Stimulus-Subsidized High Speed Trains Slaughtering Chinese Airlines And Jeopardizing Boeing’s China Dream (BA)

I have a Chinese Crested.

I dont really consider them "social" dogs.. they tend to cling to their family and enjoy friends and other family members that they visit often.. but very few of them are outwardly friendly towards strangers. Mine is tolerant and accepting of strangers, but he's not overly friendly towards many strangers (typically only ladies at petshops that smell like treats!).

They are not all tiny pocket-sized dogs.. they vary in weight.. average sizes are 8-18 pounds.. most of them around the 12 pound range. Keep this in mind when you are trying to figure out if one will fit in a carry-on size crate! If you want this breed, you may be better off to seek an adult who is full grown and the size is known.

They do good with kids and cats if socialized around them. Mine likes calmer children.. he will sit on a couch and snuggle with a calm child. They dont ussually like "rough and tumble" type kids.

They are VERY difficult to housetrain. They are smart dogs, but they are also master manipulators and will try to get their own way.

The hairless is alot of skin care.. they are prone to dry skin, acne, blackheads, sunburn and other infections and irritations. The hairless are not always as "hairless" as you may think either. They vary in amounts of body hair.. from true hairless, which has little/no body hair (they also lack the flashy socks and manes you see on the show dogs).. a moderate hairless has a strip of hair going down its back, and some up on the legs.. to a very hairy, which is almost completely covered in a fine, single layer of hair. Most show cresteds are moderate to hairy and are shaved down.

A puff has a full double coat of hair.

Hairless tend to be more clingy and childlike in nature, while the puffs are more independant and "doggy" in nature.

I don't know all of the various ethnic groups in China. The largest one is the Han or the ethnic Chinese. There are the ethnic Turks in the northwest, in the Xinjiang Republic, who are generally Muslims. There are the ethnic and linguistic Tibetans in the southwest, in what was historically the nation of Tibet. In the south, there are a variety of non-Han groups, including some who are sometimes called Miao tribesmen, Yao, and a variety of others. Some of these are related to other peoples who also live still further south, in Southeast Asia. For example the so-called Miao are akin to the Hmong who are mainly in Laos, as far as I know. Their language is thought to be related to Thai and Lao, not Chinese, but culturally they are distinct from all others. I am not as certain of the Yao's affiliation, either linguistically or culturally. But you can discover the details on these and other groups by looking up Chinese ethnic groups on Google. I've been to such sites in the past, but there are so many, I don't recall them all.

As far as religion goes, since the official position of the government for so long was anti-religious, I couldn't say what exists now. In Tibet, the people have been Buddhist for a very long time. In the Xinjiang Republic, as noted earlier, the Turkic speaking people (Uighurs specifically) have been Muslims for a long time. There are also some Christians scattered about, but they are a small minority. Taoism was traditionally one of the major religions in China but it, like Chan Buddhism, suffered greatly under Communism, and may be extinct. The tribes in the hill country such as the Miao were traditionally shamanist, but again I don't know how this stands today.

Literacy is strongly emphasized, at least for children. But the majority of the populace does not go past the equivalent of high school and I'm not convinced that it's even that good, despite claims of greater than 90% literacy. After all, for most of the country, they have to not only learn to read, but to read a language other than what they speak at home, since most people don't speak Mandarin as a first language. Even those who do, don't speak the way it's written. And Chinese isn't written with an alphabet either. It's almost like reading charades, with a "sounds-like" part for each word plus another part that indicates something about the meaning, derived ultimately from picture writing, but so changed that you wouldn't guess what the picture was unless you studied it in school.

The education policy is to teach everyone to read Mandarin, if that's what you mean. So in the south of China, where they speak Cantonese, they don't learn to read Cantonese. No, they learn to read Mandarin. That's comparable to having the Spanish learn to read French. The languages are related but they're by no means the same! Now I studied Chinese from ordinary books and took courses in college, again using books, back when a computer was a gigantic object that filled a room the size of the average garage. So I can't give you websites. You'll have to find those yourself, I'm afraid. And the rest comes from speaking to Chinese people whom I've met over the years. I've only looked at a few websites over the years, none recently.

thesocialarchive’s status on Thursday, 18-Feb-10 12:16:21 WAT

Because by not doing so, Yahoo could lose the whole Chinese market if the Goverment sensor them.

This is really more to do with politics than technology so I wont get into the debate.