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SINGAPORE, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Travel is the top pursuit for nearly three-quarters of high income Asia-Pacific households, according to a survey released on Monday. According to the Spending Patterns and Perspectives of High Income Households survey, some 73 percent of high income Asia Pacific households said travel is their top personal interest over the next two years, well ahead of food (43 percent) and music (31 percent), and 63 percent of respondents said they went away for weekends overseas every six months or so. The survey, conducted by Visa in late 2008, interviewed 4,106 people from countries and regions such as Singapore, South Korea, Australia, India, Japan, China, China's Hong Kong and Taiwan. All respondents were aged 18 and above with equal gender split and were from the top 20-40 percent of households for each marketplace. The survey also showed that respondents from China's Hong Kong and India are the region's most frequent travelers. And the most popular destinations among the region's high income respondents were Japan, Australia and the United States.

NEW YORK, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of thousands of people on Tuesday gathered along Fifth Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, to watch St. Patrick's Day Parade. A band marches down the Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York, the United States, March 17, 2009. Hundreds of thousands of people on Tuesday gathered along Fifth Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, to watch St. Patrick's Day Parade. (Xinhua Photo) The parade is regarded as the world's oldest and largest parade of its kind. St. Patrick's Day is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick, one of the patron saints of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on March 17. The day is the national holiday of Ireland. It is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland and a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland and Montserrat. In Canada, Great Britain, Australia, the United States, and New Zealand, it is widely celebrated but is not an official holiday. A girl watches the St. Patrick's Day Parade along the Fifth Avenue in New York, the United States, March 17, 2009. Hundreds of thousands of people on Tuesday gathered along Fifth Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, to watch St. Patrick's Day Parade.(Xinhua/Gu Xinrong) In celebration of St. Patrick's Day, the White House fountains and lawns had been dyed green. A spokeswoman said it was First Lady Michelle Obama's idea. She said it was inspired by celebrations in Chicago, where the river is dyed green. Spectators watch the St. Patrick's Day Parade along the Fifth Avenue in New York, the United States, March 17, 2009. Hundreds of thousands of people on Tuesday gathered along Fifth Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, to watch St. Patrick's Day Parade. (Xinhua Photo)

Source: CCTV.com 02-24-2007 10:06 Wang’s Grand Courtyard is situated in Lingshi County at the south edge of Jinzhong basin of Shanxi Province. The family started in Jingsheng Town, which is only 12km east of Lingshi County, that takes Mianshan Mountain as screen in the east, looks over Fenhe River in the west. Wang's Grand Courtyard is an example in handing down the five thousand years' old Chinese civilization and a masterpiece of Chinese civil residence architecture of Qing Dynasty; with a total area of up to 150,000 sq.m, ranks in the provincial-level cultural relic protection. The three huge architectural complexes of Gaojiaya, Red-Gate Fort and Ancestral Temple now opened up as "Chinese Civil Residence Art House". It was set up in the periods of Qing Dynasty, with an sum area of 45,000 sq.m and covering 123 wow gold large and small compounds with 1,118 rooms. The two architectural complexes of Gaojiaya and Red-gate Fort are confronting each other in the east-west direction. It also connected to each other through a well-protected bridge on the hill. The two compounds have the general characteristics of relying on mountains and complying with the terrain in layer upon layer. The great momentum and complete functions basically inherit the courtyard style of house. In addition, the carvings on brick, wood and stone have great originality with their elegant decoration unified practicability and impressive appearance. It ranks in an extremely high cultural grade of Chinese residential designs. The Gao Jia Ya Architectural Complex had been built by the brothers of Wang Rucong and Wang Rucheng, the wang’s 17th generation, within the period of Qing Dynasty from 1796 to 1811. It covered about 2,000 sq.m of land including 35 large and small courtyards and 342 rooms. The buildings and gardens are well arranged buy wow gold adapting themselves for the geographical conditions having magnificent manner and completed functions, inheriting the courtyard style formed in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Wang’s Courtyard perfectly satisfies the requirements of the three architectural elements of "practicality, stability, and elegant form" but more importantly also in that it represents the novelty in the ranges from cultural implication to social scale and imposing manner from terrain selection to internal structure design. Under the prerequisite of compliance with courtesy system and striving for practicality, the whole architecture combines the gardening art with the courtyard style as a whole, both keeps the traditional style of North-China civil residence and fully uses of South-China gardens. Wang's family entered time of great prosperity in the period of Emperor Kangxi, Qianlong and Jiaqing were in positions from 1722 to 1796 when it went in for large-scale construction, built residences, ancestral halls and grave-yard. In such period, there are twelve persons from Wang's family who held offices as fifth-to second-rank officials in the government. Since the eighteenth century (in the period of Daoguang), Wang's family gradually declined, and the reason for it lay in that, in addition to the social, political, economic and other objective factors, its descendants did not try to make a good showing and got extravagant day by day. They cast away the fine moral characters handed down from their ancestors. Some of them were out of studies while contributing money for official posts, and some neglected farming while indulging themselves in smoking opium. Finally, Wang's family went to declination just like the falling buildings. Though individual rich families still ran firms and shops within the province and in Beijing and Tianjin before the War of Resistance Against Japan. Wang's family has experienced 27 generations for more than 680 years. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were many wealthy businessmen built large mansions on the fertile land of Jiangxi province. The architecture works that embody the dreams of a family have become a great cultural legacy for contemporaries… Today, everything of the mansions may be a masterpiece of the private residential culture in northern China. It symbolizes an excitement of the memory of a nation about its rich history and glorious civilization. Shangxi Province is reputed to be a treasure house of Chinese ancient architecture, and to the date, 106 family compounds dating before the Song Dynasty from 960 to 1279 have been found here, accounting for 70 percent of the nation’s wood-structured buildings of the same age. Chang’s family house has its uniqueness of geographic structure. It has left a mystery of design. The courtyard has more doors on a straight line and has more than usual three sets on one unit. Of cause doors are not confront each other to meet the terms of good fengshui. The ancient Chinese people pursued poetic charming while building gardens and stressed geomantic quality and rites while creating mansions. Some large families such as Yus built both gardens and mansions. However, as independent structures, the gardens and mansions were all built according to their respective rules. On the other hand, Yus family amphsize library more than any other functions It shows not only the admiration to study, but the foundation of family background. Most mansions integrate natural landscape with artificial buildings and represents a philosophy of respecting nature and combining the heaven and man. It features strict structures, an exquisite layout, a convergent manner, and a free and easy style. Noble but not overbearing, magnificent but no volatile, the mansions bear wisdom and moral standard and represents the feudal culture and thoughts as an integration of commerce, culture and officialdom. The perfect blending of the mansions practical functions and artistic designs shows ancient architects’ superb techniques in creating complex art on a simple plane. Both the entire composition of the mansions and the designs of details show the glamour of Chinese residential house culture. It stands in an imposing manner with a profound meaning. Each of the engravings in the mansion is a fantastic artwork and contains a touching story or a life philosophy.

MIAMI – Seeking a getaway despite the downturn, Olivia Gonzalez called her travel agent with an agenda. "I said, what kind of deals do you have?" said the Miami resident, who is in her 60s, standing outside the Port of Miami. What she found was a six-day, five-night cruise through the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos for $299 a person. That was all the convincing Gonzalez and thousands of other passengers have needed lately to set sail. Though vacations are disposable when money gets tight, the cruise industry has kept ships full with deep discounts and some itinerary changes to shorter, cheaper voyages. Norwegian Cruise Line is sailing three-and four-day swings for the first time since 2004. Carnival Corp. is offering free state room upgrades and more Caribbean choices — a quick skip from the Miami port — in 2009 to accommodate demand. "Consumers are looking for more value for their vacation dollar," said Howard Frank, Carnival's chief operating officer, on a recent conference call with analysts. "And our shorter, less expensive Caribbean cruise products are performing much better than our premium and luxury, longer cruise products. So we are seeing a consumer trade-down to value." The major cruise lines are also seeing vacationers wait longer to commit. Before the downturn, bookings averaged about six months in advance, maybe eight months for luxury trips, said Bob Sharak, executive director of the Cruise Lines International Association. "People are deferring their purchases to the last minute," he said. "They're booking, but it causes the operators some degree of agitation, because it takes longer to put that sailing on the books. "I don't think that's something unique to our cruise business right now. I think all travel is like that." Carnival is offering three- and four- day trips to Mexico and the Bahamas starting at $209 for the lowest-level rooms at the last minute, a nearly 50 percent discount in some cases. A four-day Baja California, Mexico cruise sailing in February and now selling at that rate would cost $399 later, while a three-day Bahamas vacation leaving Jan. 23 is available for $219 instead of $349. Norwegian's short Bahamas cruises were starting at $229 through mid-April. Long considered a good vacation value, the cruise industry is holding up better than some competitors in this climate. The Port of Miami saw record cruise traffic of 3.8 million passengers from January to November 2008, a 10.5 percent increase over the previous year. Sharak predicts overall occupancy will continue to increase, despite grim predictions for 2009 in the industry and economy overall. Both Carnival and Royal Caribbean have suspended stock dividends, a sign of some distress, and last month Carnival lowered its revenue predictions for 2009. "I'm not minimizing today's situation. We've not seen an economic situation like this in America or globally in my lifetime," Sharak said. "However, if history is an indicator of the future, the business itself has been resilient in these varied markets, and I think right now we're showing that as well." Carnival has rolled out a new pricing scheme to entice further advance commitments. The "Early Saver" program offers 25 percent discounts for certain trips booked up to three months before departure, plus a guarantee those passengers will get the same savings if rates drop. "The good news is that consumers are still taking their vacations, but the vacation decision is for next month, rather than next year," Frank told investors. For consumers, the cruise lines' push to fill big ships can mean big savings. Shannon McClelland was shopping for a birthday gift for her boyfriend two months ago when she found a five-day cruise sailing out of Miami for $1,500 a couple, including airfare from New York. "Today is his birthday, so this is his birthday present," said McClelland, of New York. "I was just looking for something nice, it seemed doable, so we did it." Source: chinadaily.com.cn

Wuhan Botanical Garden, one of the several principal gardens in China, covers an area of about 70 hectares. More than ten landscapes including special gardens and beautiful horticulture spots have been formed these years. they are Aquatic Plant Garden, Rare Endangered Plant Garden Chinese Gooseberry Garden, Ornamental Garden ,Tree Garden, Pine and Cypress Garden, Bamboo Garden and so on. There are always so many kinds of flowers blooming almost over the whole year, and we can see various interesting cheap runescape power leveling strange and rare species growing vigorously in the large greenhouse, also a pleasure green overflowing around the Center Lawn, Moreover, many sorts of tourism facilities are available here and there. Up to present about 4,000 species have been introduced or cultivated. Since spring and fall coming, some magnificent exhibitions of famous flowers would be regularly held in the garden . You can say here has been getting into a real plant kingdom in which herbs and bushes and arbors flourish harmoniously with birds frolicking. WBG has gradually developed into the biggest germplasm reservation center of Central China and biodiversity protection base of north subtropical flora in China. 　　In order to promote its scientific research level, WBG enhanced series of cooperation with domestic and foreign institutes and botanical gardens in the fields of science and research intelligence communicating, teaching, staff training and symposium organizing, and established long term relations with other 44 countries and regions in seed exchange, technique cooperation, professional education and culture communication. These obviously have a robust virtue circle on WBG's research and development and consequently improve its reputation and influence in the world. 　　WBG has made excited achievement in science knowledge popularization, The number of pop-science tourists reaches to 300,000 every year, thereby it has been honored the National Pop-science Education Base, Juvenile Pop-Science Education Base, and technology, indoctrinating patriotism and protecting the environment by the Wuhan city and Hubei province governments. 　　Ever since the establishment of WBG, more than forty new varieties of economic fruit trees, landscape afforesting and medicine plants have been selected or bred. The garden has been contributing great to the society. 　　WBG has achieved significant economic and social benefits in product spreading, technique consultation and training, plant propagation, scheme and design of afforesting work and constructi on, selling of some kinds of economic plant, landscape plant, seed and seedlings of ornamental plant. runescape gold(source: wuhantime.com)