Tom Carter, an internationally acclaimed photographer currently based in Beijing, will be releasing his series of portraits from people all around China titled “China: Portrait of a People.” His photographs, there of which are featured here, provide a sense of depth and perspective on China, as does Tom’s career and body of work concerning China.

I wanted to feature Tom on the Blog of Dreams because of the intense passion and deep commitment his photos and writing seem to commit to understanding China. He does not seem to be content with the metropolises of Beijing or Shanghai, but has a deep interest in looking at parts of China that are often forgotten about or little-known to foreigners who have spent a short amount of time here. Most of us know that we need to go to Sichuan to see pandas, but how many of us are familiar with the Yao Minority people or Guizhou’s minority village of Zengchong? Tom’s articlulate stories and photos on both of these places are worth a thoughtful read.

More of Tom’s photos and articles can be seen on his China photo website, http://tomcarter.org.

The China Dreamblogue is a project undertaken by two American teachers to provide educational opportunities for people in China. We are doing this because we want to help people to achieve the dreams that they haven’t been able to. Hence our name is The China Dreamblogue.

中国载梦博客一个由两位美国教师为了给中国穷人提供教育机会的计划。我们这样做是为了帮助人们实现他们如今还没有实现的愿望。因此我们的名字叫中国载梦博客.

Our project has 4 major parts:
我们的计划由个主要部分组成：

1. Traveling: First, Yanzhi Liu and I will be traveling to the 22 provinces of mainland China over the course of the next 12-16 months. We will visit and interview at least one person from every ethnic group and from every province to find out about their lifestyle, their beliefs, and their hopes and ambitions for themselves and others. We will post these interviews on the Dreamblogue for you to read.
2. Free Scholarships: Yanzhi and I are giving away scholarships that will allow students to study abroad in the UK and the US.
3. China information: Yanzhi and I will be posting regular information about China on this blog. Yanzhi and I have found that Westerners’ understanding of China is often darkened by news reports that focus on the negative parts of China. We will be putting up information here on the blog that seeks to find the interesting, curious, good parts of Chinese culture and highlight them here.
4. Money for Charity: Yanzhi and I are raising money for two charities, Thomas Stader’s Library Project and Terry Dougherty’s Reading Tub. We will be raising money by selling advertising on the Blog of Dreams and giving away the advertising money to Thomas and Terry directly through a Feedburner account. Yanzhi and I will never touch the money.

1. 行程:在接下来的12-16个月中刘彦志和我将会游历中国大陆个省份。在去到每一个民族的地区的时候我们将会最少采访一个该民族的人，了解他们的生活方式、信仰、愿望、理想等等。我们将会将这些采访刊登在“载梦博客”上供大家阅读参考。
2. 免费奖学金：彦志和我将会发放奖学金供同学们去英国和美国留学。
3. 中国信息：彦志和我将会定期发布关于中国的信息在这个网站上。我们发现西方人对中国的理解经常遭到新闻报纸的误导，因为它们专注于报导中国消极的方面的信息。我们将会把中国有趣的、奇特的事物或事件或中国文化积极的方面和它们最精彩的方面的信息放上这个博客。
4. 慈善基金：我们将为两个慈善机构筹集基金：Thomas Stader的图书馆计划和Terry Dougherty的读书俱乐部。我们将把载梦博客的广告收入通过账户直接捐给Thomas和Terry.

How you can help (and don’t worry, none of these cost you a dime):
你们怎样帮助我们呢？（放心，不需花费你们分钱）

1. Blog your dreams. It’s simple. Go the form the the bottom of this page (and at the end of most posts, and fill out your dream. You can send your dream as a photo, video, text, or any other medium you can imagine. It can be a big dream or a small one. We are currently looking for sponsors who will be able to help fund your dream.
2. Visit the site often. The more people visit, the more hits and pageviews the site gets, and the more money we can charge advertisers. More money will go to charity. We’ll be sure to have fresh content for you to come back to every day.
3. Send us your photos. Over the course of the Dreamblogue journey, we’ll be sponsoring a photo contest for both professionals and amateurs, with prizes for the photos who get the most votes.
4. Favorite us on Technorati. There is a little green button you can click on that says, “fave this blog technorati.” We are trying to generate publicity for our project by becoming the most favorited blog in the world on Technorati. Click on the button, register as a member (don’t worry, it’s free and spam-free), and click on the button one more time on our site to move us one step closer to our goal.

1. 将你们梦醒写在我们的博客上。非常简单，只要写在博客下方的方框里就行了（在每篇文章的尾部写上你们的梦想。你们可以把你们的图片、视频或其他媒体发送给我们。它可以是大的梦想或小的梦想。我们会寻找赞助商来帮助你们实现你们的梦想）
2. 经常登陆这个网站。越多人登陆这个网站，我们网站就会有更多的点击率和读者，然后我们就可以向登广告的人索取更多的广告费，那么我们就有更多的钱资助慈善机构。为了使大家每天都来浏览我们的网站，我们保证每天都有新鲜的内容提供给大家。
3. 把你们的照片发给我们。在这个“载梦博客”的旅途上，我们将举行专业级和业余级的摄影大赛，得到最高票数的相片将会得到丰富的奖品。
4. 在Technorati 上投我们一票。点击那个写着“fabe this blog technorati.”的绿色按钮。我们正在尝试通过使我们的网站在Technorati 上全球出名进而推广我们的这个计划。点击这个按钮，注册一个账户（别担心，它是免费的）然后在Technorati里点击我的网站，使我们更快地接近我们的目标。

Blog your Dream/把博客写在博客上:

“In China many families live in extreme poverty. This is especially true of the mountain villages of the Guilin/Yangshuo area of Guangxi Province where many farm families live a meager existence on a bit of land. They struggle to pay the school fees for their children to go to the local elementary school.”

–from the Volunteer English Teaching Program

China teems with travel wonders and   woes. I had made plans with friends to head to Vietnam for the Chinese New Year and ended up, because of visa troubles, in Yangshuo, Guanxi province, home of the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat and the unbreakable Chun Li.

While the trip was a cascade of logistic mishap after mishap, the beauty of the karsts and the uniqueness of the people I met–from a Guangzhou leather factory owner to a crew of Dutch HKU students–all gave me reason to be thankful for my fiasco.

During my stay in Yangshuo, I had the good fortune to meet Laurie Mackenzie, a man who, like me, is an accidental expat: he decided to come to China on little more than a whim. A retired professor and former officer in the Canadian army, he’s been here for five years building a network of schools and volunteers to help poor villagers and children learn English skills. But he is not on a mission of religion, Americanization, or exploitation–he is on a mission of heart.

Yangshuo is dense with tourists almost year-round, and its offers of spectacular scenery, excellent mountain climbing and hiking trails, and good-quality, inexpensive food and lodging draw tourists not just from China but all over the world. By offering economically disadvantaged children and families English lessons and opportunities for sometimes-shy Chinese children and adults to interact with foreigners, MacKenzie opens up economic possibilities for these families and children. MacKenzie also works tirelessly to secure donations that allow for these students to purchase the basic resources they need for school–pens, paper, books, and other supplies. “Poor schools do not have resource materials,” says MacKenzie on the Volunteer English Teachers website. “Classroom equipment is a sheet of plywood painted black and some coloured chalk. It is often impossible for parents to buy the note books, pencils etc. that every pupil needs.” MacKenzie, his wife, and his volunteer staff of Anglophones from around the world do everything they can to help these motivated children realize their potential.

Children at the VET schools learn oral English through games, songs, and activities like choirs (as seen above). I end this article with some words from MacKenzie about why he chose to begin this work and why he continues:

“The cycle of poverty can only be broken through education. Poor peasant farmers struggle to pay the annual school fees for their children to go to primary school but very, very few can afford the higher costs of sending the children to Junior Middle School or beyond. We know that if the children can learn to be comfortable with foreign visitors and speak some English they will be able to get work. Volunteer English Teachers are committed to helping these children realize a better future. “

One of the many goals of the China Dreamblogue is to create a strong, pro-China internet presence in the blogosphere. To do this, we need your help. And as we create our pro-China network, we would also like to help the people who want to be part of this network by giving them a way to increase their SEO power and their ability to monetize their site. Sound complicated and difficult? The process is deceptively simple and powerful.

We’ve created an idea called link it forward. Similar to the internet memes and the Thinking Blog tag that recently moved through a number of English-language blogs about China, our idea will travel rapidly through pro-China blogs. In addition, this idea will help to create links–as many as four thousand–to your site through a trickle-down method.

There are five simple steps:

1. Take this list of 8 blogs and put them in a post on your blog. The first three blogs, Onemanbandwidth, The China Dreamblogue, and Sinotrading, remain on the list.
2. At the top of the moveable list, put a link to your blog.
3. Remove the link from the bottom of blog.
4. Send your updated list to at least five other people.
5. If you want, create a new moveable list of five blogs you think deserve some links. Be kind and include the permanent list as well.

Perma-List:

• Onemanbandwidth
• The China Dreamblogue
• Sinotrading

The Moveable list:

• The Hao Hao Report
• East South North West
• The Cal Poly MBA Trip
• China Law Blog
• The Opposite End of China

The numbers work out well for you. You will have approximately five rounds on the list. On the first round, you’ll get five links. On the second, you’ll get 25 (each of the five people you sent the list to will get five more people to put your link on their site). The third round nets you 125, the fourth 525, and the fifth 2,625. Your grand total (should everyone follow Link it Forward) will be 3,305 links. And if you get linked to again by another blog, you can start the process all over again to earn another 3,000 links.

To monetize your blog or site please click on the links found on the front page of this blog.

China Dreamblogue的其中一个目标是在因特网上创建一个强大的，支持中国的互联网。实现这个目标，我们需要你的帮助。在我们建造我们中国的友好互联网的同时，我们将会帮助那些支持我们的人，把他们的博客推到网络排名的最前列。这个过程既简单又有效。

我们已经有一个构想，称为“链接在一起”（Link it Forward），与“网络媒母”（internet memes）相类似。“Link it Forward”（ 链接在一起）会以很快的速度在支持中国的博客上移动。另外，这个构想可以使你的网站的链接数量增加几千个以上。

以下是六个简单的步骤：

1. 按照以下的说明列两组博客的目录然后放到您的博客上。第一组名单是三个固定的博客：Onemanbandwidth, The China Dreamblogue, 和Sinotrading。这三个博客的连接必须永远的保留和不可改变。
2. 在第二组上，把您自己的博客连接放在目录的第一位上。
3. 把所有在第二组目录上的连接排名依次向下移动一位。即排第一的移到第二位，排第二的移到第三位等等（第五位的移到第一位）。
4. 这就是说排第五的应该要完成一个循坏回到第五的位置上。
5. 将你的更新了的列表发给至少5个其他博客。您发的越多，您就能获得更多的链接。如果您有一百个人，那就快点去做吧。
6. 如果您想的话，还可以另外创建一个您认为有价值的列表。请也同样包括那个不变名单（即onemanbandwidth, china dreamblogue 和 sinotrading）

请记住，不要改动或者改变第一组名单和不要在第二组名单上加上第六个链接。同样，通过第一组名单所得到的广告收益将用作慈善用途。而从第二组“link it forward”上所得的收益将有您自己支配。我们会为您列举一些能够推算您自己网站价值的地方。

第一组（长期不变得目录）：

Onemanbandwidth

The China Dreamblogue

Sinotrading

第二组（可更新的目录）：

您的博客

您朋友的博客

如果理想的话，您大约会有比从前翻5倍的链接量。

第一个循环，您会得到5个链接。

第二个循环您会得到25个链接（跟您建立链接的那5个人每人会给您带来5个新的链接）

第三个循环您会有125个链接，第四个有625，第五个有3，125个。

如果每个人都按照Link it Forward的方法，您最后会得到3，905个链接。如果您同时又跟其他博客建立同种方法的链接，您将会得到另外3，000多个的链接。有了这上千个的 连接，您就能从Google Adwords（Google搜索引擎营销）那里得到相应的收益了。现在就请按本页底部的Google Adwords按钮来看一下您的网站的价值吧。

这是为了兴趣；这是为了提高中国博客在西方搜索引擎的排名；这更是为了中国的慈善事业出一分力（因为限定组中的3个博客将会把全部广告收益捐献给中国的慈善机构）；同样也能增加中国博客在互联网上的知名度。

让我们一起link it forward(链接在一起)吧！