China

The Old Summer Palace, known in China as the Gardens of Perfect Brightness , 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 , the Imperial Gardens were destroyed by British and French troops in 1860 during the Second Opium War. Today, the destruction of the Gardens of Perfect Brightness is still regarded as a symbol of foreign aggression and humiliation in China. The Old Summer Palace is located just outside the west gate of Tsinghua University, north of Peking University, and east of the Summer Palace.
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The Summer Palace or Yihe Yuan 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. 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. The Summer Palace started out life as the Garden of Clear Ripples in 1750 . Artisans reproduced the garden architecture styles of various palaces in China. Kunming Lake was created by extending an existing body of water to imitate the West Lake in Hangzhou.
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Gǔlóu , the drum tower of Beijing, is situated at the northern end of the central axis of the Inner City to the north of Di’ anmen... Street. Originally built for musical reasons, it was later used to announce the time and is now a tourist attraction. Zhōnglóu , the bell tower of Beijing, stands closely behind the drum tower. Together with the drum tower, they provide an overview of central Beijing and before the modern era, they both dominated Beijing's ancient skyline. Bells and drums were musical instruments in ancient China. Later they were used by government and common people as timepieces. The Bell and Drum towers were the center of Chinese chronology during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. The Bell and Drum Towers continued to function as the official timepiece of China and government until 1924, when the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty was forced to leave the Forbidden City and western-style clockwork was made the official means of time-keeping. The Drum Tower was built in 1272 during the reign of Kublai Khan, at which time it stood at the very heart of the Yuan capital Dadu. At that time it was known as the Tower of Orderly Administration .
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The Great Wall of China " is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the... Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups such as the Xiongnu from the north and rebuilt and maintained between the 5th century BC and the 16th century. Since the 5th century BC, several walls have been built that were referred to as the Great Wall. One of the most famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains; the majority of the existing wall was built during the Ming Dynasty. The Great Wall stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. The most comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has recently concluded that the entire Great Wall, with all of its branches, stretches for 8,851.8 km .
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The 1987 Sino-Indian skirmish occurred at Sumdorong Chu Valley. This was the second conflict between the PRC and India, with the previous one taking... place exactly a quarter of a century earlier. The two parties eventually did not engage in combat. After her return to power in 1980 as Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi ordered a general review of India's security plans. In 1982-83, she approved a plan submitted by the Chief of the Army Staff, General K.V. Krishna Rao, to upgrade the sporadic deployment of forces along the Line of Actual Control with the People's Republic of China. Since the late 1960s, India had developed an elaborate plan to defend the Himalayan frontier with China. This involved the provision of screening defences at the Line of Actual Control and the building of strong defence nodes at key points along the frontier. By the early 1980s, while the forces to man the defences were ready, the nodes were not, and the greatest weakness was in the fact that the servicing road network had not been built. The decision was taken to resume the defence infrastructure construction.
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The Sino–Vietnamese War , also known as the Third Indochina War, known in the PRC as 对越自卫反击战 ... and in Vietnam as Chiến tranh chống bành trướng Trung Hoa , was a brief but bloody border war fought in 1979 between the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The PRC launched the offensive in response to Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia, which ended the reign of the PRC-backed Khmer Rouge. After a brief incursion into Northern Vietnam, PRC troops withdrew about a month later. Both China and Vietnam claimed victory in the last of the Indochina Wars of the twentieth century; however, since Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia until 1989 it can be said that the PRC failed to achieve the goal of dissuading Vietnam from involvement in Cambodia. However, China achieved its strategic objective of reducing the offensive capability of Vietnam along the Sino-Vietnam border by implementing a scorched earth policy.
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The Vietnam War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from November 1, 1955 , to April 30, 1975 when Saigon... fell. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other capitalist nations. The Viet Cong, a lightly-armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The North Vietnamese Army engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery and airstrikes. The United States government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and part of their wider strategy of containment. The North Vietnamese government viewed the war as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the United States, and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a US puppet state.
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The Laotian Civil War was an internal fight between the Communist Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government in which both the political rightists and... leftists received heavy external support for a proxy war from the global Cold War superpowers. The Kingdom of Laos was a covert theater of battle for the other belligerents during the Vietnam War. The Franco-Lao Treaty of 1953 gave Laos full independence but the following years were marked by a rivalry between the neutralists under Prince Souvanna Phouma, the right wing under Prince Boun Oum of Champassak, and the left-wing Lao Patriotic Front under Prince Souphanouvong and future Prime Minister Kaysone Phomvihane. A number of attempts were made to establish coalition governments, and a "tri-coalition" government was finally seated in Vientiane. The fighting in Laos involved the North Vietnamese Army, American, Thai, and South Vietnamese forces directly and through irregular proxies in a battle for control over the Laotian Panhandle. The North Vietnamese Army occupied the area for use as the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply corridor and staging area for offensives into South Vietnam.
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The African Development Bank Group is a development bank established in 1964 with the intention of promoting economic and social development in... Africa. The Group comprises the African Development Bank , the African Development Fund , and the Nigeria Trust Fund . AfDB provides loans and grants to African governments and private companies investing in the regional member countries in Africa. It is owned and funded by member governments, and has a public-interest mandate to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. Following the end of colonial period in Africa, growing desire for more unity within the continent led to the establishment of two draft charters, one for the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity , and for a regional development bank. A draft accord was submitted to top African officials, then to African Ministers, before being cosigned by twenty-three African governments on August 4, 1963, in the form of an agreement establishing the African Development Bank. The agreement came into force on 10 September 1964.
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The Asian Development Bank is a regional development bank established in 1966 to promote economic and social development in Asian and Pacific... countries through loans and technical assistance. It is a multilateral development financial institution owned by 67 members , 48 from the region and 19 from other parts of the globe. ADB's vision is a region free of poverty. Its mission is to help its developing member countries reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their citizens. The work of the Asian Development Bank is aimed at improving the welfare of the people in Asia and the Pacific, particularly the 1.9 billion who live on less than $2 a day. Despite many success stories, Asia and the Pacific remains home to two thirds of the world's poor. The bank was conceived with the vision of creating a financial institution that would be "Asian in character" to foster growth and cooperation in a region that back then was one of the world's poorest. ADB raises funds through bond issues on the world's capital markets, while also utilizing its members' contributions and earnings from lending.
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The Caribbean Development Bank is a financial institution which assists Caribbean nations in financing social and economic programs in its member... countries. Created on October 18, 1969 by a conference of eighteen countries and territories in Kingston, Jamaica, it has its headquarters located in Bridgetown, Barbados. In 2004 Standard & Poor's gave the CDB a rating of Triple A, the firm's highest rating. According to Standard and Poor if the Caribbean Development bank "continues its prudent financial policies of the past, its rating should remain stable over the medium term." At the end of 2000, the bank had shareholders' equity of US$426 million.
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The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is an intergovernmental mutual-security organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of... China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Except for Uzbekistan, the other countries had been members of the Shanghai Five, founded in 1996; after the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001, the members renamed the organisation. The official working languages of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are Chinese and Russian. The official names of the organisation in the two languages, abbreviations in parentheses, are: Chinese: Russian: The Shanghai Five grouping was originally created 26 April 1996 with the signing of the Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions in Shanghai by the heads of states of Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. 24 April 1997 the same countries signed the Treaty on Reduction of Military Forces in Border Regions in a meeting in Moscow. Subsequent annual summits of the Shanghai Five group occurred in Almaty in 1998, in Bishkek in 1999, and in Dushanbe in 2000.
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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 fifteen, he attended King's Way 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.
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Sun Daolin was a Chinese actor and film director. Sun Daolin was born in Beijing on August 2, 1996. He was born Sun Yi-liang... 孙以亮 in Beijing from a family of four children. His father Sun Wen-Yau was a Brussel educated railroad engineer. His mother Fan Nian-Hua and father both are originally from Jiashan, Chikiang. He along with all his siblings all learned to speak English since grade school. He attended Yan Ching University and philosophy studies 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 Poppet 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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Xu Jinglei is an actress and director most famous in her native mainland China. Jane Xu is her English name. Xu graduated from the Beijing Film... Academy's prestigious Performance Institute in 1997. Along with Zhao Wei, Zhou Xun and Zhang Ziyi, the mainland Chinese media considers her a member of the Four Young Dan actresses . Although not well known outside of China, Xu is popular domestically: in mid 2006, her Chinese language blog had the most incoming links of any blog in any language on the Internet, according to Technorati.
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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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Mongolia , literally Mongol country/nation, is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and the People's... Republic of China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only 38 kilometres from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to about 38% of the population. Mongolia's political system is a parliamentary republic. The area of what is now Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Gökturks and others. The Mongol Empire was founded by Genghis Khan in 1206. After the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols returned to their earlier pattern of constant internal conflict and occasional raids on the Chinese borderlands. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Mongolia came under the influence of Tibetan Buddhism. At the end of the 17th century, most of Mongolia had been incorporated into the area ruled by the Qing Dynasty.
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Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia and, as of 2010, the world's most recent nation to... become a republic. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India. With an area of 147,181 square kilometres and a population of approximately 30 million, Nepal is the world's 93rd largest country by land mass and the 41st most populous country. Kathmandu is the nation's capital and the country's largest metropolitan city. Nepal is a country of highly diverse and rich geography, culture, and religions. The mountainous north has eight of the world's ten highest mountains, including the highest, Sagarmatha, known in English as Mount Everest. It contains over 240 peaks more than 20,000 ft above sea level..The fertile and humid south is heavily urbanized. By some measures, Hinduism is practised by a larger majority of people in Nepal than in any other nation.
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Russia ; Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijə]  , also officially... known as the Russian Federation , is a state in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. Russia shares borders with the following countries : Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland , Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan and the United States . At 17,075,400 square kilometres , Russia is by far the largest country in the world, covering more than a ninth of the Earth's land area. Russia is also the ninth most populous nation in the world with 142 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning 9 time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms.
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Vietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by... People's Republic of China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea, referred to as East Sea , to the east. With a population of over 86 million, Vietnam is the 13th most populous country in the world. The people of Vietnam regained independence and broke away from China in AD 938 after their victory at the battle of Bạch Đằng River. Successive dynasties flourished along with geographic and political expansion deeper into Southeast Asia, until it was colonized by the French in the mid-19th century. Efforts to resist the French eventually led to their expulsion from the country in the mid-20th century, leaving a nation divided politically into two countries. Fighting between the two sides continued during the Vietnam War, ending with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975.
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