Dr. Mark Nan Tu

The path way which leads to the starting point of the hiking trail

The leaves are turning red

Close ups of the red leaves

I took a business trip back to Beijing during the weekend. I over heard from the radio that the maple leaves in the Fragrance Hill are turning red. The annual Red Leaf festival is on. I had some time on Saturday and decided to visit the Fragrance Hill and take pictures.

We arrived around 3 pm in the afternoon. I knew a lesser known path. To avoid the usual jam in the touristy spots, we took this path. This path started at the Fragrance Hill south road and leads to the JinShan cemetery at the middle of the mountain. There is a packing lot at the JinShan cemetery. From there, we hiked to the top of the hill. The trail is build with stone steps and is a rather easy climb. We saw leaves of the vicinity trees turn red. We took pictures of the trees and leaves along the trail.

When we reached the top of the mountain, we could see the panoramic view of the Beijing. The city is covered with a dust (gaze) cap. The visibility is rather low. We walked along the mountain range and we can see more red leaves. We met some tourists but not nearly as much as those in the Fragrance Hill Park. We could see the top of the Fragrance Hill

The entrance. The two Chinese characters means large.

Ralph is a German and a former CEO for mobile.de which was later acquired by eBay. He is also an investor and advisor to our company.
He came to visit our GuangZhou office. Since this is his first visit to China, we are planning to impress him. So we took him to the YuMing village (fisherman

The West Street at night

A flute seller in the West Street

There is an old Chinese saying: The scenery in Guilin is the best in the world. But the scenery in YangShuo is even better than Guilin.

Yangshuo is 4 hours by boat and 1 hour by bus from Guilin. The famous Li river connects the two cities. The surrounding countryside is incredibly beautiful and peaceful. The landscape along the Li river is sometimes referred as the 100 li (50 km) of pictorial painting. It is dotted with Karst peaks and the Li river winds its way around them.

Yangshuo is located in GuangXi province and very close to Vietnam; It is a perfect place for weekend getaway for Chinese and the last stop in China before heading for Southeast Asia for international travelers. Many travelers find Yangshuo a worthy escape from the evils of the modern world.

Yangshuo is a laid back small town. Yet, the local tourism is surprisingly well developed with excellent choice for hotels, restaurant, and cafes. Most of the commercial activities are concentrated in a short street called the West Street.

We went for a visit to Guilin and Yangshuo during the national holiday. We flew off from GuangZhou to Guilin and spend the first night in Guilin. We then took the Li river tour, a 4 hour boat ride upstream from Guilin to YangShuo. The tour traveled through some of the most pictorial water ways along the Li river. It is definite a highlight from the whole Yangshuo experience.

We booked the Macro Polo hotel which is in the center of the West Street. The National Day holiday (golden travel week) brought many tourists. The price for our room was significantly inflated. We paid some serious money for the room which offers the best view in the West street. The West street is bustling with backpackers, travel groups and globetrotters. The noise of the disco downstairs lasted well into the late night.

We moved to the Morning Breeze hostel the second day. It is a nice little guest house on the edge of the city. It offers quite retreat, friendly staff and free bike rent. We stayed in the hostel for the next three days. We had to pay over 200RMB/night for a room that normally should cost no more than 80RMB. We spend one day in the ShiWaiTaoYuan or Shangri-La, a small village 20 km out sided the city. We also watched the night show of impression. ShanJie Liu, directed by the renowned Chinese director ZhangYiMou.

The best way to experience YangShuo is on a bike. We took bikes from our hostel and rode to the country side. It was truly an unforgettable experience. We rode on a less known track and went through some remote villages. The villagers and their cows, the local ethnic buildings are mixed with the lush vegetations in the mountains, the endless rice fields, and the tranquil rivers. The distant local folk song just added more flavor and left us an ever lasting impression.

Yangshuo is filled with restaurants which offer variety of food. We had a very good western style dinner in the Red Star caf

I recently signed a rental contract. Besides signing with my signature, I was asked to inprint my finger print.

Finger print as a signature has a long history in China. In ancient times, many people are illiterate and thus unable to the sign their names. The finger print becomes the replacement for signature. In Chinese, there is a word called QianZi HuaYa. It means sign with your finger print (rather than your signature).

The finger print as signature was almost distinct after 1949. Upon recently, we see a revival of using finger print to sign documents such as the real estate purchases and the leasing agreements. The finger print signature offers better identification and is easy to use (although a bit messy). Most importantly, it was a common practice in China for thousands of years.

Finger print as signature was rather rare in western world. In 1882, Gilbert Thompson of the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico, used his own thumb print on a document to prevent forgery. This is the first known use of fingerprints in the United States. However, usingfigure print as a replacement of signature has never been popular in the western countries.

The finger print does offer more security than the signature. The signatures are easily forged .However, the finger print is unique for each person. Through trained eyes, the finger print offers more security than the signature.

The finger print as an identification has been used in many security products. I use the technology daily as my Lenove (IBM) notebook computer and our office all use finger print lock system.

National Day holiday in China is 7 days. Hundreds of millions of Chinese simultaneously take on the road which creates the biggest jam for the transportation network, bus stations, train stations, airports, bike routes and even walkways. The last day of the 7 day holiday is the most traveled. I happened to be one of the people that contributed to the congestion in that day.

I was traveling from ShenZhen to GuangZhou. I took the bus and arrived at the GuangZhou bus station at around 4 pm. There were so much people and I had to wait 20 minutes patiently in line for the taxi.

As soon as I got in front of the taxi, a man and a woman came up from the other direction and wanted to get into my taxi. They did not wait in line. I was very angry. So I shouted to the man: Hey, get in line. This is my taxi. The man shout back in Chinese: Fxxk u, I have never waited in line in my life. The woman wanted to open the door. I was furious and hold the door. The man was continuously yelling and threatening to hit me with his fist.

I have heard a lot about the problems in the GuangZhou bus station. Many of my friends warmed me of not getting into any trouble in that place. Judging from his size and strength, I can easily take on him. I was not going to back down.

What happened next shocked me.

A security guard jumped over the fence with a swift move punched the guy right in the face with two other security guards followed. The man started to yell back but he was not going to fight rather just created a lot of noise. Bulking dog never bites. While all the attention was focused on the security guards and the guy, the woman was trying to stop the fight by pushing the security guards back.

The yelling back and forth lasted about 30 seconds and the man took off with the woman. I saw them went to different directions. The woman disappeared quickly and there were a few other women waiting for her at the corner of the street. The man had another man waiting for him also at the street corner. They were continuously yelling and shouting while walked away

When we all thought that the whole episode was over, one of the security guard searched in his pants and shouted: My cell phone is gone. Where is my cell phone?

All of the security guards started to chase the two men. I checked the pockets in my pants: my wallet and the cell phone are still there. Thank god!

LongJi (or Dragon Backbone in Chinese) is famous for its large scale terrace field. The field dated back 600 years. The legend goes like this. An evil emperor wanted to extinct the Yao minority. The emperor ordered the Yao people to move into the reservation which is located deep in the mountains. He thought that they could not survive. However, Yao people build the rice field using the limited space offered by the mountainous terrace. Year after year, generation after generation, the Yao people expanded the field and it becomes the terrace farm as we see today. They lived happily surrounded by the beautiful mountains and the green terrace field.

LongJi terrace is located in the LongShen County, some 87km out of Guilin in GuangXi province. My tour bus took over two hours to negotiate the twist and turns and finally arrived as the foot of the LongJi mountain. From there, we changed to a smaller bus which took us to the middle of the mountain. We hiked the last mile by foot.

Besides the spectacular fields and impressive local village buildings, I had a rare opportunity to photograph the local Yao women combing their hair. This is not ordinary hair. The village down the mountain was certified by the Guinness World Records as the longest hair village in the world.

When I was climbing the stairs, I was followed by the five local Yao women. I later realized that they had no reason to climb to the top. Their sole objective is to offer me the opportunity to photograph them. They wanted 50 Yuan and allow me to photograph the entire process of combing their hair. I negotiated down to 30 Yuan and told them that I can not photograph all 5 of them, but can offer 30 Yuan to photograph 3 out of 5. However, they told me that they would do it for 30 Yuan.

5 of them put the basket down which they carried at the back. They let their impressive long and thick hair down. Then I noticed that they actually had two bunches of hair. The local Yao people only cut their hair once in their life time when they reach puberty at age of 16-18. They saved their cut hair and put them up together with the new hair.

I continuously pushed my shutter and recorded the whole process. I noticed that one of the women had a dark blue cloth over her hair while the others do not. She is unmarried. I told myself. One of the women told me that she was already 50. I looked at her long and thick hair and joked with her that she looked like only in her 30s. I must admit that their healthy hair make all of them look at least 10 year younger than their age.

After the show, I asked for permission to take a picture of me with the group. I gave them 100 Yuan and asked for 50 Yuan back. I wanted them to have an easy calculation. I thanked them and wished them luck. I scontinued my hike towards the top of the mountain. All but one of the women went down the mountain whom I later met in the market selling local made silver decorations.

I visited Guilin with my parents when I was very young. But I was too young to remember much. The only impression left was the Li river and elephant mountain. I spend the 2007 national holiday in Guilin and Yangshuo. I

ShiWaiTaoYuan ?or direct translation of The Peach Field Out of This World in Chinese?came from an Ancient Chinese poem. The writer Tao Qian lived in Jin Dynasty, some 1700 years ago. In his poem, he depicted a community of people who lived in harmony and surrounded by stunning scenery only seen in the paintings, an utopian to some extend. Although the actual village of his writing is never known, the word ShiWaiTaoYuan has become the synonym for the generations to search for, a place for the most livable village in China. A village 20 km out of YangShuo claims that it is such a place.

YangShuo is known for its beautiful mountains, lush green and running river. There is a Chinese saying that the best scenery in China is in Guilin that is until you see YangShuo. Meaning the scenery in YangShuo is even better than Guilin. The small village 20km out of YangShuo has all the beautiful surrounding as YangShuo without the typical problems of the city. That is why it is called the ShiWaiTaoYuan and claimed to be the best livable small village in China. The place is currently been developed as a tourist attraction and yet the villagers still maintain the same peaceful life style that they had enjoyed for thousands of years.

The entrance ticket is 60 Yuan which includes a 20 minutes boat ride. Much like the boat ride in the everglades in Florida, visitors can enjoy the green ambient decorated by thick vegetations and colorful flowers. Visitors can also watch some local folk dance performance from the boat. The dance is shown at the stages by the river back. In my opinion, these shows are not well designed as the boat zoomed across water at such as speed and leaves no time for visitors to enjoy the show.

What really impressed me was the visit to the guest house after the boat ride. The guest house was very well designed to blend the local architecture and the surrounding rice field. From the upper level of the guest house, one can see the local villagers farming with the backdrop of the famous landmark such as the BiJa Mountain. Visitors can have an up close and personal view of the artistry work done by the local artisans. They can also buy these beautiful pieces such as weaving cloth and the colorful costumes of the local minority people.

I went to the ShiWaiTaoYuan during my recent trip to YangShuo. I took the bus from YangShuo and stayed in the village for about 1.5 hours. I give a 4 out of 5 stars for this location and recommend it as a worthy place to see in YangShuo. The scenery, the service, the location, the historical significance, the culture display, the transportation and infrastructure are all good. The only thing that I dislike is the local folk dance shows. They are poorly designed and coordinated, and certainly not suitable to be viewed from the moving boat.

A real estate project near the ChaoYang district Beijing

Every time I move into a new city and stay for more than one year, I will study the local real estate market. If I find some good deals, I would purchase it immediately. If I leave the city, I’d put it for rent. I have invested in real estate in the United States and China. I have seen some good returns on these investment.

I was having my dinner today and glanced through a real estate article in a magazine. The article advocates the real estate investment as a retirement fund. It said that in the future, the riches in China are not the internet darlings or technology elite, but 45-60 elders. Because they buy real estate investments when they are young. The appreciation of real estate bring them wealth. I very much support this view. My experiences of real estate investment in the United States and China prove this view is correct. In the United States, I saw many rich people doing business and invest in real estate. In China, those who own real estate as investment have become very wealthy for the past few years. For the next 20 years, those who own many real estate investments particularly in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai or ShenZhen will become truly rich.

Not long ago, I gave a presentation to our university first year graduate students. The intention is to introduce the research concept to them and prepare them for the graduate studies. I prepared two PPT documents, one for my research, and the other one for the cash slow analysis in the real estate investment and some case studies from my own experience. I asked the students which topic they would want to hear. Almost all the students said that they would want to listen to real estate investment. With the real estate price skyrocketing in major cities, no wonder students see it as a quick way to gain wealth.

I have no doubt that China’s large cities, such as: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai will see a very long-term appreciation in real estate. A long-term bull market for real estate had begun. 5 years ago, many of the people felt that 5000 Yuan / square meter in expensive for Beijing. 2 years ago, 8,000 Yuan / square meters was high. This year the average price for Beijing apartment is over 12,000 / square meters.

In the macro Chinese economical environment, there is excessive liquidity which resulted in some bubble in both real estate and the stock market. There might be some corrections in real estate price such as those corrections we saw in 2003 and 2004. However, over the long term (10 years), Beijing’s housing prices will continue to rise. In the near future, the average prices of over 30,000RMB / square meters is not an imagination.

In the Chinese media, there is a newly invented word called the

I went for a free model shooting event in Beida (Beijing University). I have never had the luxury to shoot a model in the US as I always thought that they are very expensive. I began to participate in events organized by the local photography communities even since I returned to Beijing in 2004.

There are many good looking young girls who are interested in becoming a model. They will need professional photo albums. The local photography community also needs these girls as their practicing models. Therefore, there are people who organize such practicing events. I have been to a few