The Chinese connections with Australia started with the gold rush in the 1800's. Most of them were not very well treated. See
http://www.oldmogotown.com.au/chinese.html
When the gold discoveries began to dwindle, many Chinese returned to their homeland, but a few chose to stay, run businesses, marry and settle permanently in Australia.
Chinese are now much better treated now, and in fact, probably flourishing in Australia. Some started businesses like providing Shiatsu or the Traditional Chinese Massage and Bodywork in the Gold Coast, Queensland. See
http://www.usenature.com/shiatsu.htm
Many started Chinese restaurants and you can see a long list of Chinese restaurants in the Gold Coast at
http://www.coastshop.com.au/restaurants/rest_chinese.htm
Tourism in the Gold Coast is big business and more and more Chinese tourists are heading to the Gold Coast. Very recently, a Chinese film crew arrived at the Gold Coast to film two Chinese travel documentaries and were warmly welcomed by the Tourism Minister, Margaret Keech. According to Mrs. Keech, China is now the Gold Coast's third largest source of international tourist arrivals and represents more than 10 per cent of all visitors to the coast.
Early this year, Mrs Keech welcomed another big contingent, up to 6000 of Chinese Amway delegates for a conference in the Gold Coast. This was the largest group of people from a single country to visit the Gold Coast at one time, said Mrs. Keech.
All this is no big surprise, for there is much to offer in the Gold Coast. To me, the greatest attraction of the Gold Coast is the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef system made up of approximately 3,000 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for 2,600 kilometres. It is, to me, a great natural wonder. My only hope is that us human do not destroy it through our activities by the time I get a chance to visit it. Then there are the wonderful beach fronts and sea sports.
But the Gold Coast is not only about reefs, scuba diving, sea sports, etc. What are your interests? Action and adventure, arts and cultural stuff, fine dining, shopping, touring, fringe activities, animals, wildlife and nature, sport and recreation, theme parks and attractions, relaxation, nightlife and entertainment? The Gold Coast have them all.
Superbike enthusiast? How about a Harley Davidson tour along winding mountain roads? Or perhaps you may be more interested in four wheels with racing-style experiences on specialist tracks. If you want fast kart racing, the Gold Coast can offer you that. Or perhaps go for a ride on the helicopter or hot air balloon and come back down to earth with a sky dive or parasail. Go abseiling, kite surfing or even bungee jumping if you can take the frightful free fall.
If action and action is not your cup of tea, you can listen to a big band on a Sunday afternoon, be serenaded by jazz, visit art galleries like the Conrad Jupiters Arts Prize, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, visit museums like the Metre Maid Museum. Still remember the Holden cars? There is a museum for the Holden cars. There are blues concerts, opera, film festivals year round.
Like to dine out? You should try the locally bred Wagyu beef. There are also soft-shell crabs, goat cheese and award-winning boutique wines.
Brought your wife along? You probably can't escape the some of Australia’s largest shopping complexes and duty free stores in the Gold Coasts which are located at northern suburbs like the Biggera Waters, Sanctuary Cove, Runaway Bay, Main Beach, Southport, Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach, Bundall, Burleigh Heads, Robina, Tweed and Coolangatta. For something more exotic, go for the Surfers Paradise’s night markets or go for the 500 plus stalls at Carrara Markets weekends. Don't forget the Parklands Produce and Craft Markets and a many other markets offering fresh fruit, vegetables and preserves in quaint towns and villages. If what you want are antiques, paintings and pottery, try Tamborine’s Gallery Walk. For hand-made crafts, go to the Tweed rural townships.
Interested in Chinese churches? There is the Gold Coast Chinese Christian Church. They have a website at:
http://www.gcccc.org.au/
I can go on and on, but better you go see for yourself. But don't go sleep on the street. Make sure you book your accommodation via online hotel booking sites like CheaperThanHotels online booking. For hotels in the Gold Coast, you will have to go to hotels in gold coast.
If you are a surfer junkie, stay close to surfers' hangout by booking hotels in surfers paradise.
The Gold Coast is not that far from my country, but neither is it very near. If I have to fly all the way to visit the Gold Coast, I might as well hop over to Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia. Some call Adelaide the city of festival for it is famous for its Adelaide Festival of Arts as well as other festivals like the Fringe Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, Adelaide Festival of Ideas, Adelaide Writers' Week, and the Feast Festival plus others. There is now the famous WOMADelaide, an annual world music and dance festival first held in 1992. It is now held annually in the Botanic Park, Adelaide, and is part of the Womad series of music festivals. The Womad events feature all sorts of music, arts and dance to encourage people to experience the music of cultures other than their own to help develop global understanding. I will of course book my accommodation online first, most likely via hotels in Adelaide
Now if my former colleague, a Chinese, who have migrated to Perth, ever get wind of me landing on Australian soil but never pay him a visit, he will never forgive me. But with his large family, it will be too much for me to expect to go cheapskate and squat in his adobe, so I will have to depend on Perth hotels. That would probably be my last destination in Australia for by that time, I probably would have exhausted most of my Australian currencies.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Gold Coast Chinese connections and Gold Coast attractions
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Famous Chinese actresses
The Spock people search engine featured Nip/Tuck actor which as I mentioned in an earlier post, did not have any Chinese actor or actress listed. I have tried using www.spock.com to look for American Chinese actor to suggest to the show creator Ryan Murphy to include in the cast, but had not thought of actresses. After all, this is the time of liberation and sexual equality, and it is not impossible to find a female plastic surgeon.
So I tried using the search term "American Chinese actress" and found Spock people search engine result page for American Chinese actress. There is no shortage of American Chinese actress, but I think the one most suited would be Joan Chen, who also happened to be stationed in California. As mentioned in the earlier post, the popular plastic surgery TV series is moving its filming location to Los Angeles, California, so she should be an ideal candidate to act in that TV series.
We have our own famous Malaysian Chinese actress Dato' Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng. If she can get to act in that popular Nip/Tuck TV series, that would be another feather in the cap for Dato' Michelle Yeoh and also for Malaysia. After all, she has acted in famous Hollywood movies like James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997. And she is a famous international actress plus she had been conferred the Knight of the Legion of Honour of France by France President President Jacques Chirac.
Perhaps we should lobby hard for her to be included in the cast as the show creator Ryan Murphy have said that they will scan bulletin boards to gauge fans' preferences.
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American Chinese actor in Spock search engine
I have found www.spock.com really interesting as I can find all kinds of Chinese personalities using that search engine. I have written about Nip/Tuck actor and how disappointed that I could not find a single Chinese actor in the Spock search engine result page. I have commented that since the show creator Ryan Murphy was quoted as saying they will be scouring online message boards so that he can get an idea of what fans like and don't like, I will try to post a message in one of these boards and suggest casting a Chinese actor so that I can add him to Spock people search engine. I have thus made a search for "American Chinese actor" and got Spock search engine result page for "American Chinese actor.
At the time of publishing, the first American Chinese actor listed was Bruce Lee alias Lǐ Xiǎolóng, my favorite actor. Unfortunately, Bruce Lee is now long dead and gone and cannot be a candidate to act in the Nip/Tuck plastic surgery TV series. I heard they are moving the location to Los Angeles, California, and I found Glen Chin, a Chinese actor located in California. Perhaps I would propose him for the cast of Nip/Tuck TV series.
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Chinese Billionaire on Spock People Search Engine
Just found out about www.spock.com, a people search engine. Very interesting. All of us knows about Google search engine, Yahoo search engine, etc. I even found out about Dogpile search engine from a Fullbright scholar which search many other search engines at one go, a kind of compound search engine. I have also published about a post on Technorati blog search engine. But a people search engine? I can really use a search engine like this. I can search for anything connected with Chinese and write numerous posts about what I found.
For example, I search for "Chinese billionaire" and got Spock search result page for "Chinese billionaire". At the very top was Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo! together with David Filo. The thing that tickled me was to see one of the related person was the current President of the United States of America, George W. Bush. How was Jerry Yang related to George Bush? "Supported Politician". I just think some people would be mighty disappointed,
I don't think the order in which Chinese billionaires are listed in order of their wealth, as I am quite sure there are other Chinese billionaires who are more wealthy than Jerry Yang. Reasons? Perhaps they didn't sign up for Spock search engine. Also, ranking is influenced by others voting on the relevance and accuracy of tags, websites, etc.
There is this famous cosmetic surgery Tuck/Nip TV series and I was hoping to find a Chinese actor in the Spock search result page for "Tuck/Nip actor" and was very disappointed not to find even a single one. The nearest was a Japanese Tuck/Nip actor. Well, we know how difficult for Chinese to break into the Hollywood circle and American TV, so by right it should not be a surprise to me. However, according to TV.com, Nip/Tuck is getting ready for its season-five premiere on October 30, so let us be optimistic that somehow a Chinese would get cast in the series as I am sure there are American Chinese cosmetic surgeons.
The show creator Ryan Murphy was quoted as saying they will be scouring online message boards, particularly Niptuckforum.com, so that he can get an idea of what fans like and don't like. Well, I think I will hop over to Niptuckforum.com, register as a user, make a suggestion to include a Chinese actor as it is said that 1 in 4 of the living residents of Earth is ethnic Chinese and I am sure there are American Chinese plastic surgeons and according to Wikipedia, the Chinese American community is the second largest ethnic group of Asian Americans at 22.4% of the Asian American population.
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Famous Chinese Chef
I am still trying to find out what this site www.spock.com is all about. From preliminary examination, it looks like some kind of people search engine. I see a link chef right at the top of the page and thought I would like to try searching for some well known Chinese Chef.
Update: that link I mentioned above changes with time. The last time I look at the site again, it was a link for "Billionaire"
I type the search term "Wok with Yan" which is a famous, humorous and popular Chinese cooking TV series by Canadian Chinese chef Stephen Yan. My search led to many Stephen Yan's, but the very first one linked to the real Stephen Yan of "Wok with Yan". Wok is a Chinese frying pan in the shape of a dish or pan, rather like the pan the gold hunter pan for gold. Wok (rhyme with walk) and the word "Wok" in the title of the TV cooking series is a play with words, for it could refer to "walking with Yan" as he show, in a humorous manner, how to cook various Chinese dishes, or it could also refer to "cooking with Yan" as wok is associated with cooking.
According to Wikipedia, "Wok with Yan" was first produced in Vancouver, Canada, from 1980 to 1982 by CBC with a second edition in the early 1990s. The popular cooking TV series was syndicated internationally in United States, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore for years and although "Wok with Yan" is no longer in production, episodes continue to be rerun on Omni Television. I know because I live in one of these countries and have watched the funny Stephen Yan cooking his Chinese dishes on TV.
I know they say 1 in 4 of living person on earth are ethnic Chinese, we should not be so inward looking as only to consider things Chinese, for there are more things in life than just things Chinese.
There is an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning American television medical drama series called Nip/Tuck (nip and tuck are cosmetic surgery operations) which features the lives of 2 Miami plastic surgeons Sean McNamara (actor Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (actor Julian McMahon). If you try searching for Nip/Tuck actor, you will get to Nip/Tuck actor - Spock Search and the first two shows the main actors Julian McMahon and Dylan Walsh followed by other minor actors in the Nip/Tuck TV series.
Now that I know how Spock Search works, I made a search for "Google Blogger", the blogging platform I used for all my blogs and found the page for Meg Hourihan who co-founded Pyra Labs. Pyra Labs is the company which created Blogger and is the one mainly responsible for first making blogging easy and popular. Pyra Labs has since being bought over by Google. On that page, at the bottom, I have added my blog Blogger Tips and Tricks which is very popular with bloggers looking for tips and tricks for their Blogger blogs and from which they obtained information which many commented is informative, well explained, easy to understand and to implement, etc., to Meg Hourihan's page. If you surf to that site, you will see a "On the Web" Section under which I see 4 logos one of which is the Blogger 
logo, beside which is the word "blogspot" and next to that is a down arrow. If you click the down arrow, you will see
If you go to that page not too long after this post is published, you will only see one link http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com which will link to my main popular Blogger (blogspot) blog, and below that you can vote if you find the link relevant to Meg Hourihan's page. I hope you vote yes because my blog Blogger Tips and Tricks provides all kind of information on Blogger which Meg Hourihan's Pyra Labs created.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Guanxi. The First Word in Chinese Trade
Guanxi. The First Word in Chinese Trade by Peter Bennett
A colleague once told me that a good indicator of economic confidence was the number of construction cranes on the skyline. If he's correct, Beijing is feeling good about its prospects, very good in fact.
According to figures recently published by the Associated Press, China's economy grew at a blistering 9.4 percent in the first three quarters of 2005 alone. Yet a pan-European business poll by parcel firm UPS revealed that almost a third (31 percent) of UK business leaders do not consider Asia to be an important trading or production market.
To ignore the headlines predicting the 'awakening of the Dragon' would be commercial suicide: the world economy is undergoing a revolution as a China-led Asia returns to its historic role at the centre of affairs, according to the Financial Times' Martin Wolf.
Few of us receive emails in Chinese, but I saw one last year which translated into: "I'd like to spend a million pounds with your company". A good excuse, I thought, to spend January in Beijing talking to business representative organizations and growing companies who want to trade with the west. There were things I know now which I didn't know when I boarded my plane from London to Beijing to meet my Chinese contact which everyone wishing to do business in China should be aware of. Let me explain.
There were no berths available on the night train from Beijing to Xian (famous for its terracotta army but fast developing other industries) but we soon found ourselves settling down to sleep as one suddenly came available. A few days later we dined in a restaurant which was so busy that there was a queue for tables but strangely we had been directed past the queue into a private dining room.
Not long after my arrival in Beijing I'd mentioned a long standing back injury was troubling me after my flight. The next day I was ushered past the waiting patients to be x-rayed immediately by one of the City's leading orthopedic surgeons. No money changed hands. The currency exchanged was based upon Guanxi (Pronounced "GWAN-shee") which literally means "relationships". In practice, "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". The exchange of favors.
My host, a local businessman whose family has lived in the same area of Beijing for centuries, runs several successful restaurants. He has Guanxi in abundance and I have lost count of the number of times his standing has made things happen which would have been impossible without his network. If you trade with China, or would like to trade with China, underestimate Guanxi at your peril.
It works at all levels from social engagements through business and into officialdom. Western corporations often place great emphasis on efficiency and financial performance as a guide to whether or not to trade with other entities. In China, a much higher importance is put on personal relationships. You do not need to be big and powerful to forge successful business relationships with Chinese executives but you do need establish the personal contacts first.
My advice is not to rely on formal written communications but wherever possible to talk to prospective contacts on the phone (using an interpreter if required) and, if at all possible, arrange to meet in person as soon as you think you have a mutual interest in trading. Return flights from London to Beijing are around 400 UK and once there, accommodation is cheap.
Time spent getting to know your potential partners will pay dividends down the line. Unless your hosts speak English well, consider hiring a face-to-face interpreter to avoid confusion and help initial meetings run smoothly. Their local knowledge of the City will also be invaluable as Beijing is huge.
My time in China was extremely productive. London Translations Limited, has announced an agreement with Beijing Sagive Translations Company Limited, one of the most respected and experienced translation firms in China. This will provide a crucial language 'bridge' to enable trade between our two countries. Crucially they will provide an English to Chinese service and we will translate Chinese into English.
Incidentally, I never found out how exactly we managed to get seats on a fully booked train but my host did mention that the wife of a comedian whose show was being played on TV in our carriage works at the train company and the comedian himself regularly eats in his restaurants!
Peter Bennett is founder and CEO of London translations Limited, one of London's fastest growing business translation and interpreting agencies.
Download his free report, Translation without tears, from:
http://www.london-translations.co.uk
Article Source: ArticleBazaar.net
Monday, April 16, 2007
Free way to advertise all things Chinese
There is this site 
