pick up theory
Suppose there is a big cornfield, and you are asked to pick up the biggest golden ear of wheat, and the condition is that there is only one to pick, and you can only go ahead without return, what you will do?
Apple just released Ipad
About 2 hours ago, Apple just released their first so called IPAD, it is about 9-inch tablet, starting price at $499, 16G, for 3G products charge another $130 more, the new toy will be in the market in 60 days…
I am sure, there will be another rush for this.
For more detail, check the engadget site here, or just go to Apple’s site here.
Yuanmingyuan Ruins after snow
A visit to the Ruins of Yuanmingyuan after the first snow of 2010.
Panjiayuan Flea Market
Panjiayuan Flea Market is located at the south east of the 3rd Ring Road. It is an open air market, opened 7 days a week, but the best time to go is on weekend. The market was famous for antique dealings about 10 years ago, today it is famous for the big collections of handicraft works from the neighbouring provinces, but not entirely in the sense of antiques, you can still get some real stuff, but not very easy.
Axis Tour of Beijing
Dear Guest,
I’m happy to introduce our new personal tour “To Be a Beijinger for a Day”. This 1 day tour focuses on the axis of Beijing. The tour will guide you through the various periods of Beijing’s history, from the 1400’s to present day.
A la recherche du temps perdu
Today I get my book from the amazon.cn, I ordered it some 3 days ago. The name of the book is “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu”, very beautiful name isn’t it? Its English translation is “In Search of Lost Time”, the author is Marcel Proust, I like the book very much, firstly because it is very thick, and secondly, I borrow this book last month from library, and I like to read it, and to be frank, it is very effetive for my sleeping 
, and I have another pretext, I know it is a little ambitious, for picking up my French.
The book is in Chinese, but I got the French version online from Gutenberg, no problem, you can download it if you want to pick up your French. And if you want the English version, it is also avaible from here. I hope it will be good for your sleeping as well.
20090828 cool day
This is the first day without air-conditioning, even a little cool in the afternoon.
Cities in Canada and Australia are the most liveable in the world
According to an article by Economist Intelligence Unit, among the world top 10 most liveable cities, Canada and Australia account 6, Austria, Finland and Switzerland take the other 4. Osaka Japan is the top asian city in the list, ranking 13th.
The top 10 ranking:
1, Vancouver
2, Vienna
3, Melbourne
4, Toronto
5, Perth
6, Calgary
7, Helsinki
8, Geneva
9, Sydney
10 Zurich
The ranking is made based on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s liveability rating, covering over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors, mainly focused in five categories such as: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, infrastructure. The categories are compiled and weighted to provide an overall rating of 1–100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal.
Other cities ranking goes as: Stockholm and Hanbourg 14, Paris 17, Berlin 22, London 51, Moscow 69.
China cities ranking goes like: Tianjin 72, Suzhou 74, Beijing 76, Shenzhen 83, Shanghai 84, Dalian 85 Guangzhou 89, Qingdao 95.
The unfolding political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe makes Harare the least desirable city in the survey. Afghanistan and Iraq are not included.
Peking or Beijing ?
In 1876, Thomas Francis Wade, a British ambassador in China, published the first Chinese textbook in English, in the book, he invented a system to spell Chinese characters, the system was refined in 1912 by Herbert Allen Giles, a British diplomat in China and his son, Lionel Giles, a curator at the British Museum.
This system is called Wade-Giles, sometimes abbreviated as Wade, is a Romanization system for the Mandarin language used in Beijing. The system reached its settled form with Herbert Giles’ Chinese-English dictionary of 1892.
Wade-Giles was the main system of transcription in the English-speaking world for most of the 20th century, used in several standard reference books and in all books about China published before 1979.
It has mostly been replaced by the Pinyin system today, but parts of it, especially the names of individuals and certain cities or trade-marks remain in use today, so that explains why “Peking” comes into “Beijing”, or brand name like “Tsingtao Beer” why not “Qingdao Beer”, or “Chiang Chieh-Shih” for “Jiang Jie-Shi”.
Pinyin or more formally “Hanyu pinyin 汉语拼音”, is the most commonly used Romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu is the Han (Chinese) language, and pinyin means “phonetics”, the system based upon several preexisting systems, the above mentioned Wade-Giles is one of them, the new Pinyin system was approved and adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People’s Congress on February 11, 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Mandarin pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults.
Today the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 (ISO 7098:1982, superseded by ISO 7098:1991); the United Nations followed suit in 1986. It has also been accepted by the government of Singapore, the United States’ Library of Congress, the American Library Association, and many other international institutions.
More recently, since January 1, 2009, it is also the official romanization system in Taiwan.
Today it is taught in schools to Chinese schoolchildren and foreign learners the standard pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese, to spell Chinese names in foreign publications and to enter Chinese characters (hanzi 汉字) on computers.
Google Pinyin download: 
Source: Wiki on Wade-Giles System, Pinyin System
