Avril Liu, 22 years old, a post graduate student in Guangxi Province. She says “We are the lost generation. I am ao confused about the world.”

Zhou Liang, 17 years old, a hair stylist student on way to see father who works in another province. He says “In adults eyes I am a bad person in society, but in fact I am a very obedient person”.

Jasmine Li, 20 years old, Student of communication in Guangdong Province. She says “Eager to have a heart wider than the universe”.

Adrian Fisk, who was named one of world’s best photographers by RotoVision Press, recently recorded the minds of China’s youth through his lens over the course of a 12,000-kilometer-journey through the country.

As China’s future, its youth are a subject of great interest to Fisk and he kept thinking, “Who are they and how do they treat their own lives?”

In order to figure out the answer, he traveled in China for 12,000 kilometers and found young Chinese men aged between 16 to 30 years. He gave them a piece of white paper to let them write down anything they wanted, and then he took a photo of them holding the papers.

Fisk’s quotes:

‘Chinese youth do not want confrontation between the West and the East. I can feel that what they want is to be whole.’

‘If you really want to know something, you have to go to that country and know its people.’

‘The communication between Chinese is different from Westerners. If you can’t understand that, you will never really know Chinese people.’

Adrian Fisk was born in the Devon Country in South Britain in 1970 and obtained a diploma in photography from Blackpool and The Fylde College. In five years he moved to London and became a photographer and producer. He was devoted to recording young men in 1990s understanding the social background of counterculture movements. He was praised as one of the best photographers in the world in 2007.

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JIUZHAIGOU, CHINA — By noon, the tour buses that ply the length of this U-shaped limestone valley are packed tight. Elbows are up. People are pushing.

“Are you going to walk?” someone hollers.

“Don’t bump!” comes the reply.

It’s a common scene in any major Chinese city, but here in northern Sichuan Province, 10 hours by bus from Chengdu, the crowds are surrounded by karst peaks and turquoise pools, not high-rise buildings and freeways.

Each day, tens of thousands of Chinese tourists board buses to visit the pine forests and mock-ethnic villages of Jiuzhaigou, a Unesco World Heritage Site. Admission costs 320 renminbi, or $47. For 25 renminbi more, visitors can rent a bejeweled, Tibetan-inspired costume and have their pictures taken by a local.

These sightseers, clad in Gore-Tex and Gucci, are fueling a boom in China’s domestic travel sector. Spurred by a mix of middle-class money, government support and interest in rediscovering China, the market is beating predictions and bucking global trends.

While the industry lost ground in Europe and the United States, China’s tourism sector posted a 9 percent jump in revenue 2009, to 1.26 trillion renminbi, thanks to domestic demand.

In 2010, total tourism revenue is expected to rise 14 percent, totaling 1.44 trillion renminbi, according to figures released Jan. 24 in state media reports.

“There is clearly an upward trend, a huge upward trend,” said Nancy Cockerell, a policy adviser at the World Travel and Tourism Council. “For the next 10 years, China will be leading the way.”

Though Chinese people have been on the move for centuries — as explorers, migrants and traders — leisure travel is relatively new to the People’s Republic. The post-Mao era afforded little time for holidays, and for most, money was scarce. The state regulated travel between provinces, so would-be wanderers needed papers and permission, in addition to cash.

As China’s economy began to gain momentum in the 1990s, the travel industry benefited. The number of domestic trips jumped 54 percent from 1996 to 2006, according to figures released by the China National Tourism Administration.

Higher incomes have driven up leisure travel, but the government has helped, too. As average incomes climbed, the state eased travel restrictions and increased the number of mandatory public holidays to 11 to drive demand.

Since 1999, Chinese workers have enjoyed “golden weeks,” a set of mandatory national holidays. There are now two per year, one held in autumn and one in winter.

The purpose is to get people spending — a strategy that seems to be working. During the National Day Golden Week holidays from Oct. 1 to Oct. 8 last year, 19.6 million tourists visited Sichuan Province alone, generating 7.7 billion renminbi in revenue, according to state media.

Nationally, tourism revenue has been climbing for more than a decade, and more people than ever are traveling.

The National Tourism Administration said domestic tourists had made 1.9 billion trips in 2009, an increase of 11 percent over the previous year, and generated 1 trillion renminbi of revenue, up 15 percent from the previous year.

But Ms. Cockerell of the World Travel and Tourism Council said the sector still had room to grow.

“For China, two billion trips is small,” she said. “When they start traveling like Americans, the numbers will be phenomenal.”

The world’s largest travel Web site, Tripadvisor, shares her optimism. In October, it said it had purchased Kuxun.cn, a Chinese flight and hotel search engine, as part of plans to invest $50 million in China through 2011.

Peripheral industries stand to benefit as well. With the rise of mass tourism comes the development of what Tim Winter, editor of “Asia on Tour: Exploring the Rise of Asian Tourism,” calls “travel culture.”

In China, travel culture means big money, he said: “People want the travel uniform; they want the gear.”

For sightseers who want more gear, the shops are ready to help. Visitors to the gift shop near the main cafeteria of the Jiuzhaigou National Park can purchase fox fur stoles (1,400 renminbi), faux fur hats (80 renminbi) or plastic back scratchers (30 renminbi).

Outside the park gates, rows of shops sell high-end travel equipment, including brand-name jackets, digital cameras and the latest in luggage.

Suitably attired, visitors to this once remote region can choose from dozens of hotels, including a Sheraton and an Intercontinental. At night, charter buses ferry guests to Tibetan shows, where, for about $25, they are treated to live music, dancing and food.

Leading the spending spree are China’s young urbanites. Overworked, wealthy and worldly, they have the means to travel and the desire to get away from city life.

“There are skyscrapers everywhere in Shanghai, but here there is natural landscape,” said Allen Zhang, a newlywed touring the park with his wife, Christine Xiong.

“Travel is a completely new lifestyle for us,” he added. “My father’s generation didn’t have the opportunity to travel.”

Mr. Zhang does, so he and Ms. Xiong flew to Sichuan to shoot their wedding pictures at Swan Lake, an algae-green pool famous for its glassy surface.

She stood by the water’s edge in a gauzy, white wedding gown; he beheld his bride through the lens of a tripod-mounted digital SLR.

They plan to travel every season, they said, and explore the country’s far reaches. “China is just a pretty, beautiful place,” Mr. Zhang said.

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A photographer shoots up close a replica Terracotta warrior coated with chocolate powder during a press event for the World Chocolate Wonderland theme park in Beijing, China, on Friday.

Chocoholics, rejoice!  A chocolate theme park opens next week in Beijing that will feature life-size replicas of the Terracotta warriors and a slice of the Great Wall of China.

The 215,000-square-foot “chocolate wonderland” opens Jan. 29 near the Olympic stadium.

“Even though chocolate in China is not as popular as it is in Western countries, we hope to promote the chocolate culture and market in China,” Zheng Yaoting, general manager of the firm running the park, tells the Global Times.

The newspaper says the chocolate items will be displayed at five temperature-controlled indoor areas and two outdoor sites.

Park organizers hope to lure a million visitors before April, when warm weather can be downright discouraging for chocolate products. It will reopen in January with new displays.

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Xi’an, once called “Chang’an”, ranks the first among the seven ancient capitals in China. And it is regarded as one of the “Four Ancient Civilizations of the World”. It has witnessed the rise and fall of 15 dynasties, including the Western Zhou, the Qin, the Han, the Sui and the Tang. It is also the starting point of the Silk Road.

photo credit: kevinpoh

There are a great number of historic relics in Xi’an, such as the Terra Cotta Warriors, the City Wall, the Famen Temple, the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower.

Xi’an has been one of the favorite destinations of tourists home and abroad.

Edited by Mengying Hao

cforms contact form by delicious:days

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Lake Kanas lies near the Altai mountains,in Xinjiang,China. It is China’s deepest freshwater lake. About 117 different kinds of birds live along it.

There is a large population of  Tuvans in the area.

There have been sightings of large lake creatures in the waters. A video was taken and shown in the local Chinese media where numerous unidentifiable creatures can be seen. And the water’s colour of the Kanas lake changes incredibly oftentimes.

Wolong National Nature Reserve  is a protected area located in Wenchuan country, Sichuan Province.Wolong National Nature Reserve houses more than 150 highly endangered giant pandas.On 5.12 earthquake,3 pandas were missing,5  staff members were killed,14 houses were all damaged.

Here is a picture of a panda seeing a policeman after the earthquake.

Though the other 86 pandas in Wolong had no casualty,the origin place of the pand’s  food,bamboo,was affected by the earthquake.

The wild giant pandas are still at risk.Concern about the lovely ancient animal,giant panda.

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    It is said that there are two Chinese Valentine’s Day,one is on  lunar July 7th,the other one is on lunar January 15th which is celebrated as Lantern Festival.

    It was an interesting 15th day this year. The full moon appeared larger and brighter than usual because it has come closest to the Earth than at any time since 1957. It was about 305,000km from Earth as compared to the average distance of 350,000km.

Lantern Festival often marks the end of the Chinese New Year.This day’s important activity is watching lanterns. Lanterns of various shapes and sizes are hung in the streets, attracting countless visitors. Children will hold self-made or bought lanterns to stroll with on the streets, extremely excited.

    In the daytime of the Festival, performances such as a dragon lantern dance, a lion dance, a land boat dance, a yangge dance, walking on stilts and beating drums while dancing will be staged. On the night, except for magnificent lanterns, fireworks form a beautiful scene. Most families spare some fireworks from the Spring Festival and let them off in the Lantern Festival. Some local governments will even organize a fireworks party. On the night when the first full moon enters the New Year, people become really intoxicated by the imposing fireworks and bright moon in the sky.

Here is a fireworks shot in Harbin.

Welcome to any first time Travvie (Travel Blog Award) visitors. I thought it might be good to share with you the brief history of the Dreamblogue and how it came to be.

The Blog of Dreams began innocently and with a very small scope: Yanzhi and I were teaching in Macau, and as part of a class project in Global Internet Marketing we organized a blog project. Both of us and our students were frustrated by the stereotypically negative and uninformed commentary found on so many blogs about China–no this week is not new in perceptions if western media coverage. In the spirit of creating a positive voice for China and raising some money to help with charitable causes, we created The China Dreamblogue,. It was to be a site that focused on creating 100% positive China content and a mission to create educational opportunities for Chinese students and a chance for an international audience to find out more about what is right with China.

Soon the “Dream Team” team exploded with ideas for promotions and getting people around the country involved. We worked on a Technorati campaign to get favorited, participated in contests, and held our own photo contests to get people involved. Everyone was excited and happy that we were brainstorming creative ways to engage, not isolate China and its people.

During this same time in China, Yanzhi had become connected to a group of women he began to call, The League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, cancer survivors who had banded together to provide each other with strength, support, and encouragement during a times of deep t crisis. Yanzhi also introduced me to his former student, Coffee, who I later taught. She was and is a remarkable woman who has overcome bone cancer and a leg amputation to train for a professional UN translator certification program in French and has been an intern with the blog for over a year.

Entranced and empowered by the positive force of these women living their lives with freedom and courage, Yanzhi and I decided to take inspiration from these women and other people who were willing to live out their dream. As a part of our pro-China campaign, the two of us had a mission: we as two American teachers would travel around the country for a year on sponsorship from ethically responsible businesses and institutions. Our plan was to visit every province an interview someone from each province and at least one person from each of the fifty-six ethnic minorities in China.

As we began our travels, we also planned to use the Dreamblogue to do good in China. Knowing about the remarkable number of students and new graduates in China who struggle to find jobs, we agreed that we would begin an internship program that would teach students about online marketing, digital media, and professional/corporate blogging, all skills which are extremely important in China’s growing Internet environment and a skill set which few people in China have. So far, we have trained a number of interns and worked with them to develop their skills and knowledge in regards to digital media. We have focused on finding and working with students of remarkable ability who have little chance to take part in the remarkable changes and opportunities available in China.

As an additional part of helping people to achieve their dreams, we have continued to seek out schools and regularly post information on the blog about top schools around the world that are well-equipped and suited for Chinese students, such as the Cal Poly Orfalea School of Business. To this day we have had a number of students who were part of the Dreamblogue get in to top schools around the world, including the University of Michigan, UCLA, Columbia University, Ohio State, Purdue, and others.

To this day, Yanzhi and I have completed about a third of our journey, taking time to continue to accumulate material on the Dreamblogue about different aspects of China, running our photo contest here, and continuing to work with our interns to help them find schools and develop skills in digital media.

China photo from Robert Daboss

Photos from Guangxi