Vacation plan may help economy, but not today

By Huang Daohen
Is vacation the way to offset the impact of a global recession? Tourism authorities said yes, but held back plans to launch a national vacation program.
Gao Shunli, a senior official at China National Tourism Administration, told a recent press conference that the country’s national leisure plan, now being rewritten to stimulate the domestic [...]

Family planning commission to reward informants

By Venus Lee
The Beijing Municipal Commission for Family Planning (MCFP) said at its annual meeting yesterday that the government is preparing to implement a third party reporting system to prevent violating the law.
The commission said Beijing had 16.95 million residents at the end of last year, and the natural growth rate was .34 percent.
“The city’s [...]

A Street (By Leonard Cohen)

(New Yorker)
Leonard Cohen, Canadian poet, novelist, and singer-songwriter, has released his new poet on New Yorker in the early of this month.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Do you know exactly what you do and do not want in life? Even if your answer is “yes,” Woody Allen would say there is always a time when you won’t in this movie, when time is as short as the two American girls’ summer holiday in romantic Barcelona.

“I do not believe” — Reality from the angle of tomorrow

More than any other artist, Yue Minjun and his laughing face captured the spirit of the Cynical Realist movement of the 1990s. When his piece “Execution” sold on auction for 30 million yuan, he became one of the most sought after Chinese artists. In his latest collection – years in the making – Yue examines the world of the today as it is excavated by the man of tomorrow.

The season for grilled oysters

The restaurant’s name translates in English to “the best oyster in e world” – no secret what its ambitions are.

Textbooks are not enough

“Shut Up!” Some of us made mistakes since we don’t have enough practice with native Enlish speakers. Learning a foreign language through textbooks is never enough and can sometimes even lead to hilarious misunderstandings.

Kill time with amusing useless inventions (Episode 2)

By Wang Yu
In the winter, Beijing Today introduced some useless Japanese gadgets clearly made for people who are bored to death. Well, there’s more where they camefrom.
Some people have been trying to inject more fun into life by marrying their weird ideas with the latest technology. The results are creative, hilarious, entertaining and possibly even [...]

Soup Opera

Chinglish on the way
This column aims to identify Chinglish in public areas. If you see any Chinglish signs, please send a picture of it to wangyu2008@ynet.com together with your name and address.

By Tiffany Tan
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess that this one was meant to be “Soap Opera.” But “Soup Opera” is [...]

Blacklist

This is a column of words or phrases commonly misused by Chinese speakers. If you’re planning to be an English teacher, reporter or employee of a multinational company, then watch out for this page each week.
Local professor: Zhu Shida
1. Respect the nature
I recently came across a Chinese fashion magazine. Upon perusing it, I found that [...]