Predestinately an unforgettable Eight One One. The day saw the official inauguration of Shanghai water leisure&sports base in Fengxian. Apparently, the Fengxianese don't want to miss another boat for the world and let the golden chance run through their fingers. What does Fengxian have to offer? Presumably, the only feathers in Fengxian's cap are nothing else but two most valuable stuffs---farms and beaches in Shanghai at the moment. Needlessly to say, the two gems, I think, have long been coveted by greedy developers even without too much publicity from the Fengxian government.
Now back to the brass tacks. Reportedly, the Fengxian beach atrracted hundreds and thousands of outdoor sports fans that night and made itself a grandious beach carnival. A carnival like this is never short of music, bear, seafood or what not. But look and behold, they even brought tents! What a wonderful night it would be to be covered with the moon in thousands at the same time. I am wondering what was in the drunk campers 's dreams after they hit the sacks, the blinking stars overhead, the lapping waves in their ears, or the seabreeze gently brushing their bodies? and beyond?

An international seminar on water sports&leisure and yachting economy was held in Fengxian Bay on August 11th. Co-hosted by China Sports tourism Expo and Fengxian government, the conference is supposed to be another mile stone to yachting Fengxian. A good many water elites including famed scolors, bosses and medias , as the original title suggests, have      attended the meeting to co-explore the business oportunities.

Prior to the event of historical significance, rumors were raging that Fengxian's boating industry was pratically an impossible mission mainly due to the lack of natural waterways. The Jinhui connecting Huangpu and the bay is man-made and too narrow, even the blue seawater in the bay is man-made. But Fengxian, after missing tons of previous golden chances and miserable repositionings, claims he has refound the confidence from yachting, which is an enormous test and a tremendous temptation to the poorest district in Shanghai. Everything needs to be done from the scratch. Good luck , Fengxian!

I have noticed a kind of special culture called water culture in Fengxain. Lemme try to explain that from two angles.

Firstly, bridges abound here, small and big, old and new, among which are my favorite ancient stone ones. It is due to the omnipresent bridges that many many villages or towns are named after bridges. For instance, Nanqiao(capital of Fengxian) literally reflects that there must have sat a bridge called Southern Bridge. The ancient elegent southern bridge(see the picture) still shines in Guhua park, deserving to be called " No. one bridge spanning the southern pond".

Secondly, Fengxian has always been reclaiming land from the sea,    sort of similar to the land below sea level. Heritage-class sea dikes and many new levees can both be found in this region, not only to keep out floods but mainly to enlarge the farming land. Fengxian's three state-owned farms used to be a sea shoal, now important vegetabe planting or industry bases in Shanghai. As precious historical archives, the enormous changes achieved by hard work have been recorded and collected in May Fourth Agricultural Reclaimation Museum.                                                                              

（to be continued)                                                        

Excited to learn that the outer suburb Fengxian will hold some events of the upcoming 2007 Special Olymics and play host to distinguished guests from seven countries. No clue as to what other events besides cricket will be held and what other competition venues other than the Sports Center there will be in Fengxian. All I am told is that Fengxian is subdevided into four regions to undertake the reception task, namely Nanqiao(India),Qingcun(the Philippines), Fengcheng(Italy) and Fengpu Development Zone(Aruba, Suriname, Belize and Bermuda)--Where are the latter four places?

Special Olimpics in Fengxian in itself is an interesting topic and, I think, will provide " much much food for thought". For example, there will surely be lots of interesting stories inside and outside the arenas. And the activities are bound to provide an excellent chance to ehance mutual understanding. More over, Fengxian will be able to better review itself and further improve its style and taste.

No idea whether there are many people who is as ignorant as me about some basic facts ranging from the Special Games to guest countries. It is supposedly not a probem to the organizers, the volunteers and even the host families, who must have had intensive and extensive relating training. Then how about average people including me? Don't forget Fengxian is a countryside and a countryside who is eager to put a new face forward. Say, where can we average Fengxianese have access to the basic information? On the net? In the newspapers or on TV? I dunno. Some necessary publicity or a slight effort, and we will then know what etiquettes to observe and what knowledge to learn, which is beneficial to all sides.

Anyway, I've got to brush up my geography and sports textbooks now.    I know I can.

Fengxianist is deperately looking around for fodder to feed & salvage this cute pet and blog. Who can give me a hand?

Xinjiang gang are doing bad things again. Watch out for your belongings especially the valuables. It's estimated that populations of ethnic minorities who are resident or migrant in such a small district as Fengxian will be up to a staggering number of 5,000 in 2015. There is nothing trivial involved in the relationship between nationalities. I think the government can't turn a blind eye to such issues, and some problems should be prevented before it's too late. Better nip in the bud.

Generally, Westerners are better off than Esterners. It is true. But do you know the saying also goes for Fengxian? Fengxian has since ancient times been divided into East and West regions. East to Qingcun town is named " East Country", with Fengcheng town as its default center. Fengcheng is among the nine key towns given priority to by the municipal government, which is assumed to make a role of balance. But things don't go as expected. The new town Nanqiao, the capital of the district as well as the leader in the west , has developed comaparatively much faster and thereby put the East's hard-earned acchievement into the shade. The esterners swarm into Nanqiao to buy houses, further brodening the gap in between. So no wonder voices have never stopped that the goverment should focus more on the east. What do the " westners" think then? It's more like a never-ending seesaw battle. Shake off the inferiority complex and be ready to learn the more down-to-earth "westners".

It's reported this August will witness the unprecedented scale of road excavation movement across the region. Downtown Nanqiao will be hardest hit, where 10- strong Streets are claimed to need maintenance, repair or various undergound pipelines as usual. How big can Nanqiao be? Almost 20 streets are being dug up in this tiny town at the same time! Just imagine it. Only one word can precisely describe it, that is" Specutacular"! Continue to be holed in my air-conditioned closet, continue to have my food delivered. Period.

Konw the outcome of your search for Fengxian on the internet in English? Try google or Baidu and you'll get it. Remember the summer of the year 2003 when I was participating a English language training class. My Australian teacher Gordon who knew little Chinese googled Fengxian in Pinyin throughout the breaktime and waddaya know--it turned out there was basicly no single English language website at that time!

Now, four years later, the situation hasn't changed much. Still hard to google out the English version of this district. Speaking of changes, the only one is likely that Fengxian government website has an English version, which still can't be googled out directly with the Pinyin of Fengxian. As to the readability, I leave it to you. Anyway, it's an improvement, which proves that Fengxian doen't want to be forgot by the larger world stage, or more exactly, Fengxian is also eager to attract the global attention.

If Fengxian, as a part of big Shanghai, can't isolate itself from the trend of globlization, then this district should also try to make itself more diverse, economicly or culturally. I mean in every aspect, even including websites. What would he think if the Gordon remembered and regoogled Fengxian he has lived in for a month? Not so badly, those who are interseted in Fengxian but chinese illiterate do find some information about the place in the cyberspace. See Seven Castles's two article here and here , Wiki's here , a western media's speculation on Fengxian's yatch industry here, a Shanghai Daily's publicity here, and suprisingly, I 've run into another something interesting here, definetly news to me albeit outdated.

Above links are almost all the sources of news or information on Fengxian if you search in Pinyin. The problem is nothing else but the lack of a sytematic, one-stop style proffesional foreign languge portal. Something is better than nothing. For whatever it's worth, check out the following sites if you explore Fengxian in English--For the record, that's all we can offer for the time being. 1, Fengxian, Shanghai 2,Fengxian Investment        3,Fengpu Industrial Park        4,Chemical Industrial Park        5,Seaport Economy. 6, Fengxian Tourism.

I just came across the Google Earth and found myself hooked on it immediatly, searching up and down like crazy. My initial reaction was: Oh my is this hot! Have I grown a hevenly eye or what? Amazed by the magic power of the high technology. Meanwhile, I've gotta say it 's a pity that many places are not in the "patch areas". That's to say the imagery of the spot you need is not in the same high resolution or not as detailed as those in "patches". Are the so called "patches" the photos taken by the satellite? What causes the defferences between them and the surrounding areas? Can we have the up-to-date photos anytime if we have Google Earth downloaded and installed on our PCs?

Today I googled Nanqiao with the software and found the imagery was not new, taken about 4 years back. There are neither new residential complexes but the old farm lands or houses nor can you locate many new senic spots including the " BLue Sea & Gold Beach", Old as it is, the satellite picture of Nanqiao offers you a unique chance to exploit the area house by house from the space, and even all the way to downtown area along some highway. Absoulutely a cool way to travel and wiew how quickly places are changing. So without much ado, be a birman, exsert your free will and check out for yourself now.  

( Above is the sattelite picture of Fengxian Bus Terminal)

Yesterday we just couldn't be bothered to cook lunch ourselves and phoned in two pieces of pizza for 4 persons around 11AM. The order was delivered  to our doorstep in less than 30 minutes, hot and fresh in a insulated bag, by a pizza guy dressed in uniform. It was the first time we ate delivered pizza. It was yummy. The pizza was 50 yuan and the delivery was free.Tips before placing your order: #1, Nanqiao is a small town, still you’d better check if you live in the delivery area. #2, Some restaurants require minimum oder. #3, Book in advance.

Check out some restaurants with home service. Enjoy yourselves!

First step

Prepare the ingredients: white gourd, minced pork, soybean, egg, salt, black pepper , MSG and green onion.

Second Step

Mix the pork with the egg, then squeeze the mixture with hands into balls. Boil the meetballs until they look white in water.

Last Step

Remove the foam, put the rest ingredients ( in proper ratio) into the meat soup and keep cooking till it's boiling. That's all for the delicay of the day.

P.S.     The soup is simple but tasty, particularly suitbale in hot weather.

You call that news? I don’t, to say the least. To a guy who have stayed in this city for ages and have fully mentaly prepared, it is really hot but not to the ridiculous or frightening extent at all. My personal sense is that Shanghai’s summer temperatures are rising increasinly year on year and red hot alarm is nothing but a bluff. High temperature of over 40 degrees has long been a commonplace in downtown area, even without the exception of the suburbs. Shanghai is not only hot but humid in summer and it’s the unpleasant humidity that adds insult to injure, making the heat wave more unberable. To prevent heat stroke , people are mad for everthing air-conditioned or iced, which sells like hot cakes because it’s in hot demand in this hot season. Based on that consideration, who can deny high temperature is not a sweet-bitter thing? Having said that, I don't mind somebody's sending me coolness instead of warmth at the moment. Who is not the same then?

The other day, I snapped this shot on the football court of the sports center, which is next door to our residential quarter. At dusk, The whole center will be packed by huge crowds of people from out of nowhere. The sports equipments, indoors or outdoors, are all occupied. At this very moment, there is no such concept as open space here, for the roads are taken up either by tenis players or private vehicles. The football court is open but there is no one on the lawn, not to mention the flying ball. You must feel it hilarious if you follow the crowd onto the plastic track for the first time. Laps after laps, so these people, old or young, women or men, just walk or jog silently and quietly. I am not clear why even walking could be back in vogue, but quite sure many city dwellers haven’t experienced the feel of being drenched in sweat ( sweat under heat wave doesn't     count ) for a long long time, which they pretty much need.

It's a very lovely compus. The teaching and office complex looks grandiose, with exquisite lawns and a beautiful square surrounded by oderly huge buildings. There is a big water fountain near the gate, also a round intersection of all the roads in the school.

Each teacher, equipted with a labtop, can have multimedia lessons in any classroom via free wireless internet. The air-coned offices are spacious, the canteen food is ok and conference halls are comfortable. The students can learn a lot thanks to the strict plus humanistic manegement , which deserves special mention.

In a word, I like this campus with the architectural style of Cambridge.

Fengxian Rolling lantern, among Shanghai first batch of non-material cultrual heritiages, has enjoyed a history of more than 100 years. The bamboo-weaved lanterns sometimes can be really huge and heavy for the layman, but very tame and flexible as soon as changing hands. Only when you watch the lantern rolling performance with your own eyes can you really undertand why it is hailed as Fengxian’s No. one tresure. Yes, in addition to its clever integration of dances and stunts, it’s a perfect combination of power and beauty, most importantly, it’s unique, and I think it’s fair to say Rolling Lantern to Fengxian is what Peking Opera is to China.