Bear's Blog New Zealand (Beta)

About ... severe cold weather in China

Most up to date information from China says that due to the improved weather condition, most stranded passengers in major train stations are now on their way home.

The problem is, it's New Year's Eve today. In Chinese tradition, tonight is the night of family union. When I was young, Chinese New Year Holiday was always the happiest time, you get lots of good food, presents (most time this means Cash in the Red envelope), just like the importance of Christmas for youngsters here.

But now it seems a lot of people may not able to make it on time and see their child's happy face.

The word "home" has a very special place in the hearts of Chinese People, especially for the migrant workers. In most cases you only get to see your family, your wife or your husband and your children once a year, and now is a time.

In rest of the year, they work long hours for low pay, they save every hard earned cent - never spend more than housing and food cost, so they can bring more money home and hope to get their child a better life, and we can cheaper goods from China.

They are the powerhouse of the booming Chinese economy and yet they received a lot of unfair treatment. When they lived in the tents outside train stations in sub-zero temperature, I saw no one in the local government ever considered somethine like "maybe we should open covered stadiums, schools and get all the empty hotel rooms for them".

Another news says a train was running without air conditioning, food, and water. When the train finally stopped for waterfor more than ten hours, while the trainmen can get off the train and have their food, passengers were prohibited from leaving the train.

It's such a shame for the Chinese authority, what a poor management.

My best wishes are with the people still on their way home, hope them could have a peaceful, and joyful Chinese New Year of Rat with the warmth of their home.

It's just another site visit...

This one due next monday, it's the last major assignment .... before the "big group work one".

I don't want say which suburb is, that's for you to guess ... it's in Auckland though. Abundance of greens, nice terraced houses, but very unfriendly people. I was stopped by at least three peoplein one hour, they questioned and treated me like a thief or a foreign spy who got their personal secretes in the camera.

I think I'd better own a UoA shirt so next time when people start to think that they have captured a foreign spy, instead of endless explanations, I may just point them the university insignia on the shirt .

Apart from that spy thing, I quite like the style of houses there. Some terraced houses look really even you know that they are at least 30 years old.

---

There seems to be a lot of photos from this suburb on Wikipedia, so I didn't upload below ones there. Regular cc-by-nc-nd copyright still applies.

Read more »

Avondale Photos

Thanks to the loads of university works, I don't even remember when is the last time I had a weekend out.

So this break to Avondale today is very precious to me - possibly the last before the exams at 19 June. It sounds a long way away but don't forget I now again have 3 assaignments need to be done simultaneously.

Photos below are just for one of my assaignments, which is an insight investigation on Avondale. As other contents in this blog, they are available under Creative common license by-nc-nd. Read more »

[China tour] Photos and comments: Chengdu

This is a post from Bear's Blog China in both Chinese and English.

关于成都的更多资料，请参考中文维基百科：成都。（在某些地区也许被封锁）

For you people that have no idea about China, Chengdu is a major city and capital of Sichuan Province in south-west China, and my hometown. For more information, see Chengdu in English Wikipedia.

为纪念三国时期蜀汉丞相诸葛亮而兴建的武候祠。现存武候祠为惠陵、汉昭烈庙、武侯祠合并而来，上图中所示则为纪念刘关张结义的三义庙。

The Wuhou Shrine is the place to sacrifices Zhuge Liang, the Premier of Han of three kingdoms period, and one of the greatest Chinese strategists, statesman, engineer, scholar, and inventor.

Read more »

[China Tour]Photos & comments: Tibet

who said that Kiwi can't fly?

--------------------------------

 The full post is in Bear's Blog China in both Chinese and English, for more details,visit:

http://arctosia.blog.sohu.com/34299124.html

[China Tour]Photos & comments: Shanghai[1]

 You all should seen picture like this some time before, Shanghai's CBD. The tower is called Oriental Pearl, and if you look the picture closely you could there are two ''globals', that's conference centre.

Read more »