Well, the weather is kind of nasty today, and there isn't much happening on the site, so might as well crack open your dusty Chinese dictionaries and get started on some of the lessons here:

Latest Lessons:

Business Intermediate:

Welcome

Grammar:

Definite and Indefinite Articles

Singular and Plural

Pronunciation:

Pinyin Initials & Finals

Oral Lower Intermediate:

Buying Shoes

Oral Upper Intermediate:

Studying HSK

Crosstalk:

Talking about Dreams (Part 2)

Oral Advanced:

The Royals

Oral Elementary:

Are You Used to Everything Here?

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Well, it seems that not everybody hates France, (yet). Yesterday, over 30 couples from Tianjin were in C'est La Vie to prepare themselves for a honeymoon in the city of Tours, France. Perhaps the French reputation for romanticism will pay off in the end, eh Ben?

They were all married early in the afternoon, which I'm told included a mixing of the waters from the Hai and La Seine Rivers. Then then headed off to C'est La Vie, where they got an introduction to French food, wine-tasting, and also a few lessons on French cultural norms.  If you look, in a few photos you can see a bunch of video equipment. That's actually from a French national news team that came to film the event. Once the Chinese left, everybody was speaking French non-stop, and I don't think I've ever felt so American. Anyways, that was part of the reason why I'm rather short on details for this, and so I'll let the photos do the talking.

Edit: Moved the pics to the "Read More" area.

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We've already got a thread started up about this in our forum , but I thought I'd post the news on the front page, as well. 

Tianjin's new air terminal begins operation

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-04-29 11:33

A new terminal was put into operation on Monday at a standby airport for this summer's Olympics in the northern Chinese seaside city of Tianjin, in preparation for a passenger surge in August.

The new terminal, covering 116,000 square meters in floor space, or about five times that of the old, can handle 10 million passengers and 500,000 tonnes of cargo a year, a spokesman with the Tianjin Binhai International Airport said.

It is expected to receive more than 300,000 passengers during the Olympics period, the spokesman said.

Construction on the new terminal and other expansion projects was started on August 8, 2005 and completed on December 25 last year, with a total investment of nearly 3 billion yuan ($428.7 million), he said.

Through the expansion work, 40,000 square meters of warehouse, 290,000 square meters of parking apron, and 62,000 square meters of car parks were also built.

Meanwhile, the runway was lengthened from 3,200 meters to 3,600 meters, which can meet accommodate Boeing B747-400s and Airbus A380s.

The old terminal, which has been in operation for 18 years, will be used to handle cargo in the future.

The Tianjin airport is a major alternate airport for Beijing Capital International Airport during the Olympics. It handled 1.15 million passengers and 33,000 tonnes of cargo in the first three months this year, up 40 percent and 24.6 percent year-on-year, respectively.

Tianjin, about 120 km southeast of Beijing, is the venue for football preliminaries for the 29th Olympics.

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I was looking around for a picture of Chris Rock from his days with In Living Color, where he used to do his "Good LORD that's a lot of money!" routine, but no luck. Anyways: GOOD LORD THAT'S A LOT OF MONEY!

Edit: Here's One.

Tianjin Q1 Housing Prices up 35.3%
Monday, April 21, 2008; Posted: 06:39 AM

TIANJIN, Apr 21, 2008 (SinoCast via COMTEX) -- -- The 2008 first quarter housing prices in Tianjin, a municipality about 137 kilometers southeast of Beijing, surged 35.3% year on year and 5% quarter on quarter, according to the Tianjin Territories Resources and House Administration Bureau.

In the quarter, the municipality totally sold 10,919 commercial houses, running down 13.8% from the period a year earlier. In March, 5,018 commercial houses were sold, 2.6 times the amount in February, a low season for the real estate market due to the Spring Festival, the nation's lunar new year.

Now, more and more property developers are marching into Tianjin, including China Vanke, China Merchants Property Development, Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town, China Resources Land, Beijing Capital Land, and Beijing Vantone Real Estate. They covet the municipality's real estate market, partially because of the coming Tianjin-Beijing high-speed railway, which will start operation this August. By then, it will take only half an hour between the municipality and the capital. 

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