[ablium]

I was in China last week. This is the first time for me to stay in my birth city for Chinese Lunar New Year (February 18th this year) since I left the city 29 years ago. My birth city is the capital of a coastal province. I estimate that more than 95% buildings that I knew when I was a child have been demolished. The city looks completely new. The fireworks and firecrackers lasted for three days during the Lunar New Year seasons.

I am amazed again by the speed of the city landscape transformation as every time I visit China. Number of cars has increased significantly comparing to what I saw two years ago. I personally drove a car for the first time in China. The road and expressway quality is as good as in the US. I am particularly impressed by the well grown and maintained plants along the side of expressways, which are rarely seen in the US. The expressway is not as busy as in US because China does not have as many cars as US now. Car parking space is a big problem in the city. There are all brands of cars, including European Fiat, Renault, Citron, and Peugeot, which are not seen in US because these car makers are not competitive in US market. I also saw sale stores of Ferrari and Maserati, the high class Italian sport car brands.

There is no problem to access this forum from China and connection speed is quite fast. The internet connection speed is 10 Mbit/second in the residential building that I stayed because optical fiber has reached the building.

I saw a slogan in both Chinese and English on the wall of an elementary school, which probably reflects the current spirit in China. “Set up a farsighted goal”, “Improve yourself with unremitting effort”. I felt that the slogan is interesting and so I took a photo of the building. See the attached file.