Greatwall of China

The tunpu (village fortress) in Anshun, Guizhou, was built in the Ming Dynasty for military use. Today, it retains its original style and pace of life.

History

Originally constructed in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) as fortresses, tunpus, echo a certain military function.

When the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, came to power, the army and locals in Anshun constructed villages as military sites. Each village included forts, sentries and toll gates.

In those days, soldiers spent most of their days working as farmers. It was only in times of war that they were called to unify and repel an enemy. People living in the tunpus were forbidden to marry people of other ancestries. Even after the passage of hundreds of years, residents of the tunpu retain their traditional Ming lifestyles, clothing and hair styles.

Main tunpu

Tianlong tunpu

The most popular destination for tunpu tourists in Anshun is Tianlong tunpu. Since the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), Tianlong has been the tunpu with the most armies and post houses.

A Ming-style teahouse is located at the entrance of the village. Waitresses there dress in Fengyang Han clothes, a style of clothing which originated in the Ming period, and is named after Zhu Yuanzhang’s hometown, Fengyang County, Anhui. A performance hall is lcated behind the teahouse. Visitors can see local performances there.

Entering the lanes of the village, you will see barracks. Jiudaokan Lane is typical of the village, because it crosses through a narrow, low gate porch with fire holes along the walls.

The mountains around the Tianlong tunpu are almost an archive of historical buildings. Ancient ramparts and the castle-style Wulong Temple are all national cultural relics. A Ming-era factory where soldiers produced weapons is in the rear of the mountain. Beacon towers, battlements and sentry posts dot the landscape.

Yunfeng Tunpu

Yunfeng tunpu is the most complete military defense post, built with stone gates and towers.

Yunshan tun is one of the spots. It is located in the canyons of the Yunjiu Mountain. The only way into the village is a twisting, stony stairway. Long walls were built besides the gate to connect it into the cliffs of the mountain.

A stony main street crosses the village from east to west. There are drama stages, a temple to the God of Wealth, ancestral temples and traditional Chinese medicine stores.

Residences and blockhouses are connected by twisting lanes and built into the mountain. The tunpu is built to be an ironclad defense.

Qingdao, a coastal city on the Yellow Sea on East China’s Shandong Peninsula, is famous worldwide for its famed Tsingtao Beer, but another constant delight of locals and a beautiful memory for tourists is the city’s excellent seafood cuisine.

Seafood choices abound in Qingdao, and its residents’ cooking skills have been highly regarded for centuries. Trepang, abalone, sea snails, clams, oysters, squid, shrimp and crab dishes are common choices whether at a seaside snack bar, in one of the city’s many excellent “ordinary” restaurants or fine dining at a luxury hotel. Clams are a local favourite, and many people like to cook at home. Clams can accompany cold dishes, be served in a hot soup, or prepared as spicy fried dishes. Delicious and nutritious soups are also highly recommended.

Because of Qingdao’s rich seafood resources and its culinary legacy, there are special seafood fish dishes for each time of the day. Trepang is considered indispensable for local fine dining.

Some of the best places to sample the freshest seafood are found in fishing villages in the city’s mountainous Laoshan District. The seafood there is often fresh-caught, good to eat and relatively inexpensive. Summer and autumn are the best seasons to visit Laoshan. Its scenery, temples and seaside amusements make this a place for unforgettable sightseeing and dining experiences.

Another delightful place well-worth visiting is the Yunxiao Lu Food Street. Seafood there is reasonably priced and comes in a wide variety. Dumplings (jiaozi) with tasty seafood fillings are quite popular.

Newcomers to the area and its cuisine, however, should take special care of their stomachs. Often, an appetite is easily satisfied, but such pleasures can come at a price; the stomach sometimes suffers. Since vinegar can help protect the stomach and make the seafood more delicious, remember not eat too much at once, and ask for some vinegar and vegetables with your meals. Try especially pucai, a vegetable grown in ponds. Pucai is crisp and nutritious, and it is treasured by local residents.

But, since Qingdao is an exceptionally diverse city, because of its unique history and culinary history, if you get bored with seafood, there are many other treats available. On May 1¨C7 each year snacks from home and abroad are featured for tasting on Qingdao’s Huiquan Square; the 2007 instalment will be part of the Eighth China Food Festival. Chefs from more than 20 countries will show off their best dishes, and lectures on healthy dining will be given by experts.

Beer lovers look forward to August in this famed beer-producing city, because this is the time for the Qingdao International Beer Festival. Beer is a big part of life in Qingdao, and if you visit at other time of the year, the newly opened “Dengzhou Lu Beer Street” is ready to welcome you. The street is home to the original Tsingtao Beer Factory, established about a century ago by German residents in Qingdao. There are now about 40 beer bars and restaurants lining the nearly 1,000-metre-long street. Of special note, all the buildings on the street are in the late 19th century¨Cearly 20th century European-style. Fresh beer produced in the factory is available daily in the area’s bars, the freshest in the city. At the Tsingtao factory, the Tsingtao Beer Museum contains a detailed history of Tsingtao Beer and its production processes. Here you can sample the best in beer with others from around the world.

To prepare for your Qingdao adventure or if you are planning to visit Qingdao for the 29th Olympic Sailing Regatta in 2008, see: www.qingdaocate.com and www.meishi007.com, which contain useful information that will enhance your stay.

Before 1979, foreign interest in China meant tourists pointing cameras at the Great Wall.

Now the attraction is not the longest Great Wonder of the World, but the world’s fastest growing economy. According to Penn State doctoral graduate and Shanghai native, Aimin Yan, joint ventures and foreign investment doubled between 1992 and 1993, to reach $25.7 billion.

“American companies, along with companies from other countries, are all scrambling to get into the Chinese market,” says Barbara Gray, a professor of organizational behavior who collaborated with Yan on a study of Chinese-American joint ventures. “We were curious about how organizations from different countries with different cultural backgrounds would collaborate, when they had different objectives and reasons for joining together.”

From interviews with representatives of four joint ventures, Gray and Yan developed a simple model of the dynamics of such a partnership. Like a three-piece domino chain, their model predicted that bargaining power (”what each party brings to the table,” says Gray) would forecast the level of management control (”the influence of each partner over key decisions”), which in turn would determine performance (”the degree to which each partner’s objectives are met”). Bargaining power could be any of three types (context-based, capital resource-based, or non-capital resource-based), while management control could be strategic, operational, or structural.

Yet when they surveyed 90 companies in the United States and their partners in China, they found, for the most part, that this domino model “was too simplistic,” says Gray.

For instance, although American companies usually had more context-based power (they can choose from several partners), Gray and Yan did not find that this flexibility translated into greater control.

On the other hand, capital resources (usually cash from the American side, land and buildings from the Chinese) determined not only operational control (meaning that everyday operations would most likely be supervised by managers from the top contributor), but also strategic control.

“Strategic control,” says Gray, “has to do with appointments to the board of directors, who make the long-term decisions for the venture. This direct relationship makes a lot of intuitive sense. If a company has to put money on the line, it would want to have direct control.”

Yet the third form of control — structural — was not proportional to the capital resources invested. “Structural control is the extent to which a joint venture is organized like the parent company,” says Gray. “Some American companies basically tried to take the organizational approach they have in the U.S. and replicate it in China. The problem is that people don’t necessarily motivate employees in the same way. For example, Chinese companies often provide housing for their employees. That’s not part of our reward package in the U.S., but in China it’s a very important aspect of employment.”

Rather than being tied to capital, structural control was connected to non-capital resource-based power — American technology or Chinese guanxi. Literally “connections,” these links to Chinese market and government heads are like the Western system of networking. “Chinese entrepreneurs,” Yan notes, “tend to trust people rather than organizations.”

In their domino model, Gray and Yan had hypothesized that the higher the level of control exerted by a partner, the more of its goals it would achieve. But their results showed that only the day-to-day operational control affects performance.

“We had thought that the company with the most membership on the board would influence what objectives were put forward. We’re coming to understand that it’s not simply control that affects performance,” says Gray.

“Factors such as whether the companies had mutual trust, whether they shared common goals in the joint venture, and whether these goals were written into the contract played a part in dictating the overal performance of the venture.”

Adds Yan, “It’s still a competitive relationship.”

Gray is now developing an executive program at Penn State to teach the ways of cross-cultural negotiations. “Our work has led me to rethink some research that has been around on cross-cultural negotiations. In particular, to take into account what each partner thinks the other is doing and how culture influences these perceptions.”

In this wonderful new anthology, due out February 2006 from Hudson Street Press, Aimee tells the story of (almost) meeting her husband on the Great Wall of China.

In the spirit of the bestselling The Bitch in the House, Why I’m Still Married captures the passion, loss, joy, friendship, and humor that marks lifelong commitment through a brilliant kaleidoscope of voices, such as Julia Alvarez, Susan Cheever, Elizabeth Graver, Erica Jong, Aimee Liu, Bharati Mukherjee, ZZ Packer, and Marge Piercy.

Revealing the myriad ways in which women navigate the bumpy terrain of emotional intimacy, weather arguments and separations, adjust to parenting, avoid—or succumb to—the temptation of infidelity, and decide who does the dishes, this riveting collection is at once unique and universal, and will speak to any woman who’s ever been in a long-term relationship.

From Publishers Weekly
Whether they’re on their first marriage or their fourth, each of the 24 contributors to this thought-provoking collection has terrific stories and wisdom to share, and they all do it masterfully. “Nobody is a perfect match and we have to accept that,” writes Marge Piercy, who has learned to accommodate her husband’s quirks, just as he has hers. Editor Propp’s husband expressed his annoyance—anger, actually—over differences so viciously that after five years she began fantasizing about leaving. Instead, she went to the Internet, read about verbal abuse and learned to stand up for herself. NPR reporter Maria Hinojosa says, “I stay married because this is the one person who understands how to help make me into a better person.” You might not agree with everyone’s theories—Hannah Pine defends her choice to be a mother in an open marriage—but each one deals with the real problems, and pleasures, of marriage. As editor Trounstine puts it: “[m]arriage doesn’t have the excitement of the illicit or the thrill of the daredevil. It’s more like the quiet hum of the everyday and the occasional surprise of the sunset.”

New Great Wall Pictures

Today is the Tomb-sweeping Day.

A fortnight after the vernal equinox is the Tomb Sweeping Day, one of the few traditional Chinese festivals that follows the solar calendar. The Day typically falls on April 4, 5, or 6.

The Chinese name for the Day, Qing Ming, literally means “clear and bright”, implying the coming of spring.

In ancient times, people celebrated the Day with dancing and singing, picnics, and kite flying. Colored boiled eggs would be cracked to symbolize the opening of life. The Emperor would plant trees on the palace grounds to celebrate the renewing nature of spring. In villages, young men and women would court each other.

Over time, this celebration of life became a day to the honor ancestors. Ancient Chinese believed that the spirits of the deceased looked after the family during this time. Sacrifices of food and spirit money could keep them happy, and the family would prosper through good harvests and more children.

Today, Chinese visit their family graves to tend to any underbrush that has grown. Weeds are pulled, and dirt swept away, and the family will set out offerings of food and spirit money. Unlike the sacrifices at a family’s home altar, the offerings at the tomb usually consist of dry, bland food. One theory is that since any number of ghosts rome around a grave area, the less appealing food will be consumed by the ancestors, and not be plundered by strangers.

Honoring Ancestors
Honoring ancestors begins with proper positioning of a gravesite and coffin. Experts in feng shui, or geomancy, determine the quality of land by the surrounding aspects of streams, rivers, trees, hills, and so forth. An area that faces south, with groves of pine trees creates the best flow of cosmic energy required to keep ancestors happy. Unfortunately, nowadays, with China’s burgeoning population, public cemetaries have quickly surplanted private gravesites. Family elders will visit the gravesite at least once a year to tend to the tombs.

While bland food is placed by the tombs on Qing Ming Jie, the Chinese regularly provide scrumptious offerings to their ancestors at altar tables in their homes. The food usually consists of chicken, eggs, or other dishes a deceased ancestor was fond of. Accompanied by rice, the dishes and eating utensils are carefully arranged so as to bring good luck. Sometimes, a family will put burning incense with the offering so as to expedite the transfer of nutritious elements to the ancestors. In some parts of China, the food is then eaten by the entire family.

Kites
Besides the traditions of honoring the dead, people also often fly kits on Tomb Sweeping Day. Kites can come in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and colors. Designs could include frogs, dragonflies, butterflies, crabs, bats, and storks.

n a survey conducted by the Beijing News at a public graveyard in Beijing, 90 per cent of respondents said Tomb-sweeping Day (April 5) should become a national holiday.

Most said the day is essential for Chinese and a holiday will make it easier to sweep the tombs of loved ones.

Also, it is a good way to pass on traditions and culture. If it is a holiday, the whole family can come, including those who work, which makes for a more together family, said a woman surnamed Peng.

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LANZHOU, Feb. 20 (Xinhuanet) — A comprehensive survey of the ancient remains of the Great Wall will be carried out this year in the northwestern province of Gansu, a local heritage official said.

“A detailed survey plan, including the methods, objects and scope for investigation, is being drawn up by heritage protection experts,” said Zheng Lansheng, an official with the provincial Cultural Heritage Bureau.

The Great Wall was first built in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). It is generally considered to start at Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu and stretch 6,000 km to the Shanhaiguan Pass on the shores of Bohai Bay in the east.

The wall was rebuilt many times through the centuries, and many sections of it have suffered serious damage from wind and water, as well as human destruction.

Previous surveys show that a 600-km-long wall built during the Qin Dynasty (221 BC to 206 BC) is located in Gansu.

However, many parts of the remains have been undermined due to a lack of effective protection in the province.

The province has become China’s pilot for the preservation of the Great Wall.

“Besides the experts, we will also make use of aerial, telemetric and archeological technologies to get an overall and accurate report on the current conditions of the Great Wall in theprovince,” Zheng said.

The plan will be submitted to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage for approval before it is carried out, he said.

BEIJING, Feb. 17 (Xinhuanet) — China will remeasure the length of the Great Wall with the help of aeronautic remote sensing technology, according to the China Great Wall Institute.

Experts from the institute and the State Mapping Bureau will jointly carry out a program on comprehensively measuring and surveying the Great Wall.

Meanwhile, the Beijing municipal cultural relics bureau will organize a team of experts to explore current conditions and produce detailed information about the Great Wall section in Beijing.

The current recorded length of the Great Wall, which is 7,300 kilometers, is not likely to be very accurate due to the relatively backward measuring equipment and methods used in the past.

The program will not only confirm the actual length of the wonder of the world, but can also provide pictorial data of its overall layout, which is significant to the preservation of the cultural relic.

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China launches Great Wall protection project

2006-02-27 16:15:46

SHIJIAZHUANG, Feb. 27 (Xinhuanet) — China has been carrying out a ten-year project to protect the Great Wall, said Tong Mingkang, deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

About 46 experts from 11 provinces, including Hebei, Gansu and Liaoning, convened at Shijiazhuang, capital of north China’s Hebei Province to discuss the project last week.

The ten-year project aims to make clear the basic information about the Great Wall, map out specific protection plans, add fundsfor Great Wall protection and repair wall damage.

The Great Wall stretches for about 6,000 km, traversing Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hebei and Liaoning.

The wall’s construction began during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC), when separate sections were built in scattered strategic areas.

The latest finding shows the oldest Great Wall was built in the Qi State during the Spring and Autumn period (770 BC-476 BC). When Qinshihuang conquered all the other six states and became the first emperor of a unified China, he ordered his general, Meng Tian, to link the disparate parts of and extend the walls.

China closes down “Great Wall of Love”

Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 05:36:26 +0100 (MET)

BEIJING, Feb 24, 2006 (AFP) - Beijing authorities have closed down a controversial project that allowed couples to carve sweet nothings on a “great wall of love” next to the genuine Great Wall, state media said Friday. The project charged couples 999 yuan (123 dollars) to inscribe a message on a stone of the marble wall, which was erected at the foot of a popular tourist section of the Great Wall near Beijing, the China Daily reported. But the fake wall, launched on Valentine’s Day, attracted widespread criticism for being a cheap marketing ploy that encouraged vandalism and showed disrespect for the historic structure. “The project … is a violation of cultural heritage protection regulations,” the paper quoted Hao Dongchen, an official at the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage, as saying.

The wall of love was 88.5 metres (292 feet) wide and 7.5 metres (25 feet) high, with 9,999 marble stones. The marketing team behind the wall had hoped to raise more than a million dollars but, even before its closure, it seemed people had not fallen in love with the concept. Only four couples paid to inscribe messages, the paper reported. Less than 2,500 kilometres remain of the original 6,300-kilometre Great Wall, which was first built in the Qin Dynasty (221 to 206 BC). It was rebuilt in the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644 AD) to keep out northern tribes that threatened the Chinese heartland.

Source: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Date: 24/2/2006

http://www.greatwall-of-china.com/gallery/gallery.html
Lots of Great Wall pictures to be enjoyed here.

http://www.greatwall-of-china.com/51/great-wall-history-1.html
The Great Wall, started more than 2,000 years ago, represents a main part of Chinese history, which has a profound influence on the China today.