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.

    Thousands of persons in Peru are suffering from the disease cholera. Medical experts say it is the first time in their century that cholera has reached the western part of the world. The Untied States Centers for disease Control says the kind of cholera has been spreading throughout the world since 1961. It was discovered that year in Indonesia. Since the first case in Peru, more than sixteen thousand people have been affected and about one hundred have died.

    Cholera is caused by polluted food and water. People become infected (传染 ) when they eat the polluted food or drink the polluted water. If untreated immediately, they may die within hours. Most victims however , can be saved. treatment includes drugs and replacement of body fluids ( 液体) directly into the blood.

    Medical researchers have developed a vaccine ( 菌苗) medicines to protect against cholera. But the vaccine is only about 50% effective. And it protects against cholera for only about six months. Medical experts say the best way to fight cholera is to prevent it. They also say people should not eat uncooked food or food that has not been cooked long enough. People who live in areas where cholera has been found should wash their hands before eating and cooking. They should drink only water that has been boiled or made pure with chemicals.

    You may not know a lot of people when you start high school. Maybe your friends from middle school are going to a different high school. Even if you know other freshmen(新生), you still feel nervous that you don't know any upper-classmen. How are you going to make friends among this sea of unknown faces?

    Most high schools hold a freshman orientation(训练) before school actually starts. These are helpful not only because you learn your way around the building and get to meet some of your teachers, but you also get to meet fellow freshmen. That way, when you show up on your first day of school, you may already recognize a few familiar faces.

    When you talk to people at orientation, you'll probably find that a lot of them are feeling just like you are. They're all new to the school and don't know what to expect. Talking about a common concern with your classmates can help you develop friendships.

    The work in high school is something freshmen are probably worried about. The work in high school builds on what you learned in middle school, giving you a more advanced knowledge of many subjects. So you may find you have more work to do or that it's a bit more challenging. If you ever find your work too difficult, teachers can give you extra help.

    High school also has more after-school activities than middle school did, such as clubs, music and theater groups and sports teams. This is a good time to explore your interests and try new things.

    Middle school taught you the basics of academics, time management, and social skills while providing you with a little extra support and guidance. High school gives you the chance to learn how to be more independent and responsible.

    Growing up in the mountainous Sierra de Penamayor, in Asturias, northen Spain, Aladino Montes had been shooting deer ever since he was a child, but his life as a hunter came to an abrupt end 10 years ago, when he met Bambi, an adorable deer that has remained by his side ever since. Aladino has never shot an animal since.

    53-year-old Aladino recalls driving through the mountains in his little jeep, ten years ago, when he saw a couple of cows being followed by a skinny little deer. Deer don't usually hang out with cows, so he approached the animals for a closer look. That's when he noticed that the deer had several wounds and would have probably died without proper medical care. He put the injured animal in his car and drove back to his house when he nursed it back to health. But instead of running back towards the forests, the deer stayed by Aladino's side. They've been best friends ever since.

    He always loved animals, but his father had taught him to hunt deer as a child. He did it for food, not sports, but ever since he adopted Bambi, he hasn't shot a single animal.

    Aladino's cabin sits at 1,140 meters above sea level, offering tourists a beautiful view of the surrounding mountainside. On clear days, one can see all of central Asturias all the way to Gijon, but most people don't travel to Les Praeres for the view, they come to see Bambi, the friendly deer.

    Sometimes, Bambi will elk straight into the bar in search of Aladino and leave everyone with their mouth open, or even let people pet her. But she's always most comfortable at the side of her rescuer. She's so relaxed around him that she makes other deer feel safe as well.

    Getting less sleep has become a bad habit for most American kids. According to a new survey(调查) by the National Sleep Foundation, 51% of kids aged 10 to 18 go to bed at 10 pm or later on school nights, even though they have to get up early. Last year the Foundation reported that nearly 60% of 7- to 12-year-olds said they felt tired during the day, and 15% said they had fallen asleep at school.

    How much sleep you need depends a lot on your age. Babies need a lot of rest: most of them sleep about 18 hours a day! Adults need about eight hours. For most school-age children, ten hours is ideal(理想的). But the new National Sleep Foundation survey found that 35% of 10- to 12-year-olds get only seven or eight hours. And guess what almost half of the surveyed kids said they do before bedtime? Watch TV.

    “More children are going to bed with TVs on, and there are more opportunities(机会) to stay awake, with more homework, the Internet and the phone,” says Dr. Mary Carskadon, a sleep researcher at Brown University Medical School. She says these activities at bedtime can get kids all excited and make it hard for them to calm down and sleep. Other experts say part of the problem is chemical. Changing levels of body chemicals called hormones not only make teenagers' bodies develop adult characteristics, but also make it hard for teenagers to fall asleep before 11 pm.

    Because sleepiness is such a problem for teenagers, some school districts have decided to start high school classes later than they used to. Three years ago, schools in Edina, Minnesota, changed the start time from 7:25 am to 8:30 am. Students, parents and teachers are pleased with the results.

    I live in Mumbai, India, a big city, but I came from a remote Kerala village. When I was a boy, hardly anyone spoke English around me. So, at age nine, Dad sent me to Montfort, an exclusive boarding school. There, I had to speak English or be punished. My uniform was typical English public school: grey jacket，tie，and black leather shoes-so different from the clothes most people in my village wore. And our official school sport was cricket, something I'd never heard of, let alone played, before arriving.

    Montfort had been built for the children of the British officials who once ruled India, but by the time I arrived in 1961, nearly all the students were from powerful Indian families. Its English traditions, however, continued.

    When I returned home for the holidays still wearing my uniform, people stared at me like I was an alien. "Speak some English," they teased. Looking back, I unwittingly brought a bit of English culture to my village.

    But English and too much Western influence are precisely what many traditionalists and politicians fear. They ask: Will such influences finish off our own culture?

    Various leaders have tried to erase the British traditions, pulling down old British statues and replacing many British-rule city names with older native names. Some even suggest changing our weekly day of rest from the "Western" Sunday to the "Hindu" Tuesday.

    Extreme responses I say. You can't change history, and it's only natural for foreign influences to affect a nation's culture. So Indian culture, as it is today, is really a mixture derived from centuries of foreign invasions.

    Add to that the massive changes of the 20th century resulting from the television, jet-age travel, the Internet, etc.

    Everything from clothes and language to food keeps changing, yet we remain Indian. I believe that Asian cultures are too ancient and deep-rooted to be weakened by foreign influences.

    Allow me to illustrate my point. Some time ago, I took my visiting Singapore-born-and-raised cousin to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Later, while driving home，I talked about the fine Chinese food we'd just had.

    "Was that Chinese food?" my cousin exclaimed. "Oh, I didn't know." It must have tasted too Indian for him to realize it.

    Meanwhile, like countless others, my village has transformed over the past decades. Many people wear modern clothes and TV brings cricket into local homes. There's even an English- language school, where you can hear kids giggling, yelling, flirting-all in English, but with an Indian accent. Just like the Chinese food you get in India.

    Are these foreign influences something to worry about? I don't think so. India's Chinese food tastes pretty good to me!