Category: City Guide

Top 1: The Forbidden City（紫禁城/故宫） Also known as the Imperial Palace, or the Palace Museum, the Forbidden City was the place where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out their administration and lived. Now it is open to the public as a palace museum where people can see the great traditional palace architecture, enjoy the treasures kept in the palace, and learn of the legends and anecdotes of the imperial family and the court.

Kate Moss could lead Topshop into China after the fashion chain's billionaire owner Sir Philip Green said he was in "advanced discussions" to open its first outlets in the country.时装连锁业巨头，亿万富翁菲利普.格林爵士声称他目前在深入洽谈于中国开办第 一家销售商店之事宜。而这之后不久，凯特.摩丝将率Topshop（英国快速时尚品牌） 进军中国市场。
With the model set to put her name to a new collection for the retailer, due to launch in 40 countries next April, Green said: "We could use that as an opportunity to open 20 to 30 pop-up stores within department stores in China."该公司专供零售销售的最新系列服装将于明年四月在四十个国家发售，而摩丝也 确定用自己的名字为次系列代言。在此大好形式之下，格林称:"我们将利用此机会， 在中国各大商场开办20-30间快闪商店。"
Moss's latest collaboration with Topshop will be the first since she walked away from a previous project three years ago. The model, who was paid a reported £3m for her first collaboration, will work on the new collection with stylist Katy England and Topshop's creative director, Kate Phelan. At 39, she is old enough to be the mother of many Topshop customers, but Green insisted she still had fashion influence.继三年前与该公司的合作项目结束后，此次双方再度携手。这位名模将与设计师 凯蒂.英格兰以及创意总监凯特.费伦就新系列建立合作伙伴关系。据报道，该名模在 与此间公司首都合作之际酬劳就高达三百万英镑。虽然39岁的摩丝和Topshop许多顾 客的母辈相当，但格林仍坚信她有时尚影响力。

A recent survey has revealed that China is considered to be the most 'industrious' nation in the world, according to research from Monster Worldwide, in collaboration with Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (GfK), a German global market research institute.国际就业咨询公司“巨兽”与德国市场调研公司捷孚凯集团合作的一项国际调查显示，中国人是全世界最勤奋的民族。
The survey — with more than 8,000 respondents from Canada, France, Germany, India, Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States — gauged economic and labor-related competitive spirit by drilling down into “industriousness,” which describes the level to which a country was “hard-working, innovative and constantly creating new ideas/products,” according to the survey.接受该项调查的是来自加拿大、法国、德国、意大利、印度、荷兰、英国和美国的共8000人，调查研究了各国经济和与工作相关的竞争精神，深度探讨了“勤奋度”，这里的衡量指标指的是一个国家整体“勤奋工作、具有创新思维并持续不断创造新点子/新产品”的水平。
According to the international survey, Chinese employees are the most industrious people in the world, followed by workers from Germany and the US. Employees from France are considered to be the laziest people in the world.该项调查得出中国人在全球范围内最勤奋，接下来是德国人、美国人。法国人则被认为是世界上最懒的民族。
German employees responded confidently to the survey placing themselves first in the pecking order of global industriousness. French employees, on the other hand, seem to be aware of their limitations, and many of those surveyed placed France in last place.德国受访者对德国的竞争力很有信心，认为本国人民在全球勤奋度方面排名领先。另一方面，法国受访者则似乎意识到自己国家的问题，不少法国受访者都把法国排在了最后。
German newspaper, Handelsblatt, reported that Chinese employees work on average 44.6 hours per week, while the German employees average about 33.5 hours of work per week.德国《商报》报道称中国员工每周平均工作44.6个小时，而德国员工每周平均工作时间为33.5个小时。
And although China has more public holidays than Germany, Chinese employees have only ten days of paid leave on average, while German employees have 25 days.而且虽然中国的公众假期比德国多，中国员工平均只有10天的带薪休假，德国员工则有25天带薪假期。
 

Apple is a famous phone brand in the world now. Apple Inc. is expected to open a new store in downtown Beijing, its third in the city and sixth on the Chinese mainland, on Oct. 20.

【汉语】互联网时代的对外汉语教学 时间: 11月09日(星期日) 14:00 – 16:00
主讲老师: 汉声中文（点击关注老师的沪江主页>>>）
公开课地点: Hujiang Chinese（点击下载CCTALK）

After years of being badgered by her parents to get married, 26-year-old Zhang Yu finally had enough.在被父母逼婚了几年以后，26岁的张玉（音译）终于不想再忍受了。
"I have decided never to marry or have a child," said Zhang, a university graduate from Changsha, Hunan province, who moved to Shanghai earlier this year to escape her family and jumpstart her career.“我决定一辈子不结婚，不要孩子，” 张玉说。她毕业于湖南长沙的一所大学，今年年初为了躲避父母的逼婚搬到了上海，专注自己的职业生涯。
Zhang's vow to never marry is rare in a country where educated women are constantly told by their families, friends and the state media that they will be lonely and miserable if they do not find a husband quickly.在这个国家，受过教育的女性通常会从亲朋好友和社会舆论那里听到：如果她们不找一个丈夫，会很孤独，很悲惨，所以像张玉这样永不结婚的宣言并不常见。
Yet some women are fighting back by rejecting marriage altogether.但是一些女性以集体拒绝婚姻来发起反抗。
Zhang had been living with her parents in Hunan to save money after obtaining her college degree, and for a time, fell sway to her parents' worries that she would become a "leftover woman" (or "shengnv" in Chinese,) officially defined as an urban, educated woman over age 27 who is single. But upon reading feminist websites, she came to believe the term existed to make women return to the home.为了供张玉上大学，父母和她在湖南省吃俭用。现在父母一度担心她会成为“剩女”，即过了27岁还未结婚的受教育程度较高的都市女性。但是当她浏览了很多女权主张的网站后，她开始相信“剩女” 这个词是为了使女性回归家庭。
She then took a risk by moving to Shanghai without a job and leaving the comforts of home for a dorm room shared with nine other roommates. But she loves her new friends and sense of freedom.她决定冒次险：还没找到工作她就搬去了上海，离开了舒适温暖的家，却住在了一个十人的宿舍里。但她十分喜欢这些新朋友和自由的感觉。
"Men are still thinking in the old ways, but women's values have evolved. I feel very relaxed now," said Zhang, who just received a sales job offer.“男人们还在用旧的方式思考，但是女人的价值观已经改变了。我觉得现在很轻松，” 张玉说，她刚刚得到了一份销售工作。
Lan Fang, a 32-year-old client relations manager for a financial company in Shanghai, similarly embraces her single lifestyle. She enjoys a relatively high income of 20,000 RMB a month (around US$3,200) and often goes out with friends to dinners, movies and concerts.32岁的兰芳（音译）是上海某金融公司的一名客户关系经理，也享受着她的单身生活。她收入相对较高，每月月薪两万人民币，经常和朋友出去聚餐、看电影、听音乐会。
"Where I grew up in Nanjing, I saw so many couples getting into big fights, and most of them seemed unhappy. Plus, so many men have affairs," Lan said. "My life in Shanghai now is very rich, why would I want to change it?"“我在南京长大，看过太多夫妻吵吵闹闹，大多数看起来并不幸福。还有，很多男人都有外遇，”兰芳说，“我现在在上海的生活很富裕，为什么要改变呢？”

Five big Chinese cities rank among the priciest housing markets in the world, surpassing notoriously expensive cities like Tokyo, London and New York, based on calculations by the International Monetary Fund. In fact, seven out of 10 of the world's least affordable markets–Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Chongqing–are now in China.根据货币基金组织（IMF）发布的数据显示，五大中国城市在世界最昂贵的房地产市场中名列前茅，甚至超过了众所周知的昂贵城市东京、伦敦和纽约，事实上，世界上十大贵的让人难以承受的房地产市场中，有七个都是中国的城市——北京、上海、深圳、香港、天津、广州和重庆。
Note that that the price-to-wage ratio, which measures median housing prices in a given city against median disposable incomes, reflects affordability rather than absolute property value. This means the mid-range price of an apartment in New York is 6.2 times more than what a typical family makes in a year. By comparison, it would take nearly a quarter-century of earnings to buy a pad in Beijing's capital outright.房价和工资比是某一城市的平均房价与平均可支配收入的比值，它反映了人们是否能承受这种房价而不仅仅是房产的绝对价值。这也意味着，纽约一间中等价格的公寓是一个普通家庭一年收入的6.2倍多，而要想在北京的中心城区买间房子要花去一个中国家庭近25年的收入。
Residential property is a big mess for the Chinese government–and it's not going away. Last month, prices on new homes leapt 7.4% in June 2012–the biggest uptick since last December.居民住宅问题是中国政府面临的一个大问题——而且这个问题还将一直存在。6月，新房价格比去年同期增长了7.4%，这是自去年12月以来出现的最快增长。
In short, policies to curb housing inflation aren't working. That's worrying news for the government; housing prices are a major source of public resentment. The danger isn't just the threat of popular unrest, though: It's that soaring property prices make people feel less wealthy and less inclined to consume. And that's exactly what the government needs them to do in order to wean the economy off its dependency on exports and credit-driven investment.简言之，抑制房价的政策没有奏效。这是一个令政府焦虑的消息；房价是引发民众不满的主要原因之一。但危险并不仅仅是民众骚乱的威胁：快速上涨的房价让人们感觉财富减少，也就更不愿意消费。而消费正是政府鼓励民众去做的，这样才能改变中国经济对出口和信贷投资的依赖。
Sure, the announcement over the weekend that the government will stop evaluating party officials solely on the basis of their contribution to growing GDP. If they're off the hook for hitting targets, it could make them less reliant on land parcel sales–the prices of which have been rising–to fund their budgets.当然，中国政府周末时已表示，不再将GDP作为衡量地方官员政绩的唯一指标。如果地方官员能够从“唯GDP是从” 中解脱出来，他们便会较少地依赖土地销售来资助预算，而中国的高房价正来源于这种依赖。

Now, a group of amateur filmmakers, based in the city where Snowden initially fled, Hong Kong, have taken a stab

The China's nationwide drive to green the barren western region has resulted in an unexpected substantial reward: the discovery of a unique ancient city covered by desert sands for above 1,000 years.