Vincent van Gogh never fades away

His name is famous worldwide whether people are interested in art or not, and his influence is still spreading. This is Vincent Van Gogh, a man who dedicated his whole life to art. Get to know him more through his letters.

Listening to the old classic folk song “Starry starry night, paint your palette blue and gray…”, it is easier to think of van Gogh.

Most people simply regard Vincent as a crazy painter creating his works with gorgeous colours all the time.

Now here’s a chance to get much closer to this genius artist.

The exhibition entitled “The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters” opens at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, running from 23 January to 18 April this year.

The exhibition features about 40 original letters written by van Gogh, mostly to his brother Theo, as well as 60 paintings and drawings reflecting themes in the correspondence.

“What comes after the letters is that he is a very thoughtful, very reflective man. His letters are full of detailed information about how he thought about making his works of art,” said Ann Dumas, the curator of this exhibition.

Nienke Bakker, the organiser from Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the cooperative partner of this exhibition also expressed a similar idea: “we want to show how the artist thought about his own work, what we can learn from his letters about how he created his paintings and drawings and how he saw the role of the artist.”

Looking at Vincent’s letters being shown alongside the paintings, a carefully creative development of his works was displayed including flowing sketches.

“Van Gogh was a very intelligent, determined person who worked methodically and reflected on what he wanted to achieve,” said Nienke in Amsterdam.

“He structures every composition carefully and seriously before he starts, this attitude is the most important inspiration for me,” said Keiko Aida, a young Japanese visitor.

“Now most young artists have over emphasized a free style during the creation process, they’re so casual with it. I don’t think it works,” Keiko continued explaining.

Van Gogh had a great passion for painting. He was really delighted when he started teaching himself to draw as he stated in his letter: “a change has come about in my drawing…I’m no longer so powerless in the face of nature as I used to be.”

Just two days before he shot himself, van Gogh even told his brother about his full attention on his recent works rather than any depression in the letter.

“He’s always tireless when creating new art works, even until his death, this dedication spirit is really admirable, and it’s him who inspires me to paint sunflowers as there’s always a moving life in his works” said Richard Wright, a British visitor.

This is the real van Gogh, who led a brightly flaming life by putting every heartbeat in his works, and continues to bring in people infinite inspirations all the time.

The first anti-terrorism decade for the US

A 23-year-old Nigerian man called Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab intended to detonate a bomb on a flight heading to Detroit, US on Christmas day. Fortunately, it failed.

For the US, the first decade in 21^st century is an anti-terrorism decade.

Beginning with “911” in 2001, ending with “Christmas bomb” in 2009, the US devoted much to anti-terrorism during this period. However, does it work?

Saddam Hussein does not have weapons of mass destruction. Al-Qaeda is still free to do whatever they want. What is most disappointing is that more and more people are dying because of the war resulted from America’s anti-terrorism declaration.

War could bring in peace, but there’s a high price to pay for it, such as people were dead, and houses were destroyed.

Is it necessary for the US to start wars under an anti-terrorism declaration?

In other words, is the boundary between justice and evil clear enough for America to lead the war, even despite whether they are fully prepared?

In general, the first anti-terrorism decade is unsuccessful, so where would the anti-terrorism move led by the US head to next decade?

Hot shopping on Boxing day

Today is the annual Boxing day for all the British people after Christmas.

All the notice saying “sales”, and “up to 50%” are almost everywhere.

The main shopping area in London, SOHO, was full of people from all over the country, which made Oxford Street, Regent Street, and Bond Street much more crowded than usual.

Selfridges, which is one of the most important shopping destinations, almost attracted everyone’s attention.

People all rushed into this shopping mall at the time it opened. Soon, it was hard for customers to move their steps freely, even in the same counter.

The products at the sale were quickly snapped up. In the afternoon, some counters were almost empty, such as Vivian Westwood, Marc by Marc Jacobs, and Chloé.

People were waiting in long queues for some big international brands, especially for Gucci.

Till eight o’clock in the evening, one hour before Selfridges’ closing, there were still dozens of people waiting for Gucci in the light rain.

Many customers said that boxing day had the biggest sale of the year, and London had the most plentiful goods, which drove them to the exciting shopping activity, especially for those non-Londoners.

VAT increasing in 2010 is another reason for hot shopping.

New media's effect on consumers

New media technologies have a great effect on consumers.

Firstly, consumers get richer information.

There emerge various products through diverse vehicles twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which is helpful to widen consumers’ knowledge of various products.

They begin to participate in the searching and interacting actions with advertisers rather than just being told originally, especially with the help of internet.

Consumers could visit websites with comparative product and ask questions, read reviews and communicate with other massive users that is called ‘word-of-mouth’ to get much more information to know the actual facts of the product or service all sidedly.

However, plentiful information also results in daily interruption and difficult selection from the perspective of consumers.

Every time people go on-line, there must be numerous burdensome pop-up advertisements.

The high frequency of junk e-mails and mussy advertisements in mobile phones is quite annoying as well.

In respect of difficult selection, for example, the advertisements of coke from both Pepsi and Coca Cola show to consumers very similar items.

Similar price, similar appearance, similar taste, similar reputation, and even similar advertisement design, which is really hard for consumers to make a choice except for those who have a preference brand.

The second considerable effect on consumers is database.

Now many on-line businesses ask consumers to provide personal information including name, birthday, address, and phone number to build databases and store information for advertisers.

The advertisers can contact with consumers through many ways.

They can send consumers a greeting card or wish lists of desired gifts via e-mails as an efficient marketing strategy, which usually makes consumers feel intimate.

In one word, database can help build closer and deeper relationships with consumers.

However, there raise significant privacy issues at the same time.

Along with the rampancy of computer viruses and hackers, these personal information can possibly be stolen and published in public, which is obviously threatening the privacy of consumers.

New media's effect on advertising industry

New media technologies have a great impact on today’s advertising industry.

First of all, there are multiple advertising platforms resulting from new media.

On one hand, there are more chances for advertisers to spread their advertisements to reach various audiences.

For example, at present, KFC advertisements can be found almost everywhere including TV, newspapers, bill boards, and internet to show its wide impact.

Traditional media such as newspapers and television are either space bound or time bound, while new media like internet and mobile phones span time and space.

Besides, what is another unique promotional strategy to the internet is the participation sites—chat rooms and blogs.

Some are constructed by companies to discuss their products, while some are established by individuals or groups to exchange their comments.

On the other hand, the marketing strategies might be more complex and the effectiveness might be uncertain as a result of so many platform options.

The platforms are growing in number, and the fragmentation of the media audience is also increasing.

It is a big challenge for advertisers to make right marketing strategies which vehicle they should focus on more and how in the new media environment.

Even some targeted audiences receive the advertisements, they might ignore them at once as there are so many fake advertisements on various platforms, especially internet and mobile phones, and they have already been tired of checking their accuracy.

Secondly, brand culture is another important effect on the advertising industry.

New media allow advertisers to communicate ‘with’ consumers rather than the traditional ones of talking ‘to’ them to build strong brand relationships more effectively.

However, the advertiser is faced with a big challenge of catering to diverse cultural groups in a global extent at the same time.

For example, “Kodak film and your family happiness” is a popular advertisement in China, while the American edition is “a picture of one boy holding ponchos in one hand, and the other standing on a sward with the statement: he just killed his last dragon”.

This difference is based on different cultural perceptions of ‘family’ for Chinese while ‘independence’ for Americans.

Therefore, advertisers should well understand distinct cultures to avoid taboos and make suitable advertisements for diverse cultural groups.

Thirdly, it is more convenient and efficient for advertisers in this new media age.

Previously, it always took a long time to illustrate advertising copies.

While in new media age, only with clicks of the right buttons, the copy is illustrated rather quickly.

Now old files can be kept in memory of the computer instead of filing cabinets under databases, which does bring in great convenience and efficiency to advertising industry.

Fourthly, advertisers usually create unnecessary wants and sponsor irrationality to consumers.

The story of advertisements made always involve magic, such as superman, gorgeous women, and extraordinarily effective products.

However, these ‘wonderful’ information are really unnecessary, even a waste sometimes.

For example, one beautiful slim woman shown in the advertisement, a large quantity of women chase for the product she shows to lose weight including many ordinary or even thin women, which probably results in a waste of time and money, and even cause indisposition and illness.

Is studying abroad really beneficial?

It was November in Australia, bright sunshine, beautiful seascape, and verdant rain forest. But none of them brought You Li happiness. On the contrary, this Chinese girl was fretting with the increasing temperature, and got annoyed.

As a student of Meridian International Design School which went bankrupt lately, just two weeks before her graduation, this girl found herself the most unlucky person in the world.

“Australia is a hell for me. I thought it was a heaven. After coming here, I realized life of study abroad was not that easy. Finally, I thought I could proudly go back to China soon as a returned student, and find a job with a decent salary.

“But now my dream is totally broken, I don’t know what to do next. I paid money, and spent time, but I got nothing at last. I couldn't believe it,” she said sadly.

As a matter of fact, not only for You Li, it has been a particularly tough weekend for another 3,000 international students including more than 1,200 Chinese as indicated by Chinese embassy in Australia as well. They all have been strongly affected by the closure of four schools in Australia recently.


Australian Global Campus Management Group declared its bankruptcy on 5 Nov due to some financial problems, which resulted in the closure of its owning schools in both Sydney and Melbourne named Meridian International School, International Design School, International College of Creative Arts and ESMOD Australia.

This incident has aroused strong repercussions in the public in China, whether studying abroad is beneficial to people becomes a controversial topic again in the society.

In recent years in China, there is an increasing number of people who go abroad for studying including UK, US, Canada, Australia, etc., and those people are becoming younger and younger.

According to Report on Chinese studying abroad during last ten years released in October this year, the number is dramatically increasing from 39,000 in 2000 to 179,800 in 2008, and the total number is 1.09 million for last ten years, between 1999 to 2009. So far, there has been over 1.39 million people who have been abroad for studying.

Wenru Dai, a final year undergraduate student in China is now applying to several American universities for her master degree. “I do want to go abroad for studying because I want to experience different cultures myself rather than being taught from the books only as international communication is so important nowadays,

“Besides, I can have the best learning resources in the university with a high reputation in the world, and I can learn to be independent as well,” she said happily, and denied any effects the bankruptcy had on her decision.

Apart from students themselves, more parents think high of studying abroad as well.

One couple said: “education is a life-time investment, those developed countries always have better learning resources, so we decide to send our son to study in UK rather than buying a house, which we can purchase later. Under such a high employment pressure in China at present, you must have some outstanding features.”

They firmly believed that their son would be more competitive with an oversea experience; although they also indicated that they would be very careful at selecting schools to avoid the same tragedy happened in Australia.

Jie Lin, one of the consultants in UKEAS studying abroad agency said: “we will provide our clients with different studying options in terms of their own situation,

“Moreover, we will not only pay attention to their current study, but also to their future occupational planning, so what we will do is to select the most suitable major and school to them based on course structures and career prospects.”

Although more and more students and parents become fairly interested in overseas studying, some experts and professors still remind people of the risk of studying abroad, and give suggestions on their decision-making.

Paul Gladstone, the professor in the University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China indicated that studying abroad should be completely based on a personal will in the first place, neither being forced by others or following the popular trend simply. Otherwise, you would get nothing but a waste of time and money.

“Language is very important for both studying and living in a foreign country. It can help you to understand better what the teacher says in the class, and also make it easier for you to enter into a different culture.

“In addition, you should always have a mental preparation for studying in a foreign country, such as solving any problems by yourself.”

Carnaby Street

Carnaby Street is a pedestrianised shopping street in London, located in the Soho district, near Oxford Street and Regent Street.

It consists of twelve pedestrianised streets with numerous fashion and lifesyle retailers, including a large number of independent fashion boutiques.

Entering in Carnaby Street, you will find it quite different from the rest in the Soho district because of its special street ornamentation.

There is a huge wall painting at the entrance of Carnaby Street summarizing various activities in Soho district. It’s a cobblestone street rather than the normal concrete one.

There are diverse shapes of balloons hanging over the streets including hearts, reindeers, and trees.

There are also some street artists from all over the world showing their different performs. There’s even a young guy from South America playing diabolo, a traditional Chinese performance.

The retailers on each side of the street are all well designed as well. Take Diesel for example, the storefront is made like a big radio.

Kingly Court is another fasinating building with three floors. It is not that prominnet at first sight. But when you go into the building, you will find all the interesting products there.

For instance, there is one bag boutique. The boss goes to China to select jade for decorating the bags.

Walking in Carnaby Street, you will find all art cells in your body are saying “hello” to the walls and shopwindows.

Luxury fever among young people in China

Purchasing luxury goods among young generation in China has been a new popular phenomenon nowadays, especially in some urban areas.

According to Mysite, China had already become the world’s second largest luxury market, with a trend of younger luxury consumers in particular.

Referring to the causes and motivations contributed to those young people’s luxury consumption, there are three common psychological values overall.

First of all, they regard luxury goods as a fulfilment of their dreams of living a ‘quality life’.

Secondly, they are under a great influence of Western culture, hence to enjoy current life as much as possible is what they firmly believe under hedonism.

Thirdly, since most young people are the only child in the family, they use luxuries to call for attention in the society.

2012, a touching disaster movie

Spectacular stunts and touching stories are what you can expect from the movie 2012.

This movie is a disaster movie, which is directed by Roland Emmerich.

The story is mainly around what human beings will do on the doomsday in terms of several small stories, expressing humanity when facing death.

The movie scenes are fabulous and true to life. No matter the flood or the collapse of buildings, both of them will make you feel like a real world.

Apart from the great pictures, what is more impressive is the plot.

The audiences can find many plots so touching.

No matter Jackson, the hero in the movie was almost dead when he tried to get the map for his ex-wife and children, or the president of the US told his people the truth of doomsday’s coming, they both could win your tears.

“At least if they know, families can say goodbye to each other, mother can comfort her children, and father can ask his daughter for forgiveness.”

It is one of the most touching parts in the movie when the president of the US giving the last call to his daughter after he decided to give up his chance to live, but to stay with his people for death.

Actualy, living or dying is far less important than living or dying with whom.

The sexiest Chicago

Having received more than 50 international awards, playing in more than 200 cities all over the world, and around 18 million people have seen it. Chicago is already one of the world’s most classical musicals.

Dressed in highheels, black fishnets, stocking and suspenders while singing and dancing, here comes the sexiest musical in the world, Chicago.

Plot

It tells the story of Roxie Hart, a woman with great ambition to be famous, while being sent to prison because she killed her lover; and Velma Kelly, a vaudeville star who shot her husband and sister after catching them in bed together. Both of them compete for their place in the spotlight.

Scenery

The stage scenery is pretty simple, which makes the performance itself even more prominent. The orchestra made up of 15 members is sitting on stage for the entire show facing the audiences.

Music

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you a story of murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery. All those things we hold near and dear to our hearts." The show starts with a fascinating introduction to attract every audience’s full attention..

The music itself is really great. The first thrilling moment is “Cell Block Tango”, when those six “merry murderesses” tell the story one by one of how they were sent to prison, full of repression and anger.

There are only six chairs as the props. Every “merry murderess” defend herself for killing her husband singly at first, and then they shout their great anger together. It is simple, but strong enough to shock all the audiences, which led to thunderous applause.

“Roxie” is Roxie’s starring moment in the show, when she lives in her fantasy about her own vaudeville act with a group of boys revolving around her all the time. Roxie always calls them “my boys” with a flirtatious glance.

Every boy bends over backwards to please her. No matter whispering or shouting, the only word comes out of their mouths is “Roxie”. The fantasy ends up with Roxie holding a piece of newspaper entitled with “Roxie rocks Chicago” as the top story.

Amos Hart, Roxie’s husband singing “Mr. Cellophane” is another most impressive moment. He gives such a big surprise to the audiences as he is so ordinary at the beginning.

The fatty actor stands in the middle of the stage, singing and waggling like a lovely non-downable doll, but his face shows his fear and tension.

Along with the words, he waves his hands in white gloves gently. It looks like he wants to attract someone’s attention. But when the audiences were all overwhelmed by his great singing, he turns into real Mr. Cellophane again as he finds it uncomfortable.

Dark humour, great songs, fantastic dancing, interesting plot, and sexy costume, anyway, you will find your reason to go for Chicago.

Profile on Qian Hao

Picture taken by Jingjing Li-30/11/09

“I believe journalists should always have the sense of responsibility to the public,” said Qian Hao.

Qian Hao, a female journalist from China has reported many significant public issues such as SARS and Sichuan earthquake, as well as some interesting topics like transsexual person during her seven-year journalist life.

“I believe journalists should always have the sense of responsibility to the public,” said Qian, “when you come to report big public issues, especially a matter of life and death for human beings, that feeling is much stronger.” Her sound is not that loud, but firm.

She graduated from the university in 2002. She is working as a financial journalist in China Business News in Shanghai now. Before that, she worked as an emergency reporter in a local newspaper in Jiangsu Province for two years.

“The stories I covered at that time were not that big, but I gained much experience which benefited me a lot later,” she said sincerely and pushed her glasses as usual.

Referring to the reports done on SARS in 2003, Qian has a deep feeling towards that, “It was really dangerous for us at that time, there were only few people in the streets, everyone stayed away from others, even when we were going to interview the doctors and patients in the hospital, the taxi driver just sent us to the place that was five-minute walking from he hospital.”

Being asked whether she was scared as well as the taxi driver, she said with a big smile, “not at all, it was the first time for me to realize what a big responsibility I had had as a journalist, I really love this feeling.”

During Sichuan earthquake last year, Qian and her fellows also went to Sichuan to do reports. Finding so many people all over the country coming to the ruined town to help the victims, she was deeply moved; again, the sense of responsibility for a journalist came out. “I have to do the reports, and when you do the report, you should be moved firstly, you could not make others feel moved if you are not.”

Metro analysis

Here is the analysis of Metro website on 23th Nov, 2009.

First impression

· The top story is not attractive enough to get readers’ attention at the first sight. The picture should be bigger, and the headline should be more bold and heavy to differ from other stories.

· The advertisement on the front page is even a little bigger than the picture of the top story, which really distracts readers’ attention. Readers could not get focused.

· The banner is clear and attractive, with “Metro” in bold, and the colour is also comfortable for readers’ eyes.

· There is a wide space on both sides of the website, which could keep readers focus on the web, and is easy to read for people who get small screens as well.

Presentation

· There are basically three columns, and the sentences keep short, no more than seven words each line, which is easy for scanning.

· All headlines are in bold, which is easy to identify.


Navigation

· The navigation is basically organized well, being put on the top and divided into 16 different sections, which is easy to find information for readers.

· For navigation, when you click different sections, it will turn into different colours, which is a little annoying (see image 2&3)

Content

· One idea, one paragraph

· The sentence is short.

· It uses simple words.

· When click the top story, the picture related to the story is much bigger to attract attention.

· There are also related articles in each story, which is easy for people to get the previous reviews.

Respect needed

At 4:30am this morning, I was waked up by an extremely loud noise outside my room.

It was people screaming and shouting, as well as blasting the balloons in the corridor.

It's not the first time for the noise made after midnight, but not as late as this time.

In the residence hall on campus, everyone should learn how to get along well with others, and show respect, especially in cross-culture communication.

The residents here are all from different countries, having different cultural backgrounds, as well as different personal habits.

However, when we all live together, the residence is no longer the place where you can do whatever you want without any considerations. It is not your own house, while it is a shared space.

Respect is particularly needed among the residents. You can do whatever you want as long as not disturbing others.

H&M opens in Ningbo

The first H&M store opened in Ningbo yesterday, on 18 November.

It is located in Tianyi Square, which is the most flourishing and busiest area in the city.

Luo, a young lady working in the hospital said: “It’s great news for me. Previously, I needed to go to Shanghai or Hong Kong to buy products of this brand, but now I can shop in my own city, which is obviously more convenient, and I have already bought a coat and two jeans.”

“H&M always has an excellent design, but sells at a relatively low price. I can hardly afford a luxury brand, but at H&M, I can have the same fashion style,” said Zhang, an university student.

Besides consumers, other competitors in this fashion industry also pay high attention to its new opening.

“H&M has two big advantages, one is excellent design, and the other is high speed for updating. It only needs a couple of weeks to finish the design, and updates the products half a month on average,” said Weiguang Huang, the general manager of Ningbo Oriental Shooping Mall.

He also indicated that compared to traditional department stores, this updating speed was highly competitive as consumers could have more choices.

“It only takes half a month to make design papers into ready-to-wear clothes, this kind of ‘fast fashion’ is worth to be learnt by Ningbo fashion industry,” said one staff in Ningbo Peacebird Garment Company.

Since the first H&M store opened in spring 2007 in Shanghai, there has been 21 stores distributed throughout 9 cities in China so far. With such a high expanding speed, more stores are under negotiation.

Sales in 2008 in China was SEK (Swedish Krona) 881 million including Hong Kong.

H&M is a Swedish clothing company, known for its fast fashion. It offers clothing to women, men, teenagers and children.

H&M has more than 1,800 stores in 34 different countries up to now.

Profile on Patricia Floric

Patricia Floric, a French girl likes reading philosophy as well as playing basketball and travelling.

“Everyday life is philosophy”, she said with a big smile.

In her viewpoint, philosophy is always connected with human being closely.

The person you meet, the movie you watch, and the food you eat, they are all kind of philosophy.

Meeting different people from diverse cultural backgrounds is also interesting to Patricia, which is the main reason for her travelling.

“You don’t know the way people think if you stick to staying in your own country, it will easily result in a narrow view of the world”, she said seriously and changed her sitting position.

So far she has been to many countries including Palistan, Germany, Egypt, Spain, Hungary, and Austria, and found they all gave her a deep impression.

Referring to basketball, “it’s just a normal activity for me and my boyfriend, and other friends as well”, she shrugged her shoulders slightly.

Patricia is not tall, neither strong, but she takes playing basketball as a fun, and a way to keep in touch with her friends.

Patricia was born in Evreux, a small city in France.

She graduated from Institute of High Studies in Social Communication in France in the summer, 2008, and got a bachelor degree of Communication and Journalism there.

After graduation, in order to practice her English, she came to London, and worked as a waitress in a cafe for seven months.

Now she is making great efforts to realize her dream as a journalist through doing MA Journalism in the University of Westminster, UK.

Domain name in Chinese will be proposed tomorrow

According to 163 News, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) is going to apply for the domain name in Chinese to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) officially tomorrow.

I think to make non-Latin characters in URL realizable is an extremely significant step after the network was created.

For Chinese people, it is so convenient to use Chinese domain name as the most of them do not know English very well. So they can follow their code of language to use internet more efficiently.

For example, when you search a website for a specific department of the Chinese government now, you need to use a search engine, and then type the Chinese name of the department to look up the click.

Once you have the Chinese domain name, you can just put the Chinese domain name in URL, then you get it. So convenient, isn't it?

Besides, it is also beneficial for the promotion of the country, culture as well as language.

Strike action at the University of Westminster

Members of the UCU were taking strike action at the University of Westminster yesterday, on 13 November.

The strike was held in all those four campuses of the university including Harrow, Regent, Cavendish, and Marylebone.

The strike decision was made by the union after the university turned into the only one in the UK imposing an overdue deal without paying back pay it owed its staff.

The union said that it had been five years of negotiations between the union and the university to make an agreement on back pay. However, no progress had been made in those talks.

The university failed to carry out the deal called the Framework Agreement, and made new moves towards staff working conditions, such as changing grading structures.

UCU Westminster branch representative, Peter Mcloughlin indicated that in June this year, the university told the staff it would be carrying out the Framework Agreement, but still would not be paying back pay, which caused many staff’s discontent.


Since the union failed to make an agreement with the university on the right of both the union and the staff, they had no other choice but to take strike action on Friday. So those students who had classes that day were affected.

Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas, the Deputy Vice Chancellor in the university said, “the university believes this strike action is unwarranted and unfairly damaging to students”.

One student from MA Global Media also said, “the tuition is so expensive, it’s unfair to force us to accept such a result.”

“To students, we regret that they missed the class. I believe it did affect them, but not that much. We wanted to persuade the employer without hurting students, but finally we had no other choice but to take strike action to protect our own rights”, said Peter.

He also indicated that if they did not get the result they wanted, they might organize more strikes in the following time.

No democracy in China?

The topic today for Issues in Journalism is about democracy.

Again, the democracy issue in China was raised, being focused on Tiananmen Square happened in 1989.

I have to admit that all the information about this event is blocked in mainland, and people hardly talk about it, some young generation even do not know this event at all.

After I checked the viewpoints by both Chinese and foreigners, I would say our government did something wrong at that time, but I also doubt whether there are some deep reasons.

China is a country with various races, long history, huge territoty and complicated cultural heritage.

Even Chinese ourselves could not fully understand certain issues, how can we explain it to foreigners in several sentences?

What I find interesting here is that it seems foreigners always like judge China based on one thing, such as Tiananmen Square.

20 years passed, please, China is not that lacking of democracy any longer.

I mean, critically speaking, maybe you receive the part truth, and I receive the part truth, none of us could say clearly and exactly about what happened at that time.

Iran at this year's World Travel Market

Iran is improving its image to attract more tourists at this year’s World Travel Market in the Excel conference centre, London, between 9 and 12 November.

“It is safe enough to go to Iran for travelling,” says Rangiha in Iran Sebt Tour, “Politics is just politics, the Iranians are very friendly and hospitable, and we welcome all people to visit our country.”

Another officer working in Iran Discovery Tours says: “Basically you can take pictures everywhere as long as you do not take pictures of nuclear reactors on purpose.”

He also indicates that although the number of tourists is shrinking badly, from around five million to one million now, they are still confident about the future of the market through the feedback they received at the WTM.

There are various travelling packages offered by four different travel agents to all tourists around the world visiting Iran including singles, couples and groups.

Customers can also suggest their individual journeys as they can arrange it particularly for you.

Many translators of different languages will be there assisting the trip as well, such as English, French and Italian.

As it is quite difficult for individuals to get a visa for visiting Iran, it is a better and easier way to ask for a travel agent to deal with it, which requires about one week.

Iran is an Islamic country, so all the visitors are required to conform to the Islamic dress code to respect their religion. For women, it is essential that all the body is covered, except for the hands and face.

There is a fabulous cultural heritage in Iran based on its rich and long history. Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Yazd, Mashad, and Persepolis are all places worth visiting.

The best time to visit Iran is spring and autumn since summers are always hot and dry, and winters are rainy and snowy.

New modern China

The morning class today asked us to express an opinion (stereotype, basically) towards a country.

After the personal presentation, I found there were almost all negative impressions when referring to China.

What I want to indicate here is that China is quite different from the past, although there still exist some problems in the society. China is making great efforts to improve the image.

With a rapid economic development, China is now showing a new image to the world.

The nation is friendly to foreigners. No matter what problems foreigners have when they are in China, travelling, studying, or doing business, the only thing needed to do is asking for help, Chinese people will always be delighted to offer help from the government to the ordinary people.

China is getting more fashionable under a great effect by western culture, especially for young generation. They chase Hollywood style, wear popular clothes, and even purchase luxuries.

There is no big difference between Chinese and foreigners for the entertainment part. Chinese now have more choices to enrich their spare time, either going to the cinema, theatre, club, museum or the bookstore, what people imagine could be easily found in China now. Overall, it is becoming more open to accept western life style.