TouchBeijing.com

I am not good at gambling, neither do I play any card or Mahjong Games. Our local guide in Las Vegas gave us a most splendid speech on gambling: At any of the gambling place in Las Vegas, people are just gambling against the Casino, it looked some may win, some more may lose, but in the long run, most likely they all will lose. Why? There are two reasons: firstly, it based on the theory of Probability in the most precisely mathematical research; and secondly, the so-called Human Weaknesses push people to make wrong decisions, in winning they come to be more and more cautious, but in losing, they will do just the reverse, so in the end people will lose the game definitely somewhere, somehow.

He also taught some tactics on how to play Black Jack, such as when you are winning, keep the profit about 3/4 and keep playing with just 1/4, this even guaranty you will win at last, but at least you can play a little longer.

“So… how about you? You should be very good at it.” one of us asked him.

“If I am that good, I wouldn’t be here as your guide”, that was his answer.

Read all »

San Francisco was our second stop. The flight lasted about 5 hours long. There was no free food on board, but the drinks was free, the video on the plane showed us how to cook crab and sea food, my mouth was watering…

Read all »

There is no direct flight from Beijing to Hawaii, we had to transfer at Narita airport in Tokyo. I prefer such a transfer during the long flight.

The total flight lasts about 9 hours, but plus the change between the time zones, by the time we touched the land at Hawaii, we found ourselves to be several hours ahead of the time when we flew from Beijing, that is, when we boarded the plane at Beijing the time was like 11:00 am of 26th of March, but when arrived in Hawaii, the time was still 07:00 am in the same day, but it made me feel the long flight seems to be unreal.

Read all »

From 14th to 21st of Feb. 2010, I had a trip in Israel, this is my first time to middle east, during this trip I had also a two day excursion in Jordan.

About a month ago, I began to prepare this trip.

Read all »

Last year I got an add-on device for my Nikon camera, it was very convenient to locate the photos that I shoot, wherever I was, the GPS data will be inserted behind the photo, and when I go home, I just upload the photos to the Panoramio site, it was fantastic, all the photos will be mapped automatically on the map.

It was fun till last December, when I upload photos to the same website, the photos were mapped somewhere else, the offset could be even a hundred km away. After a little research, I think the Panoramio got some problems recently, the proof is, to upload a same picture both to Panoramio, and Flickr, they were mapped at different spot, Flicky got the right location.

I don’t know when Panoramio will fix this problem, but before that, I have to map them manually. I will have a chance to visit Israel by the Chinese New Year, hope I can find myself in the map.

By the way, if you have a Nikon, the GPS will work on: D5000, D90, D200, D300, D3, D3x.

I just had a driving trip to the north of China, that is Inner Mongolia. It was a cool trip, nice weather and very scenic, my first time to the grassland.

More info, PDF File about the trip, and more photos.

A sketchbook I got at the airport of Langkawi.

This is my second time to south east Asia. My destination this time is Malaysia.

Even though Beijing seems to be much warm and dry (108 days no raining), from my previous trip in Cambodia, I know there must be very humid and hot. I left Beijing on the second day after the big fire at CCTV building, and upon arrival at Kuala Lumpur, I think the local weather is still too much humid for me. I walked about 20 mins around the hotel, trying to take some pictures of the KLCC, … the twin tower, and my T-shirt was wet with sweat.

Read all »

The Grand Courtyard of the Wangs is the largest-existing folk residence cluster in China and a model of the merchant family’s residence in North China’s Shanxi Province, demonstrating the quintessence of Chinese architectural art and cultural values.

Situated in Jingsheng Town, 12 km east of Lingshi County, the Wang’s Grand Courtyard is only 35 km from Pingyao.

This luxurious residence covers about 45,000 square meters with 123 compounds and 1,118 rooms and took about half a century (1762-1811) to build.

Read all »

Built in 1370 at the beginning of Ming dynasty, the city of Pingyao today still remains its original layout of the Ming and Qing dynasties. More than 300 sites in or near the city have ancient ruins. Preserved Ming- and Qing-style residences number close to 4,000. The streets and storefronts still largely retain their historical appearance.

It became a World Heritage Site in 1997, included also the outlying Zhenguo Temple (13km northeast) and Shuanglin Temple (6km west).

Pingyao was designed and built according to Chinese geomancy theory of Baigua and Fengshui.The city was north-south orientated, but about 15 degrees off to the east, it has six gates, the east and west side have two gates each, but the north and south have one gate each, locals say it it similar to the shape of a turtle (head, tail, and four legs), another name for it is “Turtle City”. A tower was built about 8 km north east of the city to tie up this giant turtle from moving,

The walls measure about 12 meters high, with a perimeter of 6,000 meters. A 4-meter wide, 4-meter deep moat can be found just outside the walls. Aside from the four structured towers at the four corners, there are also 72 watchtowers and more than 3,000 battlements. In 2004, part of the southern walls collapsed but were reconstructed. However, the rest of the city walls are still largely intact and are considered among the best-preserved ancient city walls on this scale. This makes the city walls the centerpiece of the Heritage Site.

Read all »

Cambodia is a very warm country, even by the end of October, the weather is still very humid, the humidity makes me very hard to get used with. So seeing the photos is a story, but taking the photos is totally another story.

Read all »