4-Day Classic Beijing Tour

The 4-day classic Beijing tour is designed for tourists who come to visit China for the first time. It covers the most popular and typical places in Beijing, fully displaying the scenery, culture, history, local lifestyles and features, food and drinks, business, etc. for you.

Day 1:Arrival in Beijing

Your guide meets you at Capital Airport, and helps you check in at your hotel

Enjoy Beijing Duck as welcome dinner.

Accommodation: Beijing downtown

Day 2:The Great Wall & the Summer Palace

Start your day at the most famous part of the Great Wall, the Badaling Great Wall. Leave the downtown for the Great Wall at 8 am. Since it is a long drive to the Great Wall (about 2 hours' riding) have a break at the Jade Museum on the way. Lunch will be enjoyed in a local restaurant. In the early afternoon come back to the city and have a sightseeing tour of the Summer Palace.

Recommended Activity: Beijing Opera Show (Liyuan Theatre,19:30-21:10 every evening)

Accommodation: Beijing downtown

Day 3: Beijing city sightseeing & Local experience

Your guide meets you at the hotel at 8 am and set out for the day's touring: Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City.

After visiting the two sites, have a break and get ready forlunch.

Hutong visit: see some traditional arts of the old Beijing, suchas paper cutting and kite making, and visit a local family.

Accommodation: Beijing downtown

Day 4: Beijing Olympic sites

Visit the Olympic sites: Bird's Nest, Water Cube and OlympicPark, witnessing the fast developing modern China. Enjoy some free time after visiting the sites.

After lunch, it is shopping time and then the tour is over.

If Confucius(孔子) were still alive today and could celebrate his September 28 birthday with a big cake, there would be a lot of candles. He'd need a fan or a strong wind to help him put them out.

While many people in China will remember Confucius on his special day, few people in the United States will give him a passing thought. It's nothing personal. Most Americans don't even remember the birthdays of their own national heroes.

But this doesn't mean that Americans don't care about Confucius. In many ways he has become a bridge that foreigners must cross if they want to reach a deeper understanding of China.

    In the past two decades, the Chinese studies programs have gained huge popularity in Western universities. More recently, the Chinese government has set up Confucius Institutes in more than 80 countries. These schools teach both Chinese language and culture. The main courses of Chinese culture usually include Chinese art, history and philosophy(哲学). Some social scientists suggest that Westerners should take advantage of the ancient Chinese wisdom to make up for the drawbacks(缺点) of Western philosophy. Students in the United States, at the same time, are racing to learn Chinese. So they will be ready for life in a world where China is an equal power with the United States. Businessmen who hope to make money in China are reading books about Confucius to understand their Chinese customers.

So the old thinker's ideas are still alive and well.

    Today China attracts the West more than ever, and it will need more teachers to introduce Confucius and Chinese culture to the West.

    As for the old thinker, he will not soon be forgotten by people in the West, even if his birthday is.

    Daniel was born in New Orleans, LA., in 1962, slow to walk and talk, and short. He was the tiniest in his class, but he developed a warm, outgoing nature and was popular with his peers(同龄人). And he became skillful at sports.

    Baseball gave him his earliest challenge. He was an excellent players in Little League. At graduation, the coach named Daniel the team's most valuable player.

    His finest hour, though, came at a school science meeting. He entered an exhibit explaining how the circulatory system works. It was traditional, especially compared to（与…相比）the modern, computerized, blinking-light models entered by other students. My wife, Sara, felt embarrassed for him.

    It turned out that the other kids had made their exhibits. As the judges went on their rounds, they found that these other kids couldn't answer their questions. Daniel answered every one. When the judges awarded the Albert Einstein Plague for the best exhibit, they gave it to him.

    By the time Daniel left for college he stood six feet tall and weighed 170 pounds. He was in superb condition, but he quit baseball for English literature. I was sorry that he would not develop his athletic talent, but proud that he had made such a satisfactory decision.

    One day I told Daniel that the great failing in my life had been that I didn't take a year or two off to travel when I finished college. This is the best way, to my way of thinking, to broaden oneself. Once I had married and begun working, I found that the dream of living in another culture had disappeared. Daniel thought about this. After graduation, he worked as a waiter at college, a bike messenger and a house painter. With the money he earned, he had enough to go to Paris.

    The night before he was to leave, I tossed in bed. I was trying to figure out something to say. Nothing came to mind. Maybe, I thought, it wasn't necessary to say anything.

    The writings of Shakespeare are today little read by young people in Britain. His young readership is limited to those who choose to study literature at university.

    Shakespeare's work, together with most other classics, is seen as remote, and written in a 400­year­old version of English that is about as inviting as toothache.

    Still, in Britain schools, it is compulsory to study the bard(诗人), and when something is made compulsory, usually the result is boredom, resentment(憎恨) or both.

    This was my experience of the classics at school. But when I reached my late teenage years, I had a change of heart. Like every other young person since the dawn of time, the world confused me. I wanted answers, so I turned to books to find them.

    I went on to take a PhD in literature and have taught it in Britain and China. I have never regretted it. There is something in literature that people want, even if they don't read books. You see this in the popularity of TV and movie adaptations of great works, the recent film version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice being a case in point. These popular adaptations may help increase people's interest in the classics.

    Reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet may perhaps lead to a reading of Shakespeare's actual play. If that is the case, then I welcome the trend. But do not make the mistake of thinking that it is the same thing. Shakespeare is a poet. His greatness is in his language. Reading someone else's rewriting of his work is like peeling a banana, throwing away the fruit, and eating the skin. Take on the original. It really is worth the effort.

The Alexander technique

    Until earlier this year, I didn't know anything about the Alexander technique—and saw no reason to think I should. One day, the backache I regularly suffered was more painful. I was brought up to think that the preferred way of dealing with aches is to do nothing and hope they'll go away, but I eventually went to the doctor. After examining me, he said, "You actually have bad posture (姿势). Go off and learn the Alexander technique." Three months later I could walk straighter and sit better.

    The Alexander technique is a way of learning how you can get rid of harmful tension in your body. The teaching focuses on the neck, head and back. It trains you to use your body less severely and carry out the movements that we do all the time with less effort. There is little effort in the lessons themselves, which sets apart the Alexander technique from yoga or pilates, which are exercise-based. A typical lesson involves standing in front of a chair and learning to sit and stand with minimum effort. You spend some time lying on a bench with your knees bent to straighten the spine (脊椎) and relax your body while the teacher moves your arms and legs to train you to move them correctly.

    The technique helps to break the bad habits accumulated over years. Try folding your arms the opposite way to normal. This is an example of a habit the body has formed which can be hard to break. Many of us carry our heads too far back. The head weighs four to six kilos, so any inappropriate posture can cause problems for the body. The technique teaches you to let go of the muscles holding the head back, allowing it to go back to its natural place on the top of our spines.

    So who was Alexander and how did he come up with the technique? Frederick Alexander, an Australian actor born in 1869, found in his youth that he had vocal (声音的) problems during performances. He analyzed himself and realized his posture was bad. He worked on improving it, with excellent results. He brought his technique to London and opened a teacher-training school, which is still successful today.

    So if you're walking along the road one day with shoulders bent forward, feeling weighed down by your troubles, give a thought to the Alexander technique. It will help you walk tall again.

    London's newest skyscraper (摩天大楼) is called the Shard and it cost about 430 million pounds to build. At a height of almost 310 metres, it is the tallest building in Europe. The Shard has completely changed the appearance of London. However, not everyone thinks that it is a change for the better.

    The Shard was designed by the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano. When he began designing the Shard for London, Piano wanted a very tall building that looked like a spire (尖顶). He wanted the glass surfaces to reflect the sky and the city. The sides of the building aren't regular. So the building has an unusual shape. It looks like a very thin, sharp piece of broken glass. And that is how the building got the name: the Shard. Piano says that the spire shape of the Shard is part of a great London tradition. The shape reminds him of the spires of the churches of London or the tall masts (桅杆) of the ships that were once on the river Thames.

    The Shard has 87 floors. At the top, there is an observatory. At the moment the building is empty, but eventually there will be a five­star hotel. There will also be top quality restaurants, apartments and offices.

    Before building work began, a lot of people didn't want the Shard though the plans were approved. Now they are still unhappy about the Shard. Some critics say that such a tall skyscraper might be good in a city like New York, but not in London. They say that the best thing about the Shard is its spire shape. But that is the only thing. There is no decoration, only flat surfaces. The Egyptians did that 4, 500 years ago. They also think the Shard is too big for London. It destroys the beauty of the city.

    Other critics don't like what the Shard seems to represent. They say that the Shard shows how London is becoming more unequal. Only very rich people can afford to buy the expensive private apartments and stay in the hotel. But the people who live near the Shard are among the poorest in London. So the Shard seems a symbol of the division in society between the very rich and the poor.

    The Shard now dominates the London skyline. It is not certain, however, that ordinary London citizens will ever accept it as a valuable addition to the city.