Look at the architecture of the new hall and stadium which is comparable with the best in the world.
Ordos in Inner Mongolia with the second highest GDP after Shanghaihas its wealth through the vast resources of coal exploitation.
The government has built an entire new Ordos City.
All buildings virtually sold but unoccupied – held mainly by investors for investment. In China, nobody ever loses in real estate, at least not on a consistent basis. So they keep on building & investors with cash to spare to spare keep on buying.
Nobody has yet moved into the new City of Ordos, but investors are waiting patiently . . . only a question of time, they believe.
At present, of course there isn’t any existing economic activity, except some 30 Km away in the old city of Ordos.
With characteristic & unique style of architecture, reflecting the Mongolian past traditional life, Ordos City will prove to be a great tourist attraction in the days ahead.
There are also monuments dedicated to the great Genghis Khan, the historical conquerer in the era gone by.
Melissa Chan of Aljajeera in 2009 made this report, which as shown below in YouTube video:
Mongolians traditionally used to live in tents & will need time to get used to modern living.
Slideshow of Images of Futuristic Buildings
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This is nothing compared to what is projected ahead!
By 2025, China will build TEN New York-sized cities.
The scale and pace of China’s urbanization promises to continue at an unprecedented rate. If current trends hold, China’s urban population will expand from 572 million in 2005 to 926 million in 2025 and hit the one billion mark by 2030. In 20 years,China’s cities will have added 350 million people, more than the entire population of the United States today. By 2025, China will have 219 cities with more than one million inhabitants, compared with 35 in Europe today and 24 cities with more than five million people. Also, 40 billion square meters of floor space will be built – in five million buildings. 50,000 of these buildings could be skyscrapers – the equivalent of ten New York Cities.
So what’s happening in Ordos is rather insignificant when compared with the greater picture of China!
Madame Tussauds London, the original, is a major tourist attraction located in Central London, housed in the former London Planetarium. It is famous for recreating famous people, or celebrities, in wax.
Anna Maria Tussaud was an artist known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussaud’s, the wax museum, in London is attributed to her memory.
Now, this tourist attraction for celebrity wax figures in London is everywhere – New York, Washington, Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Berlin, Shanghai, and Sydney.
Welcome to Madame Tussauds located in Times SquareNew York, USA. Get up close and personal with your favorite celebrity wax figures at the world famous tourist attraction.
Whom do you like to meet? Political leaders, historical figures, pop stars, cultural figures, TV stars, sports stars, world leaders, Hollywood stars – you’ll find them all at the wax museum.
Here are some of the celebrities we met (Slideshow):
Long after Shanghai’s 2010 World Expo has gone, the China Pavilion still stands magnificently. This striking immense red structure is the first building you’ll see upon entering the Expo Park & the last one upon leaving.
It’s certainly reflecting the theme: Better City, Better Life.
Timelapse and video shot on Canon 7d and GoPro Hero HD for SeeChina.org.cn and Danwei.tv by Janek Zdarski
“The main structure of the China Pavilion, “The Crown of the East,” has a distinctive roof, made of traditional dougong or brackets, which date back more than 2,000 years. The dougong style features wooden brackets fixed layer upon layer between the top of a column and a crossbeam. This unique structural component of interlocking wooden brackets is one of the most important elements in traditional Chinese architecture. Dougong was widely used in the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC-467 BC).”
The contour design of the pavilion is based on the concept of “Oriental Crown, Splendid China, Ample Barn, and Rich People,” to express the spirit and disposition of Chinese culture. The pavilion has a core exhibition area on the top floor, an experience area on the second and a functional area on the first. China’s achievements in urban development from ancient to modern times are shown as the core theme of the pavilion.
The China Pavilion sits right next to the Expo Boulevard and the Sun Valleys, which act as the center of the Expo. (Slideshow Below)
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Painted the same red as the Forbidden City, the China Pavilion consists of four pillars with 6 floors expanding out and up. The 30 meter high roof is constructed from 56 wooden brackets (dougong), which represent the 56 minority ethnic groups of China. Additionally, nine folded scripts engraved on the surface of the building list the short names of China’s provinces.
Designed by He Jingtang, the director of the Architectural Academy of the South China University of Technology, “the Pavilion includes many energy saving technologies. The exterior of the structure offers a temperature buffer zone and natural ventilation for the interior, and the inverted shape of the pavilion acts as shading for entire building as well as the courtyard below. The roof of the structure includes eco-friendly landscaping and harvests rainwater.”
The China Pavilion, also known as the Oriental Crown, represents the spirit of the people of China and is one of the 5 permanent green buildings on the Expo Park converted into a national history museum.
Video hosted by Nancy Merrill below showing the background to its construction:
Peng Liyuan, the celebrated folk singer, is becoming China’s First Lady through her microphone. Whereas Jackie was a lesser known figure prior to her meeting up with President John Kennedy, Peng Liyuan is a celebrity in her own right. She’s glamorous, cultured, well educated with a master degree in folk music. It was her voice & singing that first wooed the heart of Xi Jinping, the next President-to-be of China.
She’s totally different from all the First Ladies you’ve ever known or heard of.
She’s China’s own & absolutely exceptional.
Until 2007, when Xi Jinping was promoted to top Party leader in Shanghai, his wife Peng Liyuan was a fixture at government-sponsored events, CCTV Festival Extravaganza which are the country’s largest and most conspicuously events watched by hundreds of millions. Ms. Peng was admired as much for her soprano vocal as she was for the way she exercised them in “shimmering chiffon gowns, with crimson-glossed lips”.
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Her profile is summarily mentioned here:
* Ms. Peng, whose name means “Beauteous Beauty” in Chinese, has been known as a faithful “soldier of the arts.” in a state news agency profile page.
* She is China’s first folk-song master-degree recipient; youngest civilian general in the Chinese army’s musical troupe; honorary professor at Shanghai Teachers’ College.
* Her travels include trips to “various revolutionary districts, impoverished mountainous regions, and minority neighborhoods.”
* Ms. Peng has also been put forward as a celebrity ambassador for issues of public health including AIDS,requiring her to lobby foreign governments to help cure such dreadful disease & others.
* A friend and photographer once took pity on young Peng and snapped her first picture, immortalizing the young star for whom camera lenses would, soon enough, become a constant companion. That was late 60s or early 70s when she first set her eyes on a camera.
* The glamorous starlet initially dismissed the future President as a xiang ba lao, a country bumpkin with coarse skin who wasn’t much to look at, an impression that isn’t entirely unfounded, according to an article in the Zhanjiang Evening News in 2007 that was widely copied on the Chinese Internet but has since been mostly deleted.
* Even her final verdict came with honest qualifiers: “Isn’t [he] the one I’ve been looking for? Unsophisticated but really intelligent.” As for Mr. Xi, he was quoted as telling her that he knew she would be his wife within 40 minutes of meeting her.
She has also described how she was introduced to Mr. Xi through a mutual friend when he was working as the deputy mayor of the eastern port of Xiamen in 1986. Mr. Xi had been married once before, to the daughter of a Chinese ambassador to Britain, but that only lasted three years when her own desire to study abroad overtook Xi’s political ambition, and they had no children.
Political analysts say Ms. Peng, who is now 49, is already helping to bolster and soften Mr. Xi’s public image in a country that, stimulated by social media, has become increasingly hungry for news about its leaders and their personal lives.
She has already broken the mould by talking about her relationship with Mr. Xi prior to his promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007.
“When he comes home, I’ve never thought of it as though there’s some leader in the house,” she once told a state-run magazine. “In my eyes, he’s just my husband. When I get home, he doesn’t think of me as some famous star. In his eyes, I’m simply his wife.”
She has however taken a few tentative steps into the limelight again in recent years, fuelling expectations that she will be the first spouse of a Chinese leader to play an active “first lady” role after her husband takes power in October or November.
Last year, as mentioned, she became a Goodwill Ambassador for Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS for the World Health Organization – a job that requires her to help lobby governments around the world to take action to prevent and cure the two diseases.
And after the devastating earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province in May 2008, she staged special performances in affected areas and announced publicly that their daughter, Xi Mingze, who was then 16 at the time, had volunteered to help relief efforts – another first for a Chinese leader’s family.
Come this fall, when Peng’s First Lady identity eclipses her superstar status, we must await to see the transformation in our dazzling star. Would she remain a noble, dignified mother only & a faithful wife?
The question is “Will she do anything exceptional to further boost the image of China? Or like her three other predecessors retreat into the background & remain a mystery?”
Shenzhen was voted by ForbesChina in 2010 as the most innovative city in mainland China. It virtually started from scratch.
Shenzhen in the 1970s was but a small village. Its metropolitan cityscape is the result of the vibrant economic growth made possible by rapid foreign investment since the institution of the policy of “reform and opening” establishment of the SEZ in the late 1970s. Both Chinese and foreign nationals have invested billions in the Shenzhen SEZ. More than US$30 billion in foreign investment has gone into both foreign-owned and joint ventures, at first mainly in manufacturing but more recently in the service industries as well. Shenzhen is now reputedly one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
Shenzhen continued to top the list of the most innovative cities on the Chinese mainland this year, followed by Suzhou and Shanghai.
Shenzhen continued to top the list of the most innovative cities on the Chinese mainland this year, followed by Suzhou and Shanghai, according to the latest list of the 25 Chinese mainland cities with the strongest innovation capabilities released Monday by Forbes China.
with the municipal GDP of above RMB 43.6 billion yuan (US$6.84 billion) in 2010
also the number of patents newly applied for (per capita and total number)
the proportion of sci-tech expenses to local fiscal expenditures (including expenses on trial development of new products, intermediate experiment allocations and subsidies for important scientific research projects).
In 2010, the value-added of Shenzhen’s high-tech industry rose 17.1 percent to RMB 305.9 billion yuan, while the total output value of high-tech products made in Shenzhen hit about RMB 1.02 trillion yuan, with 60.1 percent contributed by products with independent intellectual property rights.
The Yangtze River Delta region retained its predominant status this year, with 15 cities edging into the list. Jiangsu province alone has 11 cities included. Five cities from the Pearl River Delta moved up into the list, while no cities from Western China appeared there.
Statistics show that China’s smaller cities are amazingly eye-catching for their innovation capabilities with more than half cities on the list being county-level and prefecture-level cities. Of the top ten, there are 4 county-level cities: Wujiang, Kunshan, Changshu and Zhangjiagang.
Known among his friends as the “Singing Doctor”, he prescribed
medicine with a smile, and sang with his heart. His deep melodious voice was soothing to the ears and more so to the hearts of women who literally worshipped him with sheer admiration. He rendered both Mandarin & English songs with ease & charm . . . that handsome look with his boyish smile ever so radiant & bright!
Sadly, we shall no longer have his company nor to have him entertain us with rendition of songs by Michael Ball such as “Love Changes Everything” or his favourite song on Shanghai Bund in Cantonese. He passed on some days short of his sixtieth birthday defeated by that dreadful cancerous disease of the colon.
He sang as though there were no tomorrow . . . impressing on the importance of the present. In all the years that I have known him, he never turned me down to be present to sing, whether it was a home karaoke dinner or a public charity performance. All the time unknown to me he was fighting to beat this dreadful disease.
Below: A happy Dr Yap at our party to celebrate Tom’s birthday (1 October 2010)
At the last function (29 September 2010) attended by him in my house, he was in real high spirit, giving no indication of his being ill as you can observe from all the illustrated pictures. We had a roasted suckling pig and nobody was handy with slicing off the crunchy skin of the pig. He rolled up his sleeves saying “No problem” for in his father’s house in Ipoh, Malaysia, they always had this three times a year.
Dr Yap exhibiting his slicing skill with the pigling (Picture: Above & below)
A shock to all of us, he was in China when he passed away . . . seeking his last hope of living.
Gone but not forgotten, In Heaven he lives on. No longer forlorn, he’s telling us that life’s still worth the living, and living it to the full. Sing with a merry heart & make others merry! Don’t be sad when life is bad. Sing unto Him with a merry heart. Play your part out with a mighty shout: “Glory be to God!”
Before you begin to read this transcript, let me urge you to drop any pre-conceived ideas you may have about China. Have an open mind, otherwise it would be likened to dropping off a plane or cliff with a closed parachute – and it can be dangerous.
To quote the words of Martin Jacques in our preceding presentation of “Understanding the Rise of China” that:
“This is China, a civilization state rather than a nation state”
and
“China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West as its economy expands over the next decade.”
Here below, Robert Herbold presents a most enlightening concept on the differences that separate China from the United States and how the differences make them grow apart.
Bob Herbold, Former COO of Microsoft
(Robert Herbold, a retired chief operating officer of Microsoft Corporation, is the managing director of The Herbold Group, LLC and author of ‘What’s Holding You Back? Ten Bold Steps That Define Gutsy Leaders’ (Wiley/Jossey-Bass, 2011).
”Recently I flew from Los Angeles to China to attend a corporate board-of directors meeting in Shanghai, as well as customer and government visits there and in Beijing. After the trip was over, in thinking about the United States and China, it was not clear to me which is the developed, and which is the developing country.
Infrastructure: Let’s face it, Los Angeles is decaying. Its airport is cramped and dirty, too small for the volume it tries to handle and in a state of disrepair. In contrast, the airports in Beijing and Shanghai are brand new, clean and incredibly spacious, with friendly, courteous staff galore. They are extremely well-designed to handle the large volume of air traffic needed to. In travelling the highways around Los Angeles to get to the airport, you are struck by the state of disrepair there, too. Of course, everyone knows California is bankrupt and that is probably the reason why. In contrast, the infrastructure in the major Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Beijing is absolute state-of-the-art and relatively new. The congestion in the two cities is similar. In China, consumers are buying 18 million cars per year compared to 11 million in the U.S. China is working hard building roads to keep up with the gigantic demand for the automobile. The just-completed Beijing to Shanghai high-speed rail link, which takes less than five hours for the 800-mile trip, is the crown jewel of China’s current 5,000 miles of rail, set to grow to 10,000 miles in 2020. Compare that to decaying Amtrak.
Shanghai-Pudong Skyline At Night
Government Leadership: Here the differences are staggering. In every meeting we attended, with four different customers of our company as well as representatives from four different arms of the Chinese government, our hosts began their presentation with a brief discussion of China’s new five-year-plan. This is the 12th five-year plan and it was announced in March 2011. Each of these groups reminded us that the new five-year plan is primarily focused on three things: 1) improving innovation in the country; 2) making significant improvements in the environmental footprint of China; and 3) continuing to create jobs to employ large numbers of people moving from rural to urban areas. Can you imagine the U.S. Congress and president emerging with a unified five-year plan that they actually achieve (like China typically does)? The specificity of China’s goals in each element of the five-year plan is impressive. For example, China plans to cut carbon emissions by 17% by 2016. In the same time frame, China’s high-tech industries are to grow to 15% of the economy from 3% today.
Government Finances: This topic is, frankly, embarrassing. China manages its economy with incredible care and is sitting on trillions of dollars of reserves. In contrast, the U.S. government has managed its financials very poorly over the years and is flirting with a Greece-like catastrophe.
Human Rights/Free Speech: In this area, our American view is that China has a ton of work to do. Their view is that we are nuts for not blocking pornography and antigovernment points-of-view from our youth and citizens.
Technology and Innovation: To give you a feel for China’s determination to become globally competitive in technology innovation, let me cite some statistics from two facilities we visited. Over the last 10 years, the Institute of Biophysics, an arm of the Chinese Academy of Science, has received very significant investment by the Chinese government. Today it consists of more than 3,000 talented scientists focused on doing world-class research in areas such as protein science, and brain and cognitive sciences. We also visited the new Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, another arm of the Chinese Academy of Science. This gigantic science and technology park is under construction and today consists of four buildings, but it will grow to over 60 buildings on a large piece of land equivalent to about a third of a square mile. It is being staffed by Ph.D.-caliber researchers. Their goal statement is fairly straightforward: ‘To be a pioneer in the development of new technologies relevant to business.’ All of the various institutes being run by the Chinese Academy of Science are going to be significantly increased in size, and staffing will be aided by a new recruiting program called ‘Ten Thousand Talents.’ This is an effort by the Chinese government to reach out to Chinese individuals who have been trained, and currently reside, outside China. They are focusing on those who are world-class in their technical abilities, primarily at the Ph.D. level, at work in various universities and science institutes abroad. In each year of this new five-year plan, the goal is to recruit 2,000 of these individuals to return to China.
Reasons and Cure: Given all of the above, I think you can see why I pose the fundamental question: Which is the developing country and which is the developed country? The next questions are: Why is this occurring and what should the U.S. do? Let’s face it, we are getting beaten because the U.S. government can’t seem to make big improvements. Issues quickly get polarized, and then further polarized by the media, which needs extreme viewpoints to draw attention and increase audience size. The autocratic Chinese leadership gets things done fast (currently the autocrats seem to be highly effective).
What is the cure? Washington politicians and American voters need to snap to and realize they are getting beaten and make big changes that put the U.S. back on track: Fix the budget and the burden of entitlements; implement an aggressive five-year debt-reduction plan, and start approving some winning plans. Wake up, America!”
The image of a powerful modern China in all its mega-engineering projects simply staggers the mind of the Westerners especially the British who first initiated and engineered the Industrial Revolution. In a matter of three decades or so, China has acquired Western technology & set new heights beyond all past human innovative spirit. Even the American standards have been surpassed. This is China’s era.
With the closing of the Shanghai‘s Expo by 31 October 2010, China is rolling out its new high-speed trains, shaped like bullets, linking Shanghai & Hangzhou, the Three Gorges Dam which is already working & generating hydro-electricity at full capacities.
More mega projects are still in the works: nuclear power plants, a gargantuan project to pump river water from the fertile south to the arid north, & a $32.5 billion, 820-mile (1,300 kilometre) Beijing-to-Shanghai high-speed railway link scheduled to be opened in 2012. China’s engineering triumphs & the nation’s growing ambitions are in line with its economic boom. (Read by same author: “If You Stall . . . Others Roar”).
Completely New Railway Station
On the railway front, its technology is second to none. “We are now much faster,” Railway Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said at Tuesday’s inauguration of the super-fast line from Shanghai’s western suburb of Hongqiao to the resort city of Hangzhou. “Now other countries are hoping to cooperate with us.” The train will cruise at a top speed of 220 mph (350 kph), making the 125-mile (200-kilometre) trip in 45 minutes.
Pretty Rail Stewardesses At Your Service
Although China holds the patents on the technology, design and equipment used by the CRH380 train, some in the industry question the degree to which China is justified in claiming the latest technology as its own. In a recent interview, Michael Clausecker, Director General of Unife, the Association of the European Rail Industry said, “Everybody knows that a lot of the core technology is European”.
The benefits of high-speed railway are obvious, but with speed costs soar and people are reluctant to pay higher fares particularly on shorter routes. However, the government has embarked on upgrading the whole national network.
A Female Construction Worker Watches As Train Passes By
London Underground, known commonly as The Tube, has the distinction of being the first such railway system in the world with its first section opening in 1863. It is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and neighbouring areas of Essex, Hertfordshire & Buckinghamshire in the UK. In 1890 it became the first to operate electric trains.
The name “Underground” in London can be quite misleading as some 55% of its system is above ground. Nonetheless, it was an awe inspiring experience for me when using it as a fresh young man coming from an under-developed country in 1959 & 1960.
In my recall, I still remember Madrid Metro, as a system situated right in the centre and has train doors opening at both sides to improve passenger flows. This was a real bonus considering its congestion particularly on bull fight days.
Hong Kong MTR (Mass Transport Railway) is perhaps the most busy of the systems I have seen. Its quick, frequent & efficient and for most times it’s packed to capacity with only standing room.
The world of rapid underground travel, named invariably as Underground, Metro, MTR or MRT, is most fascinating. Herein below is a pictorial presentation of the World’s Most Amazing Ten Subway Stations:
The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel in Shanghai, China. The 647-m long tunnel is a surrealistic fantastic public transportation system with its walls featuring hi-tech geometrical optics of various colors. (Below)
The Komsomolskaya Metro Station in Moscow, Russia. The metro station has become one of the landmarks in Moscow partly because it is located at the city’s busiest public transportation hub the Komsomolskaya Square. The station opened on Jan. 30, 1952
(as below)
The Bockenheimer Warte Subway Station in Frankfurt, Germany. The entrance to the station looks like a train sinking underground after an explosion. The designer of the station said he was inspired by surrealistic artists.
The Subway Station in Bilbao, Spain. The subway station, designed by Norman Foster, is well known for its efficiency and unique design style.
The City Hall Subway Station in New York, United States. The station is a beautiful and functional one. It has been the most attractive subway station in New York since it was put into operation in 1945
The O’Hare Subway Station in Chicago, United States.
It was built in 1984
The Subway Station in Dubai, UAE. Combining traditional and modern architecture styles, the station looks like a shell.
The Subway Station in Stockholm, Sweden. The station is highlighted by its inside cave paintings.
The Subway Station in Pyongyang, DPRK
The U-Bahn Metro in Munich, Germany. It opened in 1972
See the new City of Ordos in Inner Mongolia, China where the crowning of Miss World 2012 took place. It was won by
