China and Olympic Games

In 1984 Chinese athletes earned 15 gold, 8 silver and 9 broze medals in the 23^rd Olympic Games. This is the first Olympic Games New China had attended. This Olympic Games has ended China’s history of never having won a gold medal in the Olympiad.

In 1996 Chinese athletes won 16 gold, 22 silver and 12 bronze medals at the 26^th Olympic Games held in Atlanta, ranking fourth in both gold medals and total medals, after the United States, Russia and Germany.

In 2008, China will be the host for Olympic Games.

China’s Mass Sports

China’s mass sports are carried on in schools among workers and staff members, peasants, the armed forces, the aged and the handicaped.

In 1995, The Chinese Government put forward the Plan for All People to Build Up Their Health with all the citizens as participants and youngsters and children as the mainstay so as to develop mass sports more widely and to improve people’s physical quality and helath level.

Sports activities are popular among workers and staff members. Workers and employees of industrial and commercial enterprises, government offices and other organizations have a fifteen minute break both in the morning and afternoon to do exercises or attend other sports.

Eight types of setting up exercises to radio music are offered, so that there is activity for everyone.

In many cities, the traditional sports, such as wushu (martial arts), taijiquan (shodow boxing) qigong (breathing exercise) and body building exercises are popular.

Particularly in the early morning, people are seen in parks and open spaces doing morning exercisex. Sports in China’s rural areas may reflect regional differences but participation is encouraged.

Traveling China by the rivers and lakes

Most of China’s rivers flow from west to eash into the Pacific Ocean except a few in southwest China that flow to the south. The rivers in China total 200,000 kilometers in length and more than 1,500 of them drain an area of 1,000 square kilometers or large each. The total flow of these rivers is 2,700 bilion cubic meters. This is the sama as the total flow of the rivers in Europe.

China’s largers rivers originate on the Qinghai Tibet Plateau and thus have a high drop. Therefore China is very rich in hydropower resouces, leading the world with 680 million kilowatss hydropower reserves.

The Yangtze River (Changjiang) is more than 6,000 kilometers long and become the largest river in China. It has a catchment area of 1,800,000 square kilometers and is the major inland river transport artery in China.

The Yelow River (Huanghe) is stretching over 5,464 kilometers. This is the China’s second largest. Its area covering 700,000 square kilometers and believed as the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilization and has a wealth of historic sites and relics, many of them buried underground.

China also has a famous man made waterway. The Grand Canal which is running from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, in the south.

China has also many natural lakes, most of them scatterd in the Middle Lower Yangtze palins and the Qinghai Tibet Plateau. China’s largest freshwater lake is Lake Poyang with an area of 3,583 square kilometers and the largest salt lake is Lake Qinghai in the west with an area of 4,583 square kilometers.

Your destination: China’s mountain

China’s surface slopes down from west to east in a four step staircase. The top of the staircase is the Qinghai Tibet Plateau, with an average elevation of more than 4,000 meters and know as the roof of the world. The Qinghai Tibet Plateau is composed of rows of snow capped peaks and glaciers. The major mountain ranges are the Kunlun, Gangdise and Himalayas.

The second step consists of the Inner Mongolia, Loess and Yunnan Guizhou plateaus, and the Tarim, Junggar and Sichuan basins, on an altitude of 1,000 – 2,000 meters.

The third step, about 500 – 1,000 meters in elevation, begins at the line from the Greater Hinggan, Taihang, Wushan and Xuefeng mountain range eastward to the sea coast.

To the east of the third step the shallow waters of the continental shelf, an extension of the land into the ocean, form the fourth step of the staircase. The depth of the water here is less than 200 meters.

Great quantities of mud and sand have been carried here by the rivers.

China’s many mountains are well known throughout the world.

Several Big Hotels in China

If you travel to China you can consider some of this hotel for staying: China World Hotel, Hong Kong Macao Center Swissotel at Chaoyang District, Jingguang New World Hotel which is also at Chaoyang District, Kunlun Hotel, Diaoyutai Guest House, Beijing Hotel, Grand Hotel, Shangri-La Hotel at Zizhuyuanlu, New Otani Changfugong Hotel, Hilton Hotel, Holiday Inn Crown Plaza, New Century Hotel, Palace Hotel, Beijing Kempinski Hotel, Great Wall Sheraton Hotel.

Chinese style of hand embroidery, pottery and porcelain

Chinese artisans adopt many different kinds of hand embroidery and countless different stitches which produce different effects in texture, tone, shading, buck and perspective. Chinese embroidery is concentrated in four centers – Suzhou, Guangdong, Hunan and Sichuan.

Suzhou embroidery is famous for cat and gold fish products; Hunan embroidery is well known for its lions and tigers; Sichuan embroidery appreciates a high reputation for lotuses and carps, cocks and cockscomb; and Guangdong is famous for Hundred Birds Paying Respects to Phoenix, displaying enthusiastic scene with various kinds of birds flying around a phoenix with the sun, pines, bamboos, peony and red plum blossoms in the background.

Pottery and porcelain are one of ancient China’s inventions. Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province is known as China’s porcelain capital, with its products famed as “white as jade, bright as mirror, thin as paper and making music when taped.” Yixing is praised as China’s pottery capital, and its red ware, made with local purple clay, have close texture, simple and unsophisticated form and Chinese style.

Exit Registration Cards for China travelers

On departure, travelers must fill in Exit Registration Cards and have their passports and visas checked. Articles registered on the Baggage Declaration Form should all be brought out of China; if any item is missing, a certificate from a public security organ is required if something has been stolen; otherwise, the traveler must pay import tax according to the Customs regulation.

Visitors who want to change Renminbi back into foreign currency at a port of departure before leaving China will be required to show the exchange memo proved when they exchanged foreign currency in RMB on entry or at banks.

Articles that are forbidden to be exported according to law may not be taken out of China. Foreign currency, RMB, cultural relics, medicinal material, gold, silver and/or their products may not be taken out, unless they meet Chinese regulations and has been checked by the Customs.

Entry Registration Cards: another paper you should fill when you travel to China

On arrival in China, travelers must fill in Entry Registration Cards, and present passports, visas and quarantine certificates for inspection. All luggage, goods and packages must be checked by the quarantine inspectors before being allowed to enter China. Entry of travelers with VD, leprosy or infectious pulmonary tuberculosis is prohibited.

Those who wish to bring into China old and waste materials, food, micro organisms, biological products, portions of the human body, blood and/or its products, or animals that may spread infectious diseases among humans must declared them in full detail.

Travelers from areas with epidemic yellow fever must show valid certificates of inoculation against this disease. Those with symptoms of fever, diarrhea or vomiting, or rashes must declare this information clearly.

Travelers without quarantine certificates will be examined by the quarantine station designated by the Customs before being allowed to enter China.

Entry is forbidden to articles prescribed as dangerous, poisonous and/or harmful by Chinese law; those who have such articles must declare them to the frontier inspection station. When arriving at hotels, travelers should check in according to the local regulations.

Custom Declaration Form: something you must fill when you travel to China

Before entering China, travelers must fill in a Custom Declaration Form describing in detail all the luggage and valuables they are bringing with them. One form per family is enough.

All articles listed on the Form must be declared at a place of entry and taken out of China when the traveler leaves. The Form must be retained by the traveler and surrendered to the Customs when leaving the country. Customs clearance shall be based on inspection of the original declaration made at the time of entry.

Unaccompanied baggage should be declared to the Customs as regards quantity and port of arrival, and must be transported into China within six month from the day of the traveler entering China.

Social interaction in China

If you are a kind of people who loves to kiss each other as a way of greeting, you should be careful when traveling to China because usually people there do no embrace, kiss or walk hand in hand. Instead, people in China are accustomed to nodding, shaking hands and cupping one hand in the other in front of the chest whey they meet.

When meeting a guest for the first time, Beijing residents normally love to discuss about diet, family and arrangements of activities as topics to indicate friendly feelings.

Well I hope this little information about social interaction in China will be useful for you when you travel there someday.

The great diversity of wildlife in China

China is one of the countries with the greatest diversity of wildlife in the world. There are more than 2,000 species of terrestrial vertebrates, more than 10 percent of the world’s total. There are 1,189 known species of birds, nearly 500 animal species, more than 210 species of amphibians and 320 species of reptiles.

Among the wild animals, there are many rare species found only in China. These include the giant panda, golden monkey, white-lipped dear, takin, Chinese river dolphin and Chinese alligator. The Manchurian tiger is also a rare animal in China.

Giant pandas, recognized as one of China’s national treasures, live in the remote mountain areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanzi provinces and feed on bamboo. The panda is also called a living fossil. This animal is a remnant species which thrived during the glacier period of the Quaternary.

China has 7,000 species of woody plants, of which 2,800 are arbors. In a concerted effort to protect the nation’s zoological and botanical resources, China had establisedh 932 nature reserves covering 76,71 million hectares by 1997.

Climate in China

Most of China is situated in the temperate zone. Some parts of south China are located in tropical in tropical and subtropical zones while the northern part is near the frigid zones. The temperature varies greatly in different parts f the country. In north China, summers are warm and short and winters long and cold.

In the tropical and subtropical south, trees and other vegetation remain green all year. The eastern coastal regions of China are warm and humid and have four distinct seasons. But the temperatures in the interior area of northwest China change greatly during the daytime. Because its high elevation, the Qinghai-Tiber Plateau area, a special alpine cold zone, has low temperatures all year round.

Destination: China

The People’s Republic of China, or simply China, is situated in the eastern part of Asia, on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean. China has a total land area of 9,6 million square kilometers, next only to Russia and Canada.

From north to south, it measures some 5,500 kilometers, stretching from the central line of the Heilong River north of the town of Mohe to the Zengmu Reef at the southernmost tip of the Nansha Islands. From west to east, the territory of China extends about 5,200 kilometers from the Pamirs to the confluence of the Heilong and Wusuli rivers.

China’s land border is 22,800 kilometers long. The nation is bordered by Korea in the eash; Mongolia in the north; Russia in the north east; Kazakhstan, Kirghizia and Tadzhikistan in the northwest; Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan in the west and southwest; and Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam in the south. Across the seas to the east and southeast are the Republic of Korea, Japan the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Chinese mainland is flanked by the Bohai, the Huanghai (Yellow Sea) and the East China and South China seas in the east and south. The territorial waters of China extend 12 nautical miles out from the base line drawn where China’s land territories and interior waters border the sea. More than 5,400 island are scattered over China’s vas territorial seas of 4.73 million square kilometers, the largest being Taiwan with an area of 36,000 square kilometers, and the next largest, Hainan with an area of 34,000 square kilometers. Taiwan and Hainan are two provinces of China.

China coast is 32,000 kilometers long, including 18,000 kilometers of the coast of the mainland and 14,000 kilometers of the coast of the islands. The coast of the mainland is dotted with excellent harbors and ports, the most famous of them, form north to south, being Dalian, Qin haung dao Tianjin, Yantai, Qingdao, Lianyungang, Nantong, Shanghai, Nignbo, Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Zhanjiang and Beihai. Among them Shanghai is the largest city in China as well as a famous metropolis in Asian and in the world. It has well developed industry, commerce, finance and ocean transportation.