The picture here shows that a universtiy professor standing behind a veteran at the venue in the celebration of the latter's 99th birthday. The event took place in Nanning yesterday, April 7, the traditional holiday of Zhuang people living in Guangxi and other parts of China.The old man is named Qiu Bingji（邱炳基）. He was an ex-soldier of KMT troops fighting in Yunnan Province of China and Burma against the Japanese aggressors in 1940s, serving as a machine gun operator, and later he became a cart puller to make a living in the old Nanning when he retired from the army and never made any undue demand to the local government or acted as if he was a big hero who saved the world.According to the professor Mr. Li in the picture, who is a retired teacher of Guangxi Teacher Education University or the now Nanning Normal University, the veteran Mr. Qiu has not had any illness in his hard work and life up to now and he (the teacher) also had real experience of the life of a cart puller because his own elder brother was also one, and that is why he could form such a seemingly weird relation with a former soldier.This year marks the 70th anniversary of foundation of New China, and we should not forget about the history of this country, especially those heroes who make contributions to the coutnry with their toil, sweat and blood.

Today is April 7, but it is also the third day of the third moon on lunar calendar, a ceremonious holiday for Guangxi people. Before I write this post, I was surprised to read an article of the same subject published on the front page of today’s China Daily. It is about the Buyi ethnic group living in Guizhou Province, a much less populous people than the Zhuang people living in Guangxi, where a five-day-long holiday has been granted by the government to all residents. Zhuang people is second only to Han people in number in China. So our dear readers can understand who is the real owner of this traditional ethnic-themed festival. We eat sticky rice on such a big-event day in memory of our forefathers. The food is prepared and presented in five colors, which is the most colorful food in China in my opinion. We sing songs on this day too. As is known to all, Guangxi is home to folk songs and the Nanning International Folk Song Festival has long been a brand gala for many music lovers and culture fans. In 1960s a famous movie “Sister Liusanjie” was so popular that even up to now you can find its trace in Guilin, a very nice city of Guangxi with the most beautiful landscape under the sun.

The late 1980s saw that our city, Nanning of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in the southern region, sent a host of engineers and construction teams to work in the international engineering market, opening the exploration of world market for the first time as the country China began to recover from the stagnation of economy in the previous period.Those engineers worked in Bangladesh on a highway that connects the home village of the great writer Tagore to the outside world. Due to lack of international experience, the work progressed much slower than scheduled and the team of engineering of China was almost forced out of the poor country with the bad performance they delivered because they were not familiar with the FIDIC rule-based management of international engineering projects. Their practice was done following the usual government-ordered planning manner back home.It was a Mr. Chen Tingzheng, the then Vice Mayor of Nanning, who is an engineer himself, that led the workforce there to fulfill the unfinished work on time, saving the face of the country and regaining the confidence of Bangladesh, a good neighor of China. The effort of the city was in fact the beginning of the Belt and Road Initiative, only it took place more than 20 years ago. So it is very meaningful for us to read this book today, written by a woman writer who collects information from the workers on that project.

Nanning is a border city in the south of China, but during the years of 1988 to 2005, not less than 2,000 engineers or technicians were sent to work in the projects of road construction in Bangladesh.At that time, projects of engineering were not done in the internationally recognized manner at home, so these Nanning engineering crew did make great scenes before they could finish the job. In other words, they learnt a great lesson at high cost in a foreign land.Why did they go to a strange land then? For more profit, you may say, but the answer is no, because at that time, engineering works were easily available in China and no bidding was implemented for obtaining the contract. All companies that engaging in engineering were all run by public ownership, with laboring hands employed from countryside only. They could easily earn the profits without going to the market outside the country.The truth is that there was an official of the embassy of Bangladesh whose native home is Wuming County under the jurisdiction of Nanning. At that time, Nanning or even the province of which Nanning is the capital city seldom owns a diplomat at national level. So that official wished to give a hand to help his home land when Asian Development Bank representative visited the embassy and informed them of the projects. The then mayor of Nanning happened to be a graduate of civil engineering, so he organized a team of engineers with fleet of trucks and engineering equipment undertaking the work in Bangladesh.After the not so pleasing experience, many people working for the projects there has become the mainstay of the government agencies in Nanning till now.

In my earlier blog posts, I presented the full-length novel "Dream of Morgan" but due to the unavailability of time I cannot make a translation so that readers here can have a good read.Recently during my cleaning of the house for the upcoming Chinese New Year, I came across a booklet that was published by Guangxi Writers' Association, a semi-official organization of competent writers of literary works in Guangxi and that had a small circulation.However, the record on the inside page of this booklet showed that "Dream of Morgan" was one of the winners of Literature Award for Writers of Zhuang Ethnicitiy. That is the news very exciting.

Today I browsed the news of some people paying an aid visit to poor families in remote hilly region before the Chinese New Year as one of their job of providing poverty relief.But in the group photo that I read I saw these people were staying in a storied building, obviously the home of that poor family, because there is a staircase leading to the upper floor shown background.So if a household owning a two-story building is called a poor house, then what should we call ourselves in the city living in a rent apartment? Who is the one needing the poverty aid the most?Due to privacy, I won't paste the photo here.

In a glimpse, the formal universities or colleges in the Chinese mainland have their names in the format of location + college or university, with some more words that can highlight the features added, for example, “Normal”, “Petroleum”, “Forestry”. In terms of location or places, there seems a connection of the school name and the name of the place, for example, Guangxi University means the institute is located in or hosted by Guangxi. But there are some names that are misleading, for example, Peking University or Beijing University, is not a college run by Beijing, but one run by the national educational authorities, only those who live in Beijing (or to be exact those who have Beijing household registration) have got the much larger percentage of benefits of the college than their fellow countrymen in other parts of the nation; Sichuan International Studies University is not located in Sichuan either, but in Chongqing. Some may argue that previously Chongqing was under the jurisdiction of Sichuan, but it has been quite some time that the two administration bodies have been independent from each other, so now the unwillingness of the university to change its name or its address is absolutely unjustified and dishonest. But the case of Xizang Minzu University is far more ridiculous because it is not located in Xizang (or Tibet) but in Xianyang, a place most of Chinese don’t even know where. Yes, Xianyang is part of Shaanxi Province, a central China province, quite a long distance away from Tibet and both provinces do not have subordination or similar geographical or close cultural relations. The names of other universities in China are implying larger territory their influence reaches, such as Central China Normal University, Southwest University of Political Science and Law, University of Science and Technology of China.But in my opinion, the most ambitious name of university is that of the former Qinzhou University which is located in Guangxi, after the approval of China’s Ministry of Education, it is now named Beibu Gulf University. The Beibu Gulf is also known as Bay of Tonkin, which doesn’t belong to any single country, but is shared by the seven nations around it and the world public. So that is why no other Chinese colleges can surpass this institute in terms of name. Perhaps only the Nanyang (means South Ocean in Chinese) Technological University in Singapore and the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand can outdo Beibu Gulf University by name only.

There has been heated discussion online about a recent speech delivered by a schoolboy of Hangzhou in a classroom activity before his classmates and his and their teachers and parents. Dressed in school uniform and especially the flashy red scarf, a symbol of the successor to the great socialist revolutionary cause, the boy surprised the audience with his dream, which is about making fortune, an obvious goal of life of capitalists or the object to be revolutionized in normal classroom education. But he actually revealed the truth in plain words only, actually nearly all people in China want to make fortune, but they think it is a shame to tell others it is their dream or final goal in life to pursuit money. The boy also explained why he makes such a choice when there are so many other that sound more morally aloof and correct. He said he would not bear the boring days ahead without the fortune great enough to change his life, which is supposed to be an easy and comfortable life where he can do whatever he likes without considering too much about money. At this, I would like to give my warmest applause to such an honest confession. And that is what makes the audience laugh because they all believe what he said is true and that they are shy enough not to admit it. However, I would like to point out that whether you admit it or not, you have already been in the great efforts to earn money, and making fortune is the dream or the highest representation of earning money. Because if you do not have enough money, you do not even have the chance to survive. Your comfort and luxury rely on the fortune you make, but for earning such fortune, you will have to work hard. The boy expressed his feelings toward the existing pathetic way of life of many people, however, it is not that those people do not want to have more money but that they are unable to get the money for the comfort and luxury they want to have even after they have tried very hard. So the question here is all the people in the classroom including the speaking boy do not realize that to fulfill such a goal takes much trouble or even costs a lot more. Apart from those who are born with a silver spoon in mouths, no rich people can earn his money easily. So if what you care about making fortune is about the outcome or the comfort and luxury but not the sweat, toil and blood, it is advisable that you should keep making fortune a secret in your mind so that you will not lose face when questioned by the people who want to ridicule you.

Unlike the saying of China tells us, the daughters of an emperor do not worry about their marriage and the good wine has no fear to be located in a deep and inaccessable street, good works need to be advertised, even in today's web age, when information is easily available. So that is why I make the trouble to make the recommendation for the novel. Title: Dream of Morgan Type: Full-length Suspense Novel Author: Zhang Bo Origin: Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China Published by: The Law Press of China in 1988 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Fire, Strange Fire Chapter 2 Two Different Melodies Chapter 3 Speculation at Late Night Chapter 4 Laugh that doesn’t please Chapter 5 Bitterness with Sweetness Left Chapter 6 Night, Foggy Night Chapter 7 Debate Is Going On Chapter 8 A Leopard Cannot Change Its Spots Chapter 9 Wave of Emotions Chapter 10 Clue Given by the Orient Watch Chapter 11 Boundless Sea of Hardship Chapter 12 Is It She? Chapter 13 Wrong Dancing Steps Chapter 14 Stories of Right and Wrong Chapter 15 Hazy Dream of Love Chapter 16 Alcohol Doesn’t Dispel Real Worry Chapter 17 Spark Caused by Soul Impact Chapter 18 Mutual Killing Chapter 19 Intensity Chapter 20 A Broken Dream

During the past 4 decades, China underwent great changes and some of the literary works also made vivid depiction of the reform efforts all over the country. I like to make a short introduction to a fiction titled "Dream of Morgan", written by an author from Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, a region geographically close to Guangdong, the most energetic and active place of reform, but far away from it otherwise.There is nothing new to some readers, but considering it is a novel written during the days when reform and opening up was not yet very popular in the country, there should have something for us to chew over against the agitation of today's world. At the beginning, let us just have a look at this publishing work that is the product of Law Press China.Dream of Morgan, novel of Law Press China