As a tributary of the Pearl River, Hongshui River originates at Mt.
Maxiong in Yunnan Province. There are villages and terraces on the
mountains and the clear water in the river acts as a mirror of the
surrounding areas.
2009-12-01 17:02 BJT
Editor: Jin Lin | Source: China.org.cn
Lights, camera - wow ... sometimes you just get a special picture. As thousands of people flock to Shanghai's Yuyuan Garden last night, the final one of the week-long Spring Festival holiday, a spectacular combination of color, light and skyline is shown. The Year of the Tiger and World Expo Lantern Temple Fair at the garden attracted more than 2.2 million visitors during the break. And Shanghai shoppers went on a spending spree during the holiday.
2010-2-20
By Dong Zhenand Lu Feiran
The purse-strings are well and truly opened as Spring Festival holiday spending hit a record of about 5 billion yuan (US$731.95 million) in Shanghai.
Commerce authorities believe recovering consumer confidence about the economy is the linchpin.
A sample investigation into the Spring Festival sales market in the city found that the 460 major local retail and service companies turned over the amount during the week-long holiday that started on February 13, the Shanghai Commerce Commission said yesterday.
The result was the highest since 1999 when the commission first started compiling these statistics.
It eclipsed last year's Spring Festival holiday total by 15.8 percent, the commission said.
Retailers citywide also lent a hand by offering extensive discounts during the break.
"It was the first time in 57 years that Valentine's Day was the first day of the Lunar New Year," said Chen Yuxian, a commission official. "Holiday spending was definitely enhanced by the nice coincidence."
During the seven days, city supermarkets and convenience stores took 2.29 billion yuan, up 13.1 percent from a year earlier.
Online rush
"Supermarkets still remain the most attractive shopping location for consumers when they need to choose gifts and food for the festival," Chen said.
However, television and Internet retailers gained the biggest sales growth from a year earlier.
The sales investigation found online and TV shopping deals completed during the period soared by 28.2 percent from 2009.
The holiday tourism industry also boomed, thanks to the recovering economy and the approach of the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.
The city received about 2.6 million tourists from both home and abroad during the holiday, up about 5 percent year on year.
Tourism revenue reached nearly 2.2 billion yuan for the period, up about 10 percent on last year, according to the Shanghai Holiday Office.
Scenic spots and Expo-themed events proved hugely popular.
For example, The Year of the Tiger and Expo Lantern Temple Fair at the Yuyuan Garden was the hottest event in the city, receiving more than 2.2 million visitors.
The Expo-oriented exhibition on peonies at the Shanghai Botanical Garden and the Expo Puzzle Temple Fair at Guyi Garden received more tourists than last year's Spring Festival, officials said.
Bird's-eye view
There was also a visitor increase to the Pudong New Area skyscrapers, such as the observatory of the Jinmao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center.
Officials said this was largely because more people wanted to see a bird's-eye view of the World Expo site.
"The Expo effect has started working in the city, helping the whole tourism industry to bounce back after the world economic downturn," said Li Ping, a holiday office official.
The number of Shanghai people who went abroad during the holiday also spiked sharply.
More than 59,440 people in about 3,000 tour groups went abroad, up a whopping 46 percent from last year's break.
Asian countries were still the most popular destinations for Shanghai residents.
As for the domestic market, north China and south China reigned supreme.
People either chose skiing in the north or sunshine in the south, the holiday office said.
Taste of the past: Stylish chairs and retro-furnishings complement the tatami and shoji screens of Matsubara-an, where traditional soba is matched with Western fare. ROBBIE SWINNERTON PHOTOS
Friday, Jan. 8, 2010
From the very first sip of aromatic otoso sake and steaming-hot ozoni soup, we always love the time-honored ritual and ceremony of New Year's in Japan. But even more than that, we like it when the hallowed traditions are brought up to date and placed in a contemporary context. That's the way they do it at Matsubara-an.
At first look, this restaurant in genteel Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, seems nothing but traditional. It occupies a stately, 70-year-old timber town house set in its own spacious garden. You enter through an imposing wooden gate and relinquish your shoes at the exquisite entrance hall. However, once inside, you find that appearances can be deceptive.
The main dining room is beautifully restored with impeccable shoji screens, period lampshades, retro furnishings and views out onto the garden. But the tatami mats are covered with carpets, and instead of zabuton cushions you sit at stylish modern tables and chairs.
Too often this kind of hybrid look can feel stilted and forced, but at Matsubara-an the mood is comfortably casual. A buzz of conversation drowns out the bossa nova emitting from the sound system. The waitresses are polite but friendly, putting you immediately at ease.
The menu reflects a similar blend of simplicity and sophistication; Japanese and Western, traditional and modern. The specialty of the house is te-uchi soba, buckwheat noodles that are prepared fresh each day, rolled out and cut by hand and served with considerable refinement. However, there's plenty more to explore at Matsubara-an besides noodles.
Just take a look at the mixed hors d'oeuvres plate. It features a selection of seven different dishes, including a couple of cuts of smoked duck; a smear of pate on a sliver of baguette; a cube of chilled tofu topped with savory miso; a slice or two of carpaccio; and various vegetable preparations.
Kamakura has a deserved reputation these days for the excellent produce grown in its coastal microclimate. Matsubara-an's version of bagna cauda showcases the local vegetables at their best. The colorful array of crisp vegetable sticks is accompanied by a thick, anchovy- and garlic-driven sauce that here is served cold rather than hot.
Italian influences: Matsubara-an's cold version of bagna cauda includes a colorful array of local vegetables.
Much of the seafood is landed nearby, especially the aji (jack) and shirasu (whitebait). But even greater emphasis is given to duck, which is served either grilled or simmered down in chunks in a rich broth, in much the same style as pork kakuni.
As at any soba restaurant worth its salt, Matsubara-an prides itself on the quality of its tempura. Rather than the standard-issue pair of jumbo prawns served elsewhere, it prepares crisp kaki-age patties packed with fresh shrimp, cuts of soft squid, jade-green shiso leaf and fragrant mitsuba herb.
RELATED STORY
Other soba houses to discover in Kamakura
These side dishes are all available a la carte throughout the day, but at lunchtime, two set menus are also offered. The ¥2,800 course comprises the hors d'oeuvres plate and a vegetable tempura, along with a serving of noodles — either seiro (cold with a dip) or kake (in hot soup). In the ¥4,000 course, you also get a plate of the grilled duck, plus dessert and a soft drink.
In the evening, though, Matsubara-an undergoes a change of character. The lights are dimmed and in place of out-of-town visitors it fills with locals, who settle in for leisurely dinners lubricated by sake, shochu, wine or whiskey from the well-stocked bar. In winter, nabe hotpots of pork or duck are added to the menu; throughout the year, there are steaks and seafood.
But what distinguishes Matsubara-an from just about any other soba restaurant we know are its garden tables. These are popular year-round, thanks to the overhead space heaters (blankets are also provided). But it is when the weather gets warmer that these come into their own.
They fill up with people out walking their dogs, families with young kids in tow, and even beachgoers. Where else can you sit down for tempura-soba dressed in shorts and a tank-top, to the accompaniment of sunshine and birdsong? That's the kind of reworking of tradition that we really love.
Matsubara-an lies well off the regular tourist trail, down a quiet side street in a residential district a good 15-minute walk from the center of the city. Even so, there are often lines outside at lunchtime. If you don't have a reservation, expect to wait up to an hour at weekends and especially on holidays.
Kamakura Matsubara-an
FROMMER’S:
The city recently made an effort to recapture some of its Russian history with Eluosi Fengqing Jie (Russian Street), a collection of mostly new Russian-style structures north of the railway cutout, above Shanghai Lu. The large, dilapidated yellow-brick building at the end of the street was the municipal government office when Russia still controlled the city.
Tolstoy was baptized orthodox, but had never been a true believer, though he often reflected on the religion. In 1855, he decided to create his own doctrine, based on Christianity,
“the new religion, appropriate for the level of development of the humankind, the religion of Christ, cleaned of the belief and the mystery, the practical religion, not promising the beatitude, but giving the beatitude.”
He fully described his doctrine in the article “The Confession,” written in 1882 and in the novel “Resurrection,” written in 1899.
Tolstoy’s ideas inspired people, and in the beginning of 1880s, the “Tolstoyans” movement started. The Tolstoyans preached humanism and pacifism, so the followers of the movement refused to join the army. They denied the necessity of the public authorities, and appealed to the natural peoples desire to help each other. The majority of the Tolstoyans were vegetarians; they did not smoke or drink alcohol.
The religious views of the Tolstoyans were synthetic and had many things in common not only with Christianity, but also Buddhism, and Islam. However, the Bible was just a code of the ethical rules for them. They did not appreciate the Orthodox Church hierarchy and the articles of faith.
They did not believe in the divinity of Christ, in the Virgin Birth and in the Trinity, and replaced the Ten Commandments with five:
“turn the other cheek”,
“do not commit adultery”,
do not litigate with anyone”,
“do not swear”, and
“do not steal.”
The Tolstoyans founded a publishing house in St. Petersburg to publish the fiction books and articles by Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and other authors, and handbooks about agriculture, medicine, and cattle-breeding. The Tolstoyans distributed books among peasants, and made a significant contribution to the public education.
In the middle of the 1880s, the colonies of the Tolstoyans appeared all over the country and outside it. The people from Europe, Japan, and India joined the Tolstoyans. Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the India independence movement, supported Tolstoy’s doctrine.
At the end of 1880s, the church hierarchs started to appeal to the Emperor Alexander III and to the Sinod, the highest administrative organ of the church, asking them to punish Tolstoy and to lay him under an interdict. The Emperor refused – he did not want to make a martyr out of Tolstoy. After Alexander’s death, the next Emperor, Nicholas II, gave ear to their appeals, and agreed with them.
In 1897, the Sinod declared the Tolstoyans movement a dangerous sect. When Tolstoy was excommunicated, the government started to arrest his followers. The movement disintegrated and was forgotten soon.
View RT Article
February 19, 2010 8:43 p.m. EST
By Dan Gilgoff, CNN
'I had affairs, I cheated'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Woods: "People probably don't realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist"
- Golf great, addressing controversy on Friday, says he had "drifted" from his faith
- "Woods was quite accurate" in his summation of Buddhism, one scholar says
- After affairs made news, Fox's Brit Hume publicly urged Woods to embrace Christianity
(CNN) -- When Tiger Woods invoked his religious faith during his public apology on Friday, he readily acknowledged that a lot of people would be surprised.
"People probably don't realize it," he said, "but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years."
But Woods said his Buddhist faith would be a key part of his quest to put his life back together after revelations of his marital infidelity, which he admitted for the first time. Buddhist experts said Woods' summation of the tradition's beliefs was accurate -- and that his remarks likely will bring more attention to the faith in a week when its highest profile leader, the Dalai Lama, is visiting the United States.
"I have a lot of work to do, and I intend to dedicate myself to doing it," Woods said, reading a statement from Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. "Part of following this path for me is Buddhism, which my mother taught me at a young age."
"Buddhism teaches that a creation of things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security," he continued. "It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught."
A handful of Buddhist scholars said Woods' description of Buddhist teaching was spot on. "Woods was quite accurate," said Janet Gyatso, a professor of Buddhist studies at Harvard University.
"Craving causes unhappiness. That's a fundamental Buddhist idea."
A 1996 Sports Illustrated profile suggested that Woods--then in his early 20s -- took his faith seriously. He visited a Buddhist temple with his mother each year around his birthday, slept near a mother-of-pearl Buddha from his Thai grandfather, and wore a gold Buddha around his neck, according to the profile. Woods' mother, Kultilda, is a Thai-born Buddhist.
"I like Buddhism because it's a whole way of being and living," Tiger Woods told Sports Illustrated. "It's based on discipline and respect and personal responsibility. I like Asian culture better than ours because of that."
When allegations of Woods' infidelity began emerging after a November 27 car accident, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume stirred controversy by publicly advising the golf pro to become a Christian.
You're always beginning again in the Buddhist tradition.
--John Kornfield, California-based Buddhist teacher
RELATED TOPICS
"He's said to be a Buddhist -- I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith," Hume said. "So my message to Tiger would be: Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."
But Buddhist scholars say that forgiveness and redemption are core components of the faith.
"You're always beginning again in the Buddhist tradition," said John Kornfield, a prominent Buddhist teacher based in California. "You see that you're causing harm, you repent and ask forgiveness in some formal or informal way, and you start again."
Some Buddhism experts said that's what Woods appeared to be trying to do today. Many Buddhists applauded Woods' statement.
"The fact that people could see this kind of behavior causes suffering is an incredibly important message for all kinds of people who respect Woods," said Kornfield.
Buddhism was in the spotlight this week before Woods' remarks, with the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama -- a Buddhist -- meeting with President Obama in Washington on Thursday.
Buddhism is among the world's largest religions, with about 350 million adherents, including about 1.2 million in the United States, according to a 2009 report by Trinity College. The faith began in India about 2,500 years ago.
Sergey Pyatakov
20:2704/02/2010
Russian Orthodox Church leaders called on Christians on Thursday to be firm in defending traditional marriage and lamented the family crisis in the country.
According to some estimates, over half of the marriages in Russia end in divorce. Women in the 140-million-strong country undergo some 1.5 million abortions annually.
"We, Christians of different denominations, should profess the inviolability of the evangelic norms on the holy matrimony between man and woman," Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said in a welcome message to participants of an inter-Christian forum for former Soviet republics held in Moscow.
Christians, he said, should "openly testify that deviation from the God-given fundamentals of marriage cannot contribute to forming a healthy individual."
Another top church official, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk who heads the Russian Orthodox Church's external relations department, criticized today's morality.
"Today the scale of priorities for many people looks totally different than what is in line with Christian tradition. Freedom, permissiveness, acquisitiveness, lust for success and career aspirations are in first place rather than traditional spiritual and moral values, family, marital fidelity or giving birth to children and raising them," he said.
"Abandoned children, a huge number of divorces... a high number of suicides and abortions indicate a deep crisis for the family and social relations," Hilarion said.
MOSCOW, February 4 (RIA Novosti)
View Article in RIA Novosti
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