Beijing

The Summer Palace is a palace in Beijing, China. The Summer Palace is mainly dominated by Longevity Hill and the Kunming Lake. It covers an expanse... of 2.9 square kilometers, three quarters of which is water. Longevity Hill is about 60 meters high and houses many buildings positioned in sequence. The front hill is rich in the splendid halls and pavilions, while the back hill, in sharp contrast, is quiet with natural beauty The central Kunming Lake covering 2.2 square kilometers was entirely man made and the excavated soil was used to build Longevity Hill. In the Summer Palace, one finds a variety of palaces, gardens, and other classical-style architectural structures. In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace "a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value.
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The Old Summer Palace, known in China as Yuan Ming Yuan , and originally called the Imperial Gardens, was a complex of palaces and gardens in... Beijing. It is located 8 kilometres northwest of the walls of the Imperial City, built in the 18th and early 19th century, where the emperors of the Qing Dynasty resided and handled government affairs . Known for its extensive collection of garden and building architectures and other works of art . In 1860 during the Second Opium War, two British envoys, a journalist for The Times and their small escort of British and Indian troopers met with the Royal Prince to negotiate. Instead they were confined and tortured, resulting in twenty deaths. The British High Commissioner to China, Lord Elgin, retaliated by ordering the destruction of the palace, which was then carried out by French and British troops.
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The Beijing Zoo is a zoological park in Beijing, China. Located in the Xicheng District, the zoo occupies an area of 89 hectares , including 5.6... hectares of lakes and ponds . It is one of the oldest zoos in China and has one of the largest animal collections in the country. The zoo and its aquarium has over 450 species of land animals and over 500 species of marine animals. In all, it is home to 14,500 animals. More than six million visitors come to the zoo each year. The zoo was founded in 1906 during the late Qing Dynasty. Like many of Beijing's parks, the zoo's grounds resemble classical Chinese gardens, with flower beds amidst natural scenery, including dense groves of trees, stretches of meadows, small streams and rivers, lotus pools and hills dotted with pavilions and historical buildings.
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The Yonghe Temple , also known as the "Palace of Peace and Harmony Lama Temple", the "Yonghe Lamasery", or - popularly - the "Lama Temple" is a... temple and monastery of the Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism located in the northeastern part of Beijing, China. It is one of the largest and most important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world. The building and the artworks of the temple combine Han Chinese and Tibetan styles. Building work on the Yonghegong Temple started in 1694 during the Qing Dynasty. It originally served as an official residence for court eunuchs. It was then converted into the court of the Prince Yong , a son of the Kangxi Emperor and himself the future Yongzheng Emperor. After Yongzheng's ascension to the throne in 1722, half of the building was converted into a lamasery, a monastery for monks of Tibetan Buddhism. The other half remained an imperial palace. After Yongzheng's death in 1735, his coffin was placed in the temple. The Qianlong Emperor, Yongzheng's successor, gave the temple imperial status signified by having its turquoise tiles replaced with yellow tiles which were reserved for the emperor.
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The Geological Museum of China , built in 1916, is a geological museum, boasting 200 thousand specimens. This museum is located in the Xisi area of... Beijing and opened on October 1, 1959. It is the earliest geological scientific museum of China. At present, the Geological Museum of China has more than 100,000 geological specimens. Many of them are precious items reputed as "National Treasures", such as "the Giant Shandong Dinosaur" fossil, the highest and most complete dinosaur fossils extant in the world; the fossils of primitive birds that were found in the west of Liaoning Province, which has the essential values to the research on birds of the area; the teeth fossils of Yunnan Yuanmou Man, which shifts the appearance of human beings in China to a much more earlier time; the stoneware, stone pearls, bone needles and bone decoration unearthed from the site of the Upper Cave man at Zhoukoudian in Beijing; a cinnabar crystal of 237 grams that is called as "King of Cinnabar"; and more than 60 new mineral products that were found in China, and so on.
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The Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, or China People's Revolution Military Museum is a museum located in Beijing, China... immediately west of central Beijing in Haidian District. It displays restored military equipment from the history of the People's Liberation Army, up to and including modern-day machinery. The museum began construction in October 1958 and completed in 1960. The museum's four floors include ten halls, the largest of which is the Hall of Weapons. The Hall's extensive holdings of antiquated weaponry showcase domestic and foreign weapons, including blades, small arms, artillery, tanks, armored personnel carriers, anti-air weaponry, jet fighters, rockets and rocket launchers, and cruise missiles. Foreign weapons include: Soviet tanks purchased or donated during the 1950s and 1960s, American weaponry captured from the KMT during the Chinese Civil War and from UN forces during the Korean War, and Japanese weaponry captured during the Sino-Japanese War. In addition, the weapons hall displays equipment from China's space program, satellites and an orbital capsule with two seats.
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The art collections of the Palace Museum , a national museum housed in the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, are built upon the imperial collection... of the Ming and Qing dynasties. This collection was expanded in the 20th century with new acquisitions, transfers from other museums, and new archaeological discoveries. The Palace Museum is housed in the Forbidden City, the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China. For almost five centuries, it served as the home of the Emperor and his household, and the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government. Built from 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 square metres. The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture, and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987, and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.
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The Beijing Museum of Natural History is located at 126, Tian Qiao Nan Street, Chong Wen District, Beijing, 100050, and is the most popular natural... history museum in China. It was originally founded in 1951 as the National Central Museum of Natural History, and its name changed to the Beijing Museum of Natural History in 1962. The BMNH is the first large scale natural history museum created in China. The BMNH has total floor space of 24,000 square meters, of which 8,000 square meters are available for display and owns more than 200,000 specimens. The major display area is the Tian Jiabing Building. The collections include paleontology, ornithology, mammals and invertebrates, and include a major collection of dinosaur fossils and mounted skeletons. The BMNH also engages in significant scientific research in these areas.
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Leon Lai is a Hong Kong-based actor and Cantopop singer. The media refer to Aaron Kwok, Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau and Leon Lai as the Cantopop Four... Heavenly Kings . He uses the stage name "Li Ming" or "Lai Ming" which literally means "dawn." Lai was born in Beijing, China as Lai Chit with Meixian, Guangdong ancestry. His family was originally from Meixian. His parents divorced when he was four. He migrated with his Malaysian Chinese father, Lai Xinsheng to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution in China. At the age of 15, he attended Kingsway Princeton College in the United Kingdom and returned to Hong Kong at the age of eighteen in 1984. Lai initially worked as a salesperson for a mobile phone company. After being awarded second-runner-up in the 1986 5th New Talent Singing Awards, Lai received vocal coaching from Dai Si Zong . In the same year he also obtained an artist contract from Capital Artists. Lai did not release any albums for four years. As a result, his teacher, Dai, arranged to have him signed a contract with Polygram, later known as Universal Music. In Polygram, he released his first album "Leon" and subsequent album "Meet In The Rain".
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Faye Wong is a highly successful and influential Chinese singer-songwriter and actress who is usually referred to as a diva . Early in her career... she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong . Born in Beijing, she moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and rose to stardom in the early 1990s by singing ballads in Cantonese. Since 1995 she has recorded mostly in her native Mandarin, often combining alternative music with mainstream Chinese pop. In 2000 she was recognized by Guinness World Records as the Best Selling Canto-Pop Female. Following her second marriage in 2005 she withdrew from the limelight, but returned to the stage in 2010 amidst immense interest in the Sinosphere. Although her music is quite individualized, Faye Wong is famously reserved in public, and has become a cultural icon of "coolness". Hugely popular in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, she has also gained a large following in Japan and is to date the only C-pop artist to have performed 4 times in Tokyo's Budokan.
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Chen Kaige is a Chinese film director and a leading figure of the fifth generation of Chinese cinema. His films are known for their visual flair... and epic storytelling. Chen Kaige was born in Beijing, China into a family of Fuzhou Changle origin, and grew up with fellow Fifth Generation alumnus Tian Zhuangzhuang as a childhood friend. During the Cultural Revolution, Chen joined the Red Guards. His father, Chen Huai'ai was a well-known director in his own right. As a teenage member of the Red Guards, Chen, like many other youths, denounced his own father, a fateful decision he eventually learned to regret. Indeed, this period of his life continues to influence much of his work today, notably in the unblinking depictions of the Cultural Revolution in Farewell My Concubine, and in the father-son relationship in Together. With the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chen, in 1978 joined the Beijing Film Academy, where he graduated from in 1982 as part of the so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers.
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Sun Daolin was a Chinese actor and film director. Sun Daolin was born in Beijing on November 18, 1921. He was born Sun Yi-liang... 孙以亮 in Beijing a family of four children. His father Sun Wen-Yau was educated in engineering in Brussels. His mother Fan Nian-Hua and father both are originally from Jiashan, Chekiang. He along with all his siblings learned to speak English since grade school. He attended Yenching University, but his studies in philosophy were interrupted during Sino-Japanese War. During the War he was active in patriotic activities including stage acting and he was jailed briefly by the Japanese Puppet Regime. He received a degree in philosophy in 1947. His career had spanned much of recent PRC history. One of his earliest roles was in director Zheng Junli’s Crows and Sparrows, a polemic on the corruption of the Nationalist Government just prior to their defeat in the Chinese Civil War. After 1949, Sun continued to act, notably as the eldest brother in an adaptation of Ba Jin’s novel, Family.
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Robert Warren "Bob" Woodruff is an American television journalist. His career in journalism dates back to 1989, and he is widely known for... succeeding Peter Jennings as co-anchor of ABC News' weekday news broadcast, World News Tonight in January 2006. Later the same month, he was critically wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Woodruff was born on August 18, 1961, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, to Robert N. Woodruff, Jr., and Fran Woodruff. Bob and his wife Lee McConaughy were married in 1988 and have four children. He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he graduated from the private Cranbrook Kingswood school in 1979. He earned a B.A in 1983 from Colgate University, where he also played lacrosse — finishing his career with 184 points, second all-time at Colgate. Woodruff earned a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1987. He is an alumnus of Theta Chi Fraternity. He is fluent in German and Mandarin, in addition to his native English. After graduating from law school, he worked as a bankruptcy associate at Shearman & Sterling .
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Li Xiaolu is a Golden Horse award-winning Chinese actress, best known for her role in Joan Chen's directing debut Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl. Li... was born in Beijing, China. She recently starred in Gao Xiaosong's Rainbow , About Love , and Alexi Tan's Blood Brothers . With the latest being Love At Seventh Sight .
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Zhang Ziyi is a Chinese film actress. Zhang is coined by the media as one of the Four Young Dan actresses in the Film Industry in China, along with... Zhao Wei, Xu Jinglei, and Zhou Xun. With a string of Chinese and international hits to her name, she has worked with renowned directors such as Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark, Lou Ye, Seijun Suzuki, Feng Xiaogang and Rob Marshall. She achieved wider fame in the West after starring in major roles for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , Rush Hour 2 , House of Flying Daggers , and Memoirs of a Geisha . She has been nominated for numerous awards throughout her career, including three BAFTA Award nominations and Golden Globe Award nomination. Zhang Ziyi was born and raised in Beijing to Zhang Yuanxiao, an accountant and later economist, and Li Zhousheng, a kindergarten teacher. She is very close to her older brother, Zhang Zinan . Zhang began studying dance when she was 8 years old; subsequently, she joined the Beijing Dance Academy by her parents' suggestion at the age of 11.
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Leon Lai is a Hong Kong-based actor and Cantopop singer. The media refer to Aaron Kwok, Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau and Leon Lai as the Cantopop Four... Heavenly Kings . He uses the stage name "Li Ming" or "Lai Ming" which literally means "dawn." Lai was born in Beijing, China as Lai Chit with Meixian, Guangdong ancestry. His family was originally from Meixian. His parents divorced when he was four. He migrated with his Malaysian Chinese father, Lai Xinsheng to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution in China. At the age of 15, he attended Kingsway Princeton College in the United Kingdom and returned to Hong Kong at the age of eighteen in 1984. Lai initially worked as a salesperson for a mobile phone company. After being awarded second-runner-up in the 1986 5th New Talent Singing Awards, Lai received vocal coaching from Dai Si Zong . In the same year he also obtained an artist contract from Capital Artists. Lai did not release any albums for four years. As a result, his teacher, Dai, arranged to have him signed a contract with Polygram, later known as Universal Music. In Polygram, he released his first album "Leon" and subsequent album "Meet In The Rain".
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Faye Wong is a highly successful and influential Chinese singer-songwriter and actress who is usually referred to as a diva . Early in her career... she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong . Born in Beijing, she moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and rose to stardom in the early 1990s by singing ballads in Cantonese. Since 1995 she has recorded mostly in her native Mandarin, often combining alternative music with mainstream Chinese pop. In 2000 she was recognized by Guinness World Records as the Best Selling Canto-Pop Female. Following her second marriage in 2005 she withdrew from the limelight, but returned to the stage in 2010 amidst immense interest in the Sinosphere. Although her music is quite individualized, Faye Wong is famously reserved in public, and has become a cultural icon of "coolness". Hugely popular in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, she has also gained a large following in Japan and is to date the only C-pop artist to have performed 4 times in Tokyo's Budokan.
more

Ge You is an acclaimed Mainland Chinese actor. A native of Beijing, he is considered by many to be one of the most recognizable acting personalities... in the Mainland. His success with major comedy roles made him a well known name throughout Mainland China. Ge You won the Best Actor Award at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival for his role in the Zhang Yimou movie To Live.
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Cui Jian [tsʰwéɪ tɕjɛ̂n] is a Beijing-based Chinese singer-songwriter, trumpeter and guitarist. Affectionately called... "Old Cui" , he is considered to be a pioneer in Chinese rock music and one of the first Chinese artists to write rock songs. For this distinction Cui Jian is often labeled "The Father of Chinese Rock". Cui Jian grew up in a musical family in Beijing - his father was ethnic Korean and a professional trumpet player and his mother was a member of a Korean dance troupe. Cui Jian himself started playing the trumpet at the age of fourteen and joined the Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra in 1981, at the age of twenty. He was first introduced to rock during this period when friends smuggled in illicit recordings from Hong Kong and Bangkok. Inspired by the likes of Simon and Garfunkel and John Denver, Cui began learning to play the guitar. In 1984 he formed his first band, Qi He Ban with six other classically-trained musicians, including the saxophonist/suona player Liu Yuan. The seminal band was heavily influenced by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Talking Heads.
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Chen Kaige is a Chinese film director and a leading figure of the fifth generation of Chinese cinema. His films are known for their visual flair... and epic storytelling. Chen Kaige was born in Beijing, China into a family of Fuzhou Changle origin, and grew up with fellow Fifth Generation alumnus Tian Zhuangzhuang as a childhood friend. During the Cultural Revolution, Chen joined the Red Guards. His father, Chen Huai'ai was a well-known director in his own right. As a teenage member of the Red Guards, Chen, like many other youths, denounced his own father, a fateful decision he eventually learned to regret. Indeed, this period of his life continues to influence much of his work today, notably in the unblinking depictions of the Cultural Revolution in Farewell My Concubine, and in the father-son relationship in Together. With the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chen, in 1978 joined the Beijing Film Academy, where he graduated from in 1982 as part of the so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers.
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