成都代表性的建筑风格就是青石瓦房。

窄窄的街道，有点云南丽江的味道，连酒吧也取名叫四方街，最能体现成都人最赶潮流的心态。不过，皮影戏和老烟枪还是保留了老成都的味道。

最最正宗的麻婆豆腐：豆腐上的花椒面足以让你头皮发麻，但是这正是这道菜的妙处。

夫妻肺片：最正宗的吃法是肺片夹锅盔，类似陕西的肉夹馍

最好吃的宫保鸡丁：鲜香和麻辣的至尊级统一，连每个花生米都酥到了骨头里

还有的就是我热爱的凉粉、凉面和煮凉粉。所谓煮凉粉，就是用水把大米做成的色泽金黄、形似豆腐的、看似凉粉的东东煮过，然后加以佐料伴着吃，热乎乎，辣嘻嘻，冬天或阴雨天吃着是莫大的享受。阿姨身后那一摞摞的碗里就是煮凉粉了，凉粉在她身后的电饭锅了烫过后，加上她身前碗里各种佐料一拌，就成了美味可口的佳肴。

大快朵颐的样子：

• the democratization of tools: e.g. the blogging tools made personal publishing easy and affordable for a lot of individuals;
• the emergence of internet: the internet makes marginal  cost for storagenegligible and dramatically decreased the distribution cost;
• the filtering capability provided by search engines: the search engines made it possible for web consumers to find what matters to them efficiently and effortlessly. When there is an easy way to separating the wheat from the chaff, we become less concerned with the mounting chaff.

The question to me seems like which tool I would like to democratize most if I still have the chance…   

This is a classic elasticity case. The publisher wants to maximize its profit by selling as many books as possible. To achieve this goal, the publisher prices each book differently based on the elasticity (the purchasing power) of each market. The more inelastic (insensitive) the demand curve is (against the price change), the higher the price the consumers are going to pay. For publishers, as long as each book sells above its marginal cost, the publishers make money. However, this model only works if the consumers in less elastic market have no access to the same goods sold much cheaper elsewhere. Otherwise, the more expensive books will never sell.

Thanks for the internet and the modern means of transportation, consumers are much more powerful to reach goods sold worldwide than in, say, 60’s or 70’s in the last century. So, students could always go to amazon.com.uk to buy text books to save 20 to 30 bucks for the exactly the same books and people like me can buy the exactly the same book in book stores in China for half the price or even cheaper.

Books I am reading now. Reviews at http://www.slashdot.com/.

Then, I found audio books at www.audible.com. With less than $10 subcription fee, I could download the latest audio books and put them into my ipod instantly. it is my saver!! I suddenly could not be bored to death when sitting in the car in vain. (I tried newspapers, but they could only make me dizzy after 10 minutes. And I want to relax my eyes if I could). The site has more than 25,000 titles and I could find books easily by genre, awards or by popularity ratings. It enables me to keep track of what’s most popular, sensible or controversial in US and the audio technology helps me to continuously improve my English skills. This service seems to satisfy all small, but important desires in my heart. I just can not stop raving the service and the business model!! (BTW, it could be a destroyer to Focus Media too. When people could make use of their idling time well, will Focus Media be disappeared in China? Maybe…)

Thought this site would be a great candidate for another copied-by-China idea. But, first, we need to create all the audio books and secondly, we need to fight for copy-right breachers. I know how to do the first. Not sure how to get the second right???

I don’t respect focus media because their ads don’t bring me any value. Their ads invade my personal space, but I have no means to turn them off!! In some sense, Jiang Nanchun builds his fortune on the sacrifice of me… and other nameless and powerless consumers who might feel the same.

The inner solar system contains the sun（太阳）、Mercury(水星）、Venus（金星）、Earth（地球） and Mars（火星）。

The planets of the outer solar system are Jupiter（木星）、Saturn（土星）、Uranus(冥王星） and Neptune（海王星）。 Pluto is classfied as dwarf planet now.  

The textbooks in China for the coming fall couldn’t reflect this change made by the late August. I heard teachers were worried because probably the first time in the history, the black-and-white prints will no longer be telling the ”truth”. The text-auditing committee claimed they chose not to revise the textbooks because editting textbooks is such a serious thing and it has to be approved by layers of authorities. It makes me wonder why the textbooks in China can only spread doctrines but encourage questioning and exploration. How about just put it as “Whether Pluto is a planet in the solar system is still under debate. Pluto was discovered in 1930 and considered as a planet since. This school of thought has been challenged by many scientists and in Aug 2006, Pluto was classified as a dwarf plant by the International Astronomical Union. However, the new classification also has many dissentents. Some scientists are working very hard to reverse the decision. Thousands of debates are still there about the universe since human being only knows it so little. If you are serious about the Astronomy, the below are the reference books. Welcome to explore the mysterious universe…” When could teachers in China give up the role as the authoritative figure but be a cheer leader among millions of knowledge-seeking kids?           

雪媚娘：是我看过最漂亮的点心之一，原来是用糯米、奶油和芒果粒做成的

西湖花港的锦鲤和接天的莲叶

Gmarket’s growth momentum: For Gmarket, the first-quarter performance translated into revenues of $29.6 million, most of which came from transaction fees. That’s about three times the sales performance of the year-ago period. In 2005, revenues from transaction fees, advertising, and other earnings totaled $59.3 million, about a fivefold jump from 2004. “Gmarket has taken everyone by surprise,” says Park Kyung Min, CEO at fund manager Hangaram Investment Management. “No one had expected it to be a credible force when it began providing an online open market in the fall of 2003.”

How Gmarket formed an alliance with Yahoo: Gmarket will gain access to even more capital with its Nasdaq public offering, set for the first week of July, by which it hopes to raise $100 million. “The Nasdaq listing, instead of an initial public offering in Korea, underlines our determination to grow in international markets,” says Jo Chang Sun, Gmarket senior vice-president in charge of business strategy. “Our partnership with Yahoo will help us save time and cost in our overseas push.”

In fact, the Yahoo and Gmarket alliance will target other markets in Asia. When the deal was announced, Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig said: “We look forward to working with Gmarket to leverage their e-commerce expertise to further expand Yahoo!’s leading position in commerce in Asia.” Gmarket executives say they are tentatively planning to set up an overseas subsidiary in an unspecified Asian country either late this year or in 2007. Part of Gmarket’s IPO proceeds will be used to finance its overseas growth.

The partnership got off the ground last summer when Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang caught up with Gmarket’s CEO Ku Young Bae at an Internet conference hosted by Alibaba.com founder Jack Ma in Hangzhou, China. Yang was apparently impressed enough at that meeting for serious talks to begin about an alliance.

Gmarket tactic 1 - shopping is fun: So what attracted Yang’s attention? For one thing, Gmarket’s business model places less emphasis on an open auction format than eBay’s. The company offers goods that one can order at fixed prices, with an option to negotiate prices with a seller on an exclusive basis. This allows buyers to conclude deals instantly instead of requiring them to wait until all bids are completed in open auctions. That option is available on eBay as well, but at Gmarket open-bidding auctions account for less than 10% of overall sales volume.

More important, Gmarket has introduced a number of marketing initiatives to differentiate itself from eBay. “We wanted to make sure those who sell their products at our site have marketing tools to promote their goods,” says Jo. “We refused to limit our role to a provider of an e-market place and an agent of attracting buyers and sellers.” The aim is to provide new features constantly at the e-commerce site. Such tactics give sellers various options to attract consumers’ attention to their products and at the same time offer some fun to shoppers to encourage them to come back.

Gmarket tactic 2 - promotion is the king: One such marketing program is a lottery called “lucky auction.” It gives buyers chances to buy everything from LCD televisions to T-shirts at a fraction of the market value. A seller promoting an MP3 player, for example, invites consumers to bid for two of them within a given price range—usually less than 10% of the retail price. Then Gmarket’s computer picks two bids at random to decide the winners. Others visitors can buy the MP3 player at a special offer price. The seller attracts consumers, while Gmarket happily hauls in commissions.

Another incentive at Gmarket is that retailers can offer online links to their own mini homepages within the site, issue discount coupons, run joint mileage points programs, and use an internal messenger service called G-messenger for instant chatting with sellers. Some shops listed on the site have also drawn traffic by promising to donate 10 cents to a favored charity every time a product is sold.

Article 2: Could Gmarket Appeal to Japanese Consumers? 

Gmarket eyes the Japanese marketplace: Nasdaq-listed Gmarket is pressing ahead with its campaign to outshine global powerhouse eBay and grab leadership in South Korea’s e-commerce. The Korean upstart on August 9 posted a 163% jump in gross merchandise value, or the total value of goods sold on its website, in the quarter that ended in June. The turnover of $573 million, which compares with $217.8 million in the April-June period last year, represents 16.8% of Korea’s retail Internet commerce, up from a share of 8.3% a year earlier.

Internet Auction, eBay’s Korean subsidiary, doesn’t release quarterly results. But industry officials say Gmarket, which is 9.1% owned by Yahoo!, could have edged past the American giant in terms of the volume of items they handled in the second quarter. “eBay’s growth is pretty decent, expanding by more than 50% in 2005 from the previous year,” says Lee Duck Jun, Gmarket’s chief financial officer. “We are growing at much faster pace, though.”

With its gross merchandise value for all of this year projected to reach $2.4-2.6 billion, Gmarket is now planning to set up a cyber open market in Japan in the first half of next year. eBay pulled out of the Japanese e-commerce market, Asia’s biggest, a few years back, after being badly beaten by Yahoo’s Japanese subsidiary. A joint venture with Yahoo is one option considered by Gmarket for its Japan operation but the Korean company doesn’t rule out the possibility of setting up a wholly-owned unit to compete with Yahoo as well as Rakuten there.