The teams represent many countries such as Germany, Norway, Italy, Brazil, UK,Australia, America, and of course China, with some teams respectively based in local bars and cafes.

You can find more Information on our fresh designed Homepage for the League. Click just here.

To get to Suzhou, take a Cebu Pacific flight to Shanghai from Manila every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 8:20 p.m., with turnaround flights from Shanghai every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday at 12:30 a.m. From Shanghai’s Pudong airport, there are buses that travel directly to Suzhou, costing around 35 yuan.)

The highway that stretched before us was kind of intimidating.

Massive, as anything else in China is, it accommodates 10 lanes on both sides and, at that time of the day, is filled bumper to bumper with a thousand cars.

But that’s not what is making us squirm in our seats. It’s the spectre of bathroom stops we would have to make on our way to Suzhou, about 100 kilometers from Shanghai.

“There are very few Western bathrooms outside the city, so I’m afraid you’ll have to squat,” says Winnie, our tour guide, with a laugh.

Not exactly cut and dried

Suzhou, located about 100 kilometers away from Shanghai on the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, is a 2,500-year-old city that dates back to the Shang dynasty. Known for its beautiful stone bridges, long winding canals, and exquisitely designed gardens, it is ranked fifth in terms of per capita income.

Thousands of native dialects have fallen into decline since China started the "Popularizing Putonghua" campaign in 1956. The decline has been accelerated by the booming economy and other developments in society.

To "rescue" the dialects, the National Language Committee is making efforts to build a database of Chinese dialects. The initial pilot program was launched on October 11, 2008 in Suzhou, a historical east-China city famed for its classical gardens.

To cover the nation's first pilot city in the project, three teams will be dispatched to downtown Suzhou, Changshu and Kunshan for field recording of original dialects there. The teams comprise experts from Nanjing University, Nanjing Normal University and Suzhou University. The ultimate goal of this project is to set up a national dialect map with multi-media rendering.

Suzhou enjoys a long history, and its euphemistical dialect is renowned for its softness and mild tone, rich in adjectives and mood words.

However, the Suzhou dialect is also facing a crisis. A local mother told the Yangtze Evening News that her daughter has used only Putonghua since she started at primary school, and now talks to her parents and classmates only in Putonghua. "She even thinks in Putonghua," said the mother.

With the increased mobility of the population, the increasing popularity of television, and developments in education, dialects have an increasing struggle to maintain their "original ecology."

Authentic native dialects will be spoken by fewer young people, and their residue will inevitably be altered as time passes, experts said.

Jiang Renjie, the former vice mayor of Suzhou city, was sentenced to death for taking 100 million yuan (14.6 million dollars) in bribes from five property companies between 2001 and 2004, Xinhua news agency reported. The sentence for former Suzhou vice mayor Jiang Renjie comes just five days after a former Beijing vice mayor in charge of overseeing Olympic construction projects got a suspended death sentence for accepting about US$1 million (S$1.5 million) in bribes from developers. Officials said the bribe-taking had nothing to do with Olympic projects.

Jiang was in charge of construction, transportation and other lucrative sectors in Suzhou, where almost 100 Fortune 500 companies have a presence. The city is just outside Shanghai, China's business capital and largest city.

Jiang, 60, was also convicted by a court in neighbouring Nanjing for misappropriating public funds, it said, without giving the date of his trial.

The former vice mayor, who was placed under investigation in 2004, has appealed the sentence, it added.

Meanwhile a top parliamentarian dealing with state finances has also been placed under investigation for his role in a real estate scam, Xinhua said.

In China, all land belongs to the state, giving local leaders tremendous economic clout in divvying up land-use rights.

Zhu Zhigang, deputy head of the finance committee of China's parliament, was placed under investigation for helping close relatives buy property at discounted prices, Xinhua said.

Zhu, who holds a minister-level rank as a member of the standing committee of the National People's Congress, is also head of the parliament's budget committee, the report said.

Up to a dozen other people involved in Beijing real estate and accounting companies are believed to be implicated in the case, the report said, without offering further details.

Zhu, 58, served seven years as China's vice minister of finance and only took up his parliamentary duties this year, it said.

Source: BEIJING (AFP) & Shanghai Daily

To bring this nice event a little more near to our hearts Tom's Bar celebrate on Saturday the 27th September 2008 a small Beer festival with Oktoberfest flair.

With special Bavarian and Party Music presented from our germany DJ, we starting this event at 8:00pm saturday night. Nice barbecue outside with special sausage and sauerkraut makes the day to a nice preparation to the chinese national day.

Come and enjoy this nice event on saturday the entrance is free and for 100 RMB you have free flow of draught beer all night long.

Celebrate with Suzhou-Expat and Tom's the typical german feeling of the Oktoberfest.

The National Day of the People's Republic of China (Chinese: 国庆节; pinyin: Guóqìng Jié) is October 1. It is a public holiday in the People's Republic of China to celebrate its national day.  In this time a lot of people are traveling to there home town to celecrate with there parents and friends.

The PRC was founded on October 1, 1949 with a ceremony at Tiananmen Square. The Central People's Government passed the Resolution on the National Day of the People's Republic of China on December 2, 1949 and declared that October 1 is the National Day.

The National Day marks the start of one of the two Golden Weeks in the PRC. However, there have been some recent controversies over whether Golden Weeks should be kept.

The National Day is celebrated throughout mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau with a variety of government-organised festivities, including fireworks and concerts. Public places, such as Tiananmen Square in Beijing, are decorated in a festive theme. Portraits of revered leaders, such as Sun Yat-Sen, are publicly displayed.

When the anniversary is a multiple of five (e.g. the 50th, 55th, or 60th), large scale official celebrations may be held, including an inspection of troops on Tiananmen Square. More notable of these events included Deng Xiaoping's inspection in 1984 and Jiang Zemin's inspection in 1999.

The plan calls for the construction of three subway lines, two of which will link to Shanghai, Oriental Morning Post reported on Friday.

If the blueprint is approved, construction will be completed by 2020.

According to Wang Hao, head of the urban planning office under the Suzhou Urban Planning Administration, one metro line at Suzhou Industrial Park will join Shanghai's Line 11 in Jiading District. The other will connect to Line 2 in Shanghai's Qingpu District.

The third metro line in Suzhou will link it to Shuofang Airport in neighboring Wuxi City, according to the report.

In addition to the ongoing construction of the Beijing-Shanghai Express Railway and the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway, Suzhou is also involved in three other city railway lines that will connect it to Jiaxing, Nantong and Shanghai's Jiading District.

To protect the environment, designers decide part of the Suzhou-Jiaxing Railway will be underground, making it the only railway line in the country to have underground tracks.

Meanwhile, the railway line to Jiading District will travel past some counties that the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway does not service, the report said.

A Suzhou-Hangzhou railway is also being planned, according to the report.

By Yang Lifei Source: CRIENGLISH.com

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