Decoding Beauty and Happiness

Liu Ruiyi is an accountant at an auditing firm in Dalian, a coastal city in Liaoning Province in northeast China. She once worked in Shanghai for one and a half years, and then decided to return to her hometown of Dalian because she could save on rent and be with her family. "Although our income is not as high as that of people in more developed cities, I feel happy living here because of the beautiful ocean scenery, pleasant climate and easy pace of life," Liu told Beijing Review.     

More Than Sightseeing

The World Expo in Shanghai is being held just two years after China hosted the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.Japan had a similar experience about 40 years ago.After Tokyo hosted the Olympic Games in 1964,another Japanese city,Osaka,hosted the World Expo.     

The Special 'One'

One seemingly trivial issue has vexed Liu Wenyan for over 30 years. Liu only needs one shoe, but every time she goes shoe shopping she has to buy a pair. Growing up in Guizhou Province in southwest China, Liu lost one leg in a traffic accident at the age of 4. Now aged 37, she has spent over three decades searching for either a seller of single shoes, or some-one else with whom she can share the pair. Paralympic high jump star Gui Yuna, who is the same age as Liu, faces the same problem. Gui comes from Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and, at 7, also lost her leg in a car ac-cident. The accident didn't discourage her from pursuing her athletic passion and in 2007 she broke the high jump world record for women amputees at China's 2007 National Games for Persons With Disabilities. One year later, she acted as a torchbearer for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Despite her success, Gui is still bothered by the shoe problem.     

历史演进与功能定位:北京建设世界城市的战略思考

将处于中国城市领军地位的首都北京建设为独具特色的世界城市,对于首都的发展乃至中国的发展而言意义重大。本文基于历史演进与功能定位的双重视角,分析了伦敦、纽约、东京三大世界城市在形成过程中遵循的普遍规律以及发展过程中各具特色的功能定位,探讨了北京建设世界城市的功能定位,并给出对策建议。     

Love for Love

A Shanghai doctor gives back to herdsmen by serving them in Tibet The drain in Zhou Jian’s bathroom is clogged with hair again. The 48-year-old has a buzz cut and lives alone, but he said the drain blocks twice a month."It never happened when I was in Shanghai. I’m losing my hair much faster on the plateau," Zhou, Vice President of the Xigaze People’s Hospital in Tibet Autonomous Region, southwest China, told Beijing Review.     

A Leap of Language

正Prior to arriving in China in 2017,I had read various books relating to China,famous Chinese novels as well as non-fiction and the seeds of my fascination were sown.Therefore,when I arrived I couldn't have been more excited to be living in this huge historically and culturally rich country,so vastly different to my native home of the UK.The food,the landmarks,the mega cities and everyday life-I was raring to explore.     

Municipal leadership and interest‐oriented mass participation: The process of housing reform plan in Shanghai 2

In the light of China's leadership transformation—from revolutionary to technocratic—in the reform era, this paper attempts to explore the new leadership through a case study of making of the Shanghai housing reform plan in 1991. After delineating housing problems and previous reforms in the mega‐city, this paper examines the process of the making of China's most comprehensive housing reform hereto, which inevitably invited conflicts of interests among social groups, especially between the ordinary urban residents who were in disadvantageous positions and the cadres who by and large benefited from old housing policies under China's planning system. The principal conclusion of the paper is that the ways of making the housing reform plan indicate that the current leadership is more responsive to ordinary people's interests and opinions than the Maoist leadership, even though both have much in common as the former inherites the latter.     

Kathmandu Tale

Beijing Review: Could you please tell us about the Nepal Pavilion at the World Expo? Tanka Prasad Karki: The Nepalese people are proudly showcasing their traditional architecture at the Shanghai World Expo 2010.The theme of the Nepal Pavilion at the Expo is "Tales of Kathmandu City."The architecture represents the city and its unique designs of houses and temples.Temples of different religious sects exist side by side in Kathmandu,showcasing our harmonious society.     

Sizzling Cultural Heritage

Chongqing, Yunnan, Sichuan, from city cravings in below-zero temperatures to finger licking fondue-styled provincial penchants, hot flashes of steamy nights flare before the hungry eyes… Yep, we're talking hotpot. Chinese hotpot (aka huoguo) is one of the most popular meals in China. So where does it actually come from? Why is it so important in Chinese cuisine? What's in it? Why is it an ever sweltering topic? How does it stand the test of time? Time to dip into the hotness.     

A Former French Official Sets the Record Straight

Beijing Review: Why have you been inter-ested in researching China-related affairs and why are you willing to refute Western media reports? Bruno Guigue:? At this historical juncture, China raises a series of fascinating issues on development, governance and democracy, especially for those Western analysts pre-pared to challenge conventional wisdom. I realized that China was providing us with answers different from those we were accus-tomed to, and that these answers were either ignored or distorted by both mainstream media and research institutes across the West. I just want to make a modest contribu-tion to provide more objective insights on China and a new outlook on the workings of Chinese society.     

Newspaper Innovation and Advertising Competitiveness in Beijing and Shanghai

Conventional wisdom holds that the high competitiveness of the newspapers in Beijing and Shanghai is due to fast economic development in these cities. This research, however, finds that the degrees of newspaper competitiveness in Beijing and Shanghai do not relate positively to their GDP growth rates. While Shanghai's GDP outranks Beijing, the newspaper business in Beijing outgrows Shanghai. This paper argues that under the current Chinese management system, economic impact upon newspapers' development is limited. Only after the government management over media is reformed, can economic factors become a decisive force behind newspapers' innovation and advertising competitiveness.     

2008奥运与数字北京

北京将举办 2 0 0 8年奥运会 ,为中国提供了难得的发展机遇和重大挑战。结合中国的实际 ,针对实现“绿色、科技、人文、可持续发展”北京奥运目标 ,阐述了城市数字化和建筑智能化是历史发展的必然     

Seeing Change,Living Change

Chan Ka-ying, or Nicole, lives with her cat in Shenzhen, a booming tech city in the south of Guangdong Province. Born in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), she is currently working in a stateowned enterprise after graduation from Peking University. "I work as a policy analyst for the business in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA)," Chan told Beijing Review. "I plan to work here for a few years and then return to Hong Kong, where my family lives."     

Metropolarities: The Troubled Lot and Beijing Bicycle

This paper reads Qiu Huadong's novel, The Troubled Lot and Wang Xiaoshuai's film, Beijing Bicycle in the light of contemporary theories on space/place. It addresses broader issues of the dynamic and dialectic relationship between text/representation and the city, and how the text/representation contributes both to understanding and constituting the city. Through textual readings, the paper addresses how the fiction/film represents new urban spaces in contemporary China, and how urban spaces are produced through socioeconomic forces, global influences, spatial practices, and cultural representation. The paper argues that in representing the new urban spaces, these texts critique the modern city but also contribute to the formation of its diverse urban spaces. The paper also detects an emergence of a ‘Beijing discourse’ that focuses on depiction and representation of the city's transformation from the historical/political city to the new global/commercial metropolis, of which the two works under discussion are part.     

Brain Banks Among the Best

China's colossal number of think tanks on international relations are earning greater international recognition and exerting increasing influence on China's foreign policymaking.Leading think tanks,such as the China Institute of International Studies,China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations,China Center for Contemporary World Studies and Shanghai Institutes for International Studies,have made significant progress in the past decades.Beijing Review reporter Li Li recently interviewed Professor Jin Canrong,Associate Dean of the School of International Studies,Renmin University of China,to find out the latest development trends of these organizations.     

APPING THE GAME

In 1999,volunteers in Beijing,Shanghai and Guangzhou in south China were told to walk into a bare room each to test if they could survive 72 hours inside without venturing out.The rooms contained just a bed,a roll of toilet paper,a sum of money in cash,an equal amount in digital currency and a dial-up Internetnet.     

韩国对华投资现状分析

中韩两国的交流越来越密切,庞大的中国市场和廉价劳动力对韩国具有很强的吸引力。截至2006年6月底,韩国对华投资累计总额达到152亿美元。如此迅猛的韩国的投资增加集中在中国的制造业。如果努力解决好韩国企业投资中国时遇到的各种妨碍因素,可以激发韩国企业更积极地对中国的投资欲望。2008年北京奥运和2010年上海世博会的召开,将会使韩国企业,特别韩国中小企业的对华投资趋势一直持续下去。     

New Era,Great Prospects

African studies are gaining promi-nence in China,as the country forges closer ties with Africa. At the end of last year,the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS),one of the leading think-tanks in China,issued a strategic report on China-Africa relations and submitted it to China's top leadership. Beijing Review reporter Liu Wei spoke to Li Weijian,Director of the Department of West Asian and African Studies at SIIS,who headed the strate-gic report project,on the evolving relations between Chi...     

Information Exchange,Headquarters Economy and Financial Centers Development: Shanghai,Beijing and Hong Kong

Over the past several years, China has consistently maintained economic growth and at the same time emerged as a new global giant in the international arena, despite the distractions caused by the global financial crisis, which was triggered by the US Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis of 2007 and the recent bond crisis that emerged in the European Union in 2011. Concurrent with China's growing interaction with the global economy and robust growth of its domestic economy, competition for the status of national and even international financial centers in the region has become fierce. This study focuses on a ‘local’ examination of internal conditions for the emergence and growth of Chinese financial centers over the next 10–20 years. Cities contending for the top slot in the roster of Chinese cities, like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, are striving to become international financial centers and are trying to compete with Hong Kong. This study investigates the development potentials, future prospects and division of functions between different financial centers within China regarding Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, with special reference to the role of information and locations of MNCs' regional headquarters.     

伦敦市中心区交通拥挤收费实施周年回顾

首先对伦敦市交通局(Transport for London)制定的中心区拥挤收费的实施方案进行了系统的论述,之后依据其在2003年10月和2004年2月发布的实施报告,对其实施的具体效果进行了较为详细地介绍,以期对伦敦的拥挤收费政策有一个全面地认识,从而为我国实施拥挤收费提供借鉴.