There are two shops of considerable scale with Chinese names of "Xu Liu Shan" and "Guo Liu Xiang" respectively, which are hard for foreign consumers to keep in mind. We may go there to take a look. Then we'll visit some wineshops, where master chefs prepare the sweet foods and drinks of different countries, which are remarkable not only for their great variety in styles and breadth of fashion, but also for their creativity in design and purity of taste. Besides the delicious taste, the sweet foods and drinks of Hong Kong flaunt labels concerned with the improvement of health, such as moistening of lungs, beautification of complexion, giving you a lift, dispelling the cold, and replenishing your vitality. The implication is that you may relish the good taste and improve your health simultaneously. There are many benefits to be gained in one swoop. Before you have decided on your choice, I'll recommend to you a particular item: Yi Shun double-skin milk. The price is 18 Yuan a bowl. Although it is expensive, you still need to have it. Because it is really wonderful in taste. Raise a spoonful of the milk to your lips and take several sips of it. The aroma of the milk will propagate in your mouth slowly until it fills all your sense organs and then disperse imperceptibly like a dream that has come and gone. You must hurry. Take another spoonful of the milk! There are two types of the double-skin milk: frozen and heated. You must make a point of ordering the frozen type. The slightly wrinkled layer of milk skin on the top is the quintessence of the delicacy in its entirety. The pleasant aroma of the milk is strong enough to remain around your tongue for three days before disappearing completely. The location you may need to remember is Causeway bay. The complete name of the enterprise is Yi shun Milk Company. As a matter of fact, it is no more than a snack bar. It is 12:00 a.m. Are you a little hungry again? Lunch may be expensive or frugal, as you like. We may go to a tea restaurant. The tea restaurant has become a signboard of Hong Kong. It can provide you with a lunch of the Chinese or Western style with Hong Kong characteristics. All dishes have genuine local flavor, absolutely true to the original. The tea restaurant serves at high speed, provides a variety of combinations and quotes prices which are by no means high when quantity and quality are taken into consideration. The brand-name dishes of different countries can be combined with each other---from whipped egg to steamed buns and from Yunnan rice flour to Italian macaroni. You may also order a bowl of wontons filled with fresh shrimps. Every wonton may be as large as a baby's fist, and the filling may entirely be large intact fresh shrimps. The white or slightly yellow wontons with a rosy hue penetrating from inside will make your mouth water. I believe that this episode will reappear in your memory when you look back at this trip to Hong Kong someday in the future. There is no need to eat too much at lunch. Because I want to have the pleasure of ushering you to a six-star restaurant, which is called "The Peniinsula". Maybe on your way there you will come across a booth or a stall, where edibles can be bought. We used to think that a street vendor's stall is not satisfactory in respect of hygiene. But standing in front of a stall of this open type in Hong Kong, you will discover that the attendants' operations are highly normalized. That they pay attention to hygiene is certainly beyond any doubt. The mobile vendors of cooked food, who travel about with their pushcarts carrying simple equipment, prepare in public the delicious edibles which are often not available even in high-class restaurants and make demonstrations of their cooking skills to the consumers half on purpose in order to show off and half in the hope that their business will thereby prosper. As the fragrance of the edibles disseminate in the street, few Hong Kong people can resist the temptation. You might as well buy a bunch of the fragrant curried fish balls to see if they are worth a try. The fish balls are full of elasticity. They are very fresh.Related articles:
Talk about the History of Hong Kong history
Chinese food culture and restaurants in Hong Kong
"The Peninsula" is a restaurant known to the whole world. You must make it a point to drink the afternoon tea of the Peninsula even if you don't put up here. The afternoon tea is of authentic English style and is accompanied by a melodious musical performance. When you repose yourself at this place you are sure to find it permeated by English culture and customs. Let's each have a glass of rose-leaf black tea. It is concocted by adding rose-leaf syrup to black tea, which pertains to the Russian style of tea drinking. Take a sip of this kind of tea, and you will feel the aroma of the rose-leaf syrup and a sour-sweet taste spread in your mouth. Look at the velvety petals floating on the amber-colored black tea, and you will feel that the tea is so beautiful as to be without a peer. The visual enjoyment alone will be enough to compensate for all that you have paid for it. If you are one of those friends who are fond of drinking alcohol, you may add a little vodka to it. As for the refreshment, we may each order a dish of buttered spongy cake. This has always been the favorite cake in Britain. Don't forget to butter the cake! Let's take up the choice tea utensil and enjoy a leisured afternoon in an aristocratic fashion.

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What is more, Beijing is not only the capital of New China. It was the secondary capital of what is called the Liao Dynasty and the central capital of what is calling the Jin Dynasty in the history of China. It was the capital of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. It is not difficult to imagine how tragic the historical events were that occurred here. The Liao Dynasty was established by an alien people, who occupied a large part of China's territory on the north side of the Yangtze River and were constantly at war with the Chinese people. The Liao Dynasty lasted more than two hundred years (907---1125). There are many stories about the heroic struggle that the Chinese waged against the Liaos. But it was a new invading power, the Jin people, that completely destroyed the Liaos. The Jins originated in what is now the northeastern part of China. After defeating the Liaos they invaded China and occupied the entire territory on the north side of the Yangtze River. The emperor of China (of the then Soong Dynasty) fled to the south of the Yangtze River. The Jins killed the Liaos and treated the Chinese on the north side of Yangtze as slaves and servants. The Jin Dynasty existed for one hundred and twenty years. Then the Mongols came. They literally annihilated the Jins and later took possession of the entire territory of China. They founded the Yuan Dynasty and located their "Big Capital" at Beijing. The Ming and Qing Dynasties that followed Yuan also designated Beijing as their capital city. It is really inconceivable that the filthy and abominable sediments of a history of one thousand years of slaughter and oppression could have been swept off in a few years after the inauguration of the People's Republic of China. Now let's ruminate over the past events and contemplate in a spirit of scientific research the relics that meet our observant gaze. You might do well to begin your investigation from the seemingly trivial things: an alley, a hutong, a shabby old house, or even an old tree. Almost everything here has some story which deserves chewing slowly and meditating over carefully. Those time-worn, dilapidated one-storied houses may have been the residences of famous personages of yore; those desolate, disorderly courtyards may have been the resorts of princes, dukes and ministers. You may go on with your study in this way until you come to the world-famous Imperial Palace, Coal Hill, Temple of Heaven, Lamasery of Harmony and Peace, Summer Palace, and Yuanmingyuan (the old Summer Palace). This is what Beijing is: ancient but lively, extensive but profound, high and far but intimate, infatuating but inscrutable. It is simple and pure---so simple and so pure that you will know it is Beijing at a glance. It is, at the same time, so colorful and so rich in contents that it will never be possible for you to sum up your description of it by means of a pithy statement. No matter whether it is about the remote and profound history, the present realities vibrant with life, the all-pervasive atmosphere of grandeur and majesty, or the simple and honest behavior of the common people, they will all come to you in rapid succession and stand face to face with you the moment you enter Beijing so that you will not be able to see them clearly and will be at a loss as to which of them to begin your study from.Related articles:
beijing architectural structure:Quadrangle,SiHeYuan


It may be said with some degree of assurance that anyone who wants to understand Beijing will feel that he/she does not know by what door or gate he/she can get in. So you must first find the gate which is the entrance to the city. Of all the gates of Beijing, Tian An Men (the Gate of Heavenly Peace) is of course the most important one. Tian An Men is the emblem of the capital city Beijing.
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You must be attracted by the charming Chinese ladies who are dressing Cheongsam, it is Qipao also, during the period of Beijing 2008 Olympics. The close-fitting woman's dress of Manchurian style with high neck and slit skirt, popularly called qipao in China, is expected to play the role of being the chief female dress for Chinese during the Beijing Olympics. Qipao belongs not only to China but to the whole world. It has made its way overseas and has been all the rage in England, America, Germany and Arabia and is held in high esteem in most other countries of the world.Related articles:
Chinese opera at Opening Ceremony of Beijing Olympics
Chinese women still love qipao principally because it is simple and elegant, suitable for reflecting the beauty of the female body. In other words, this dress can manifest to the full the merit of the wearer's body and minimize the demonstration of its demerit. For example, a woman may have bandy legs or clubbed legs. But if she puts on her qipao she will instantly become graceful in appearance, standing tall and erect. To a person who knows the Chinese language, the term qipao may arouse in his/her mind beautiful associations. For the word qi means in Chinese "flag or banner". Hearing this word, the person will spontaneously and unconsciously associate the woman's figure with a banner or flag waving gently and gracefully in a breeze. So the sound of the word carries a sensuous feeling. Of course, what has been said above is pure fancy. Now, we'll make a historical investigation of the term qipao. For three hundred years since 1616, China was ruled by monarchs of the Man nationality. People of the Man nationality were divided into eight banners, each with a distinctive color, for the purposes of administrative control, military regimentation and daily production. Chinese people of the Han nationality, who had been subjugated, looked up to them in awe and called them qi people, meaning literally "people under banners" Those qi people were nomads. They spent most of their time on horseback. They wore gowns, with slits below the hip to facilitate mounting and dismounting. The lower part of the gown was used to protect their legs from the cold weather of their native land, which is now the northeastern part of China. The Chinese equivalent of the English word gown is pao. Therefore, the gowns worn by the qi people came to be called qipao. Later, however, as more and more Chinese people of the Han nationality began to wear this type of gown, the qi was omitted by people of the Han nationality to express their close affinity to the Man nationality. The word qipao, then become a term denoting solely the woman's dress, particularly the qi woman's, because the successive emperors of the Qing Dynasty did not favor the idea that females of the Han nationality be dressed exactly like those of the Man nationality. Men of the Han nationality, especially those who were eager to curry favor with the conquerors and to get positions in the Qing government, put on the new-type gowns with alacrity to show their loyalty but did not dare to use the modifier qi for fear of giving offence to the conquerors.

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What is culture? What does culture consist in? This question is really a hard nut to crack. Culture has no shape; it's not susceptible of description. Culture has no scope; it's hard to set bounds to. Culture is like air. We live in it every day, we can't leave it for a moment, but when we hold out our hands and try to "take hold of" it we'll find that it is ubiquitous and is with us all the time---only not to be taken hold of by us. A cultural phenomenon, whatever it is, cannot occur at random, by accident, and with no reason at all. The task set for the science of culture is to find the reasons and explicate them.Related articles:
the root of Chinese culture

If we say that a Chinese is an enigma and Chinese culture is also an enigma, then the ideological core of Chinese culture is the most enigmatic of all enigmas. The core of culture, the ideological nucleus of a nation, is the general program of the existence and development of the nation. Once we seize hold of the general program, everything falls into place. Only when we have taken full command of the ideological core of a nation's culture, can we have a comparatively deep and thoroughgoing understanding of the nation's cultural characteristics, cultural personality, cultural behavior and cultural psychology. That is to say, only when a Westerner has mastered the ideological core of Chinese culture can he/she look at a Chinese with understanding, with penetration, and with precision. It is for this reason that in previous articles I have introduced you to the influence that Chinese classical philosophy has had on her culture. Philosophy is abstruse, while culture in itself is concrete, vivid and lively. Thus, the core of culture can be no other than a highly abstract philosophical generalization. Moreover, this kind of abstract generalization must be shown as true by the vivid, concrete, and lively cultural phenomena. It is difficult to derive the abstract from the concrete. It is even more difficult to return from the abstract to the concrete. Culture is doubtless made up of a great multitude of cultural phenomena. These phenomena, like biological cells that contain the secrets of life, contain the genetic code, so to speak, of a nation's culture. A conclusion that naturally follows is: A nation's culture embodies the nation's cultural personality. For example, a Chinese traditionally bows or bows with clasped hands in greeting because, as some researchers think, Chinese people have "introvert" character. Westerners shake hands or embrace on meeting, because Westerners are "extroverted" in character. Extroversion causes one to extend his hand to grasp the other person's hand. Introversion makes one stretch out his hand to hold the other hand of his own.
There is another explanation which perhaps accords better with fact. Chinese people are not aggressive. They tend to be more on the defensive. The traditional way of greeting suits this purpose well, especially when the two sides are strangers to each other and stand at some distance from each other, as was often the case in former times. Each clasps his two hands in order to show there is no weapon in either. Each bows down in order to show there is no intention of making an attack.
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Both roast Beijing duck(Peking Duck) and American roast turkey originated from the roast goose of the Mediterranean regions. Birds were the aid and gift that God gave man. But man likes to eat only those birds that are big and fleshy. The goose is a fleshy fowl and is also the special product of the Mediterranean regions. When it is roasted for food, its meat is delicious and tender. Therefore, roast goose is a traditional dish in Europe and is widely recognized as a delicacy.
When Europeans arrived in America, they found that the bird which God gave them as a gift this time was the turkey. So they ate roast turkey and offered thanks to God. After learning of the origin of roast turkey you would find it easier to accept as true the following story about roast duck. The roast goose of the Western world may be considered in a sense the progenitor of the roast duck of China. The technique of roasting the goose was twice passed on to China---once during the Yuan Dynasty of China, when China was ruled by Mongols, and later again during the Qin Dynasty, when China was under the rule of the Manchurian conquerors. The Mongolian Empire occupied an enormous territory extending from the east of China westward to the regions of the Mediterranean Sea. This was the reason why people of the Western world, such as Marco Polo, could have come to China. They brought to China quite a lot of the culture of the Western world, including the cannon and the roast goose. How did it come about that roast goose was transformed into roast duck? The cause of the transformation was no different from that of the transformation of roast goose into roast turkey. Chinese people began to domesticate wild duck two thousand years ago, but European people did not do that. Instead, they domesticated the goose very early. As China had specialized in producing duck for thousands of years, this fowl became a special product of the country and was preferred by Chinese people to the goose, which was generally not in favor. Furthermore, the duck used for producing roast duck was of an excellent species bred painstakingly by Chinese over a long period of time. The scientific name of the species is Beijing duck. It was imported by the United States in the year 1874 under the name of Peking duck, and thereafter it came to be spread all over the world.

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