张力平的个人空间--Seven Castles

 Forums are one of the best things on the Internet. There are forums for nearly every topic you can think of, and you would find so many things and learn a lot from there. Many are good places for discussion or sharing views, and some are very interesting and with lots of fun. You can ask questions and get answers from different users, and see other people write their own stories. It really makes you see that the world is very big and that there are many different people in this world! You could hardly imagine what will happen if all the forums disappear!
 
 Many people love forums, and check...

 A eunuch is a man castrated in order to perform a specific social function, as was common in many societies of the past. Over the millennia, they have performed a wide variety of functions in many different cultures such as courtiers or equivalent domestics, treble singers, religious specialists, government officials, military commanders, and guardians of women or harem servants.
 
 The English word "eunuch" is from the Greek "eune" ("bed") and "ekhein" ("to keep"), effectively "bed keeper". Servants or slaves were usually castrate...

 The Chinese name system is the original pattern of names in East Asia, followed by all the countries in the region. Today, there are over 700 different Chinese family names, but as few as twenty cover a majority of Chinese people. Most Chinese family names have only one character, but there are a few with two. Chinese family names are written first, something that often causes confusion among those from cultures where the family name usually comes last.
 
 Chinese married women usually retain their maiden name as their family name, rather than adopt the name of their husband, and children us...

 Bookcrossing is a practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise. It is the brainchild of Ron Hornbaker, an entrepreneur and book lover who was running a software company when the idea came to him in 2001. After learning about websites that enable people to track the movements of other objects around the world, including banknotes and disposable cameras, Ron imagined using a similar process for books. After less than a month of work, he and his wife turned the idea into a unique website called www.bookcrossing.com.
 
 The idea is simple:...

 An autodidact (or automath) is a mostly self-taught person who has learned a subject without the benefit of a teacher or formal education, and typically has an enthusiasm for self-education and a high degree of self-motivation. The word is from Greek autodidaktos ("self-taught") in which auto ("self") + didaktos ("taught").
 
 Some geniuses were largely self-taught in their fields. Occasionally, individuals have sought to excel in subjects outside the mainstream of conventional education, while other autodidacts have excelled within and brought innovative perspe...

 Shanghai Xintiandi is an urban tourist attraction imbued with the city's historical and cultural legacies. Located in downtown Shanghai, and only one block south of the prestigious Huaihai Road Middle (former Avenue Joffre in the heart of the French Concession in the early 1900s) and its Metro station, the project has a site area of 30,000 square meters and a gross floor area of 60,000 square meters. Xintiandi features a multitude of specialist F&B, retail, entertainment, cultural, recreational, commercial and residential facilities in restored "Shikumen" (meaning "stone g...

 Shanghai was the center of Western influence in China during the 1920s and has been transformed within the last thirty years into a showcase city for China. Shanghai was already dubbed as the "Paris of the East" 60 years ago when it was as well known as cosmopolitan cities like London and Paris. Today, it is seen as a "global business hub" and it is only a matter of time before it becomes the "New York of the East".
 
 When you say Shanghai is a romantic city, certainly it depends on your values about romance. You might think the night of Shanghai is splendid w...

 I have found that more and more students around high school age do their homework while watching TV, listening to iPod, chatting online to a dozen friends, and eating something all at the same time.
 
 Would you mind multi-tasking?
 
 Currently, many students are used to doing their homework with music because it does not require any watching, so they just sing along and that is less distracting. As for doing homework while watching TV, generally it depends on what type of homework you do. Anything that requires critical thinking, like writing, is pretty much impossible, as the complexity o...

 In its heyday, Shanghai ferry with 22 lines would carry 1 million passengers daily, but ferry traffic has been sharply decreasing, due to the abolition of tolls on bridges and tunnels across the Huangpu River.
 
 Although cabs and the lightning-quick subway are much faster through the tunnel, the ferry ride offers wonderful views and cultural experience that contrasts the old and new worlds of Shanghai. In the past many people used the ferry service just for sightseeing, but today the ferry no longer goes to the prime Lujiazui area which boasts such places of interest as the Oriental TV and...

 You are entitled to your own great moment should you want it. Though most photo albums have traditionally been abandoned to a dusty cupboard rather than contributing to an extremely rich and profound document of our lives and times, quite a number of people like to make their photographic life an open book. As the Internet is accessible across the globe, there is a boom in the photolog sites like Flickr where people can share pictures online with family and friends.
 
 However, displaying personal and domestic photographs in the public domain invites both acquaintances and unknown audiences...