Archive for the ‘Tales of Cities’ Category
A Trip to Zhenjiang
I had a trip to Zhenjiang during the Middle Festival. Zhenjiang is a city with more than 3000 years history in the southwest of Jiangsu province. It is about 2 hours train from Shanghai and is suitable to visit in the weekend, when it will be no crowd. I just stayed in Zhenjiang for one day and may not catch the highlight spots of the city, but it is worthy a visiting IMO. What I want to mention about in this blog is the Xijindu Ancient Street, which is the most concentrated and most intact historic district in Zhenjiang.
The roof of the Xijindu residential area
A corner of the Xijindu historic street
Zhenjiang is an important transportation hub in the recent history, owing to its location near the intersection of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal, and in which condition, the UK built the British Consulate in 1889 in Zhenjiang Xijindu.
The British Consulate in Zhenjiang since 1889
There are residential buildings since the late Qing Dynasty and Early Republic, and are still inhabited. The buildings are in old style and the doors attract me.
Zhenjiang’s special food are Guogai noodle (锅盖面) and Yao meat (肴肉). I like them very much and still have aftertaste.
The Origin of Xujiahui
Xujiahui is one of the places that you must go in Shanghai. Do you know the origin of Xujiahui? Here is what I learned today.
In the late of Ming Dynasty, Xu Guangqi, the director of the Imperial Library, built farm and performed agriculture experiments in this area, and then it grew to a town. As Zhaojiabang (肇嘉浜) river and Fahuajing (法华泾) river conjunct here, the town was named as Xujiahui (徐家汇). In Chinese, the first two words (徐家) mean Xu’s family, the last word (汇) means conjunction of rivers.
Read full story…
Pathe Red House in Xujiahui
In the end of 19th century, the France Pathe (EMI) company founded the Eastern Pathe company in Shanghai. In 1921, the Eastern Pathe purchased the No. 1434 land of Xujiahui road, which is the No. 811 Hengshan road in Xujiahui district, and built the record manufacturing company, . It was the first recording studio in Shanghai and is well-known as the Red House (EMI Red House) today.
Many famous composers had worked here, such as Nie Er, Xian Xinghai, Ren Guang and Lv Ji, and a bunch of revolutionary songs were composed, like <Graduation> and the Chinese National anthem <The March of the Volunteers>. Read full story…
Chongqing is to Build a Red Classic Theme Park
On July 4th, a signing ceremony was hold for building a China Red Classic Theme Park in Nanchuang District of Chongqing. According to the project planning, the Red Classic Park will cover an area of 1.28 square kilometers, and it will be mainly consisted by three parts: a performing park, a red theme park and a landscape business district.
It said that there will be a theater in the performing park with 2100 seats, which stands for the 21st century. A 1949 square meters Red-Flag will be designed in the ceiling of the theater, which stands for that the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949. Besides, a 1921 square meters party flag, a 810 square meters army flag, a 1922 square meters Chinese Communist Youth League flag will also be made. Read full story…
Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway
The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway will officially start operation at 15:00 tomorrow (2011.6.30) afternoon. At the beginning, it will open about 90 pairs of trains, including one-stop direct trains and stop-only between capital of several provinces.
It has two types of trains, 300km/h and 250km/h. The price of the train ticket has been established. The second level ticket is 555RMB and the first level is 935RMB for 300km/h speed trains, and it is 410RMB and 650RMB for 250km/h trains respectively.
The Beijing-Shanghai high speed railway is from Beijing South Railway Station to Shanghai Hongqiao Station. There are 23 stations along the railway. It only costs 4 hours and 48minutes run time for the fastest direct train (300km/h direct) from end to end. It is 7hours and 56minutes (the shortest time) for 250km/h trains.
The project launched on April 28, 2008, and the total length is 1318km. Officials expect it to carry 80 million passengers and more than 100m tonnes of cargo each year. Last year, China gets its world record speed of high speed railway at 416.6km/h.
