Skateboarding in ShangHai 上海 – documentary

Firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea 柴米油盐酱醋茶. Apollo (YT) : The main focus of this video is salt. It is perhaps the most essential of the seven items important to Chinese culinary life: firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. LiZiQi shows how salt is refined traditionally in SiChuan, an inland province of China : salt water is extracted from a well, concentrated by boiling in a big pot with firewood, purified by adding soybean milk to remove colored impurities (which float to the top and are skimmed off), and further concentrated to give salt crystals. She then used the salt to prepare/cook a variety of food, including PiDan (a kind of preserved duck egg with a very unique flavor), hand-beaten beef ball (so elastic that it could bounce like a Ping-Pong ball), potato, stewed beef, and more ... Bonus film - LiZiQi, on white radish ... A garden within a garden : )

Filmed in November 2013. Places featured: Hong Kong *, Li River (GuangXi) *, LiJiang (YunNan), Tiger Leaping Gorge *, ChengDu (pandas), Tibet *, ShangHai, BeiJing (wild Great Wall *); * indicates most footage.

HuaShan lies in ShaanXi province and is one of China's Five Sacred Mountains; the highest peak is 2,155 meters (7,070 feet).

A talk by Australian Kevin Rudd ...

Plus a little of the canola fields of the HongHe HaNi Autonomous Prefecture in southern YunNan ...

The traditional Chinese philosophy is to live in harmony with nature rather than trying to conquer nature. A look at China's Green Dream and its amazing progress ...

With CCTV's Travelogue ...

No video in this post. At BB, we think this is something crucial to well-being and we'll do our best to convey our experience ... The most important point is - don't imagine that you can 'fix' things - at the start, one needs 3 or 4 meetings to relax and know someone - but beyond that, if things are not going well, get out early; one cannot 'fix' incompatibility, and certainly not a narcissist (they kind of know that they are wacko, but will never, ever admit it). 'Love' shouldn't require a lot of work; a bit maybe; but if one senses that it is all 'one way', or not going anywhere, quit. The relationship is very unlikely to get better; it almost certainly will get worse. Doomed. Save yourself years of wasted life. If you don't, expect to become bitter and twisted yourself. At BB, we feel that health is THE foundation to all else, so we do cover health in this regard, although primarily a travel and culture site. Thousand page books are not our thing; we get straight to the point. If you want to delve deeper, consider this - why is a relationship so important to you ? Going beyond 'animal instincts' is beyond many - they never really mature. If the immature instinct is made the 'gold standard', what can one expect ? If one cannot go beyond the animal brain, one is f****d [animal brain lingo]. The thing is, bad relationships that progress to having kids, can produce sad / bad kids (that may have to endure two decades of emotional abuse). And likely to repeat the cycle, and possibly go into politics, etc. - hence, it is very important to not be a part of this. Maybe, romantic 'love' is simply the grand distraction meme that helps keep the elite in power.

In a chance discovery, an entire army of terracotta warriors was found. The first emperor of China had them created and buried with him, to protect him in the afterlife. Construction of this mausoleum began in 246 BC and is believed to have taken about 700,000 workers and craftsmen 38 years to complete.

The Ming Tombs are a collection of mausoleums built by emperors of the Ming dynasty. They lie within the ChangPing District of BeiJing Municipality, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north-northwest of Beijing city center. The site was chosen based on the principles of Feng Shui by the third Ming emperor, YongLe. Construction began after completion of the Imperial Palace (Forbidden City) in 1420. Subsequent emperors placed their tombs in the same valley; 13 in total. The siting of the Ming dynasty imperial tombs was carefully chosen according to Feng Shui principles. A key guide is that bad spirits and cold winds from the north must be deflected; therefore, an arc-shaped valley area at the foot of the JunDu Mountains was selected. This 40 square kilometer area, enclosed by mountains in a pristine, quiet valley with dark earth and tranquil water became the necropolis of the Ming dynasty. A 7 kilometer (4 mile) path named the Spirit Way, or Sacred Way, leads into the complex, lined with statues of guardian animals and officials, with a front memorial gate consisting of three arches called the Great Red Gate; constructed in 1540, it is one of the biggest stone archways in China. Further in, lies the ShenGong ShengDe Stele Pavilion with a 50 tonne stone statue of BiXi carrying a memorial tablet. Four white marble HuaBiao (pillars of glory) are positioned at each corner of the pavilion; at the top of each is a mythical beast. Then come two pillars on each side of the path, whose surfaces are carved with a cloud design, and tops are shaped like a cylinder; these are of a traditional design and were originally beacons to guide the soul of the deceased, The path leads to 18 pairs of stone statues of mythical animals, which are all sculpted from single blocks; these are all larger than life size. After, the path leads to a three-arched gate known as the Dragon and Phoenix Gate. Two of the mausoleums are open to visitors, but it is the beauty of the valley, with orchards, and the sheer scale of the area used for the tombs, that make this a nice day out in the countryside.

Beautiful views ...