chinese zhusuan across time.
Liu also showcased traditional abacus tricks such as "Phoenix Spread Single Wing" and "Phoenix Spread Double Wings". It could be intuitively seen that, as the calculation progressed, not only the beads on the abacus were changing, but the shapes formed by the beads were also accordingly changing, which manifested the idea of "combination of numbers and shapes" through the abacus.
Seven children also showed their learning achievements in calculating on the abacus, mental calculation of addition and subtraction, and mental calculation with numbers flashing on the screen.