1.
Lanzhou
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Lanzhou is the capital and largest city of Gansu Province in Northwest China. The prefecture-level city, located on the banks of the Yellow River, is a key transportation hub. Historically, it has been a link on the Northern Silk Road. The city is also a center for industry and petrochemical industry. Lanzhou was previously ranked as one of the cities with the worst air quality in the world, due to industrial pollution, however, as of 2015 it was awarded Chinas climate progress title. Lanzhou is home to 3,616,163 inhabitants at the 2010 census and 2,177,130 in the area of 1,088 square kilometres. Originally in the territory of the Western Qiang peoples, Lanzhou became part of the territory of the State of Qin in the 6th century BC. In 81 BC, under the Han dynasty, it was taken from the Huns Huandi Chanyu and made the seat of Jincheng commandery, to protect the city, the Great Wall of China was extended as far as Yumen. Parts of the Great Wall still exist within the built-up area, after the fall of the Han dynasty, Lanzhou became the capital of a succession of tribal states. In the 4th century it was briefly the capital of the independent state of Liang, the Northern Wei dynasty reestablished Jincheng commandery, renaming the county Zicheng. Mixed with different cultural heritages, the area at present-day Gansu province, from the 5th to the 11th century, under the Sui Dynasty the city became the seat of Lanzhou prefecture for the first time, retaining this name under the Tang dynasty. In 763 the area was overrun by the Tibetan Empire and in 843 was conquered by the Tang, later it fell into the hands of the Western Xia dynasty and was subsequently absorbed by the Song dynasty in 1041. The name Lanzhou was reestablished, and the county renamed Lanzhuan, after 1127 it fell into the hands of the Jin dynasty, and after 1235 it came into the possession of the Mongol Empire. Under the Ming dynasty the prefecture was demoted to a county and placed under the administration of Lintao superior prefecture, the city acquired its current name in 1656, during the Qing dynasty. When Gansu was made a province in 1666, Lanzhou became its capital. In 1739 the seat of Lintao was transferred to Lanzhou, which was made a superior prefecture called Lanzhou. Lanzhou was badly damaged during the Dungan revolt in 1864–1875, in the 1920s and 1930s it became a center of Soviet influence in northwestern China. This highway remained the primary route of northwestern China until the completion of the railway from Lanzhou to Ürümqi
2.
Gansu
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Gansu is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the northwest of the country. It lies between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, the Yellow River passes through the southern part of the province. Gansu has a population of 26 million and covers an area of 425,800 square kilometres, the capital is Lanzhou, located in the southeast part of the province. Gansu is a compound of the names of Ganzhou and Suzhou, Gansu is abbreviated as 甘 or 陇, and is also known as Longxi or Longyou, in reference to the Long Mountain east of Gansu. Gansu is a name first used during the Song dynasty of two Sui and Tang dynasty prefectures, Gan and Su. In prehistoric times, Gansu was host to Neolithic cultures, the Dadiwan culture, from where archaeologically significant artifacts have been excavated, flourished in the eastern end of Gansu from about 6000 BC to about 3000 BC. The Majiayao culture and part of the Qijia culture took root in Gansu from 3100 BC to 2700 BC and 2400 BC to 1900 BC respectively, the Yuezhi originally lived in the very western part of Gansu until they were forced to emigrate by the Xiongnu around 177 BCE. The State of Qin, later to become the state of the Chinese empire, grew out from the southeastern part of Gansu. The Qin name is believed to have originated, in part, Qin tombs and artifacts have been excavated from Fangmatan near Tianshui, including one 2200-year-old map of Guixian County. In imperial times, Gansu was an important strategic outpost and communications link for the Chinese empire, the Han dynasty extended the Great Wall across this corridor, building the strategic Yumenguan and Yangguan fort towns along it. Remains of the wall and the towns can be found there, the Ming dynasty built the Jiayuguan outpost in Gansu. By the Qingshui treaty, concluded in 823 between the Tibetan Empire and the Tang dynasty, China lost a part of Gansu province for a significant period. After the fall of the Uyghur Empire, an Uyghur state was established in parts of Gansu that lasted from 848 to 1036 AD, during that time, many of Gansus residents were converted to Islam. Along the Silk Road, Gansu was an important province. Temples and Buddhist grottoes such as those at Mogao Caves and Maijishan Caves contain artistically and historically revealing murals. An early form of paper inscribed with Chinese characters and dating to about 8 BC was discovered at the site of a Western Han garrison near the Yumen pass in August 2006, the province was also the origin of the Dungan Revolt of 1862-77. Among the Qing forces were Muslim generals like Ma Zhanao and Ma Anliang who helped Qing crush the rebel Muslims, the revolt spread into Gansu from neighbouring Qinghai. Frequent earthquakes, droughts and famines have tended to slow progress of the province until recently
3.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
4.
K-pop
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K-pop is a music genre originating in South Korea that is characterized by a wide variety of audiovisual elements. The more modern form of the genre emerged with one of the earliest K-pop groups, Seo Taiji and Boys and their experimentation with different styles of music reshaped Koreas music scene. As a result, the integration of foreign musical elements has now become common practice with K-pop artists, K-pop entered the Japanese market at the turn of the 21st century and rapidly grew into a subculture among teenagers and young adults of East and Southeast Asia. Although K-pop generally refers to South Korean popular music, some consider it to be an all-encompassing genre exhibiting a vast spectrum of musical and visual elements, the French Institut national de laudiovisuel defines K-pop as a fusion of synthesized music, sharp dance routines and fashionable, colorful outfits. Songs typically consist of one or a mixture of pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, Management agencies in South Korea offer binding contracts to potential artists, sometimes at a young age. Trainees live together in an environment and spend many hours a day learning music, dance, foreign languages. This robotic system of training is often criticized by Western media outlets, in 2012, The Wall Street Journal reported that the cost of training one Korean pop idol under S. M. K-pop is a product that features “values, identity and meanings that go beyond their strictly commercial value. ”It is characterized by a mixture of Western sounds with an Asian aspect of performance. It has been remarked that there is a vision of modernization inherent in Korean pop culture, for some, the transnational values of K-pop are responsible for its success. Many agencies have presented new idol groups to an audience through a debut showcase, groups are given a name and a concept, along with a marketing hook. Sometimes sub-units or sub-groups are formed among existing members, an example subgroup is Super Junior-K. R. Y. Which consists of members Kyuhyun, Ryeowook, and Yesung, and Super Junior-M, online marketing includes music videos posted to YouTube in order to reach a worldwide audience. Prior to the video, the group releases teaser photos. Promotional cycles of subsequent singles are called comebacks even when the musician or group in question did not go on hiatus, modern K-pop is marked by its use of English phrases. In 1995, the percentage of song titles using English in the top 50 charts was 8% and this fluctuated between 30% in 2000, 18% in 2005, and 44% in 2010. Similarly, increasing numbers of K-pop bands use English names rather than Korean ones and this allows songs and artists to be marketed to a wider audience around the world. An example of a Korean song with a proportion of English lyrics is Kara’s Jumping. Increasingly, foreign songwriters and producers are employed to work on songs for K-pop idols, such as will. i. am, musicians, including rappers such as Akon, Kanye West, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg, have also featured on K-pop songs
5.
Actor
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An actor is a person who portrays a character in a performance. Simplistically speaking, the person denominated actor or actress is someone beautiful who plays important characters, the actor performs in the flesh in the traditional medium of the theatre, or in modern mediums such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής, literally one who answers, the actors interpretation of their role pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is playing themselves, as in forms of experimental performance art, or, more commonly, to act, is to create. Formerly, in societies, only men could become actors. When used for the stage, women played the roles of prepubescent boys. The etymology is a derivation from actor with ess added. However, when referring to more than one performer, of both sexes, actor is preferred as a term for male performers. Actor is also used before the name of a performer as a gender-specific term. Within the profession, the re-adoption of the term dates to the 1950–1960s. As Whoopi Goldberg put it in an interview with the paper, Im an actor – I can play anything. The U. K. performers union Equity has no policy on the use of actor or actress, an Equity spokesperson said that the union does not believe that there is a consensus on the matter and stated that the. subject divides the profession. In 2009, the Los Angeles Times stated that Actress remains the term used in major acting awards given to female recipients. However, player remains in use in the theatre, often incorporated into the name of a group or company, such as the American Players. Also, actors in improvisational theatre may be referred to as players, prior to Thespis act, Grecian stories were only expressed in song, dance, and in third person narrative. In honor of Thespis, actors are commonly called Thespians, the exclusively male actors in the theatre of ancient Greece performed in three types of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play. Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans, as the Western Roman Empire fell into decay through the 4th and 5th centuries, the seat of Roman power shifted to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. Records show that mime, pantomime, scenes or recitations from tragedies and comedies, dances, from the 5th century, Western Europe was plunged into a period of general disorder
6.
Piano
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The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. The word piano is a form of pianoforte, the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument. The first fortepianos in the 1700s had a sound and smaller dynamic range. An acoustic piano usually has a wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings. Pressing one or more keys on the keyboard causes a padded hammer to strike the strings. The hammer rebounds from the strings, and the continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air, when the key is released, a damper stops the strings vibration, ending the sound. Notes can be sustained, even when the keys are released by the fingers and thumbs and this means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, going from the deepest bass range to the highest treble. The black keys are for the accidentals, which are needed to play in all twelve keys, more rarely, some pianos have additional keys. Most notes have three strings, except for the bass that graduates from one to two, the strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, and silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. There are two types of piano, the grand piano and the upright piano. The grand piano is used for Classical solos, chamber music and art song and it is used in jazz. The upright piano, which is compact, is the most popular type, as they are a better size for use in private homes for domestic music-making. During the nineteenth century, music publishers produced many works in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play. The piano is widely employed in classical, jazz, traditional and popular music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, with technological advances, amplified electric pianos, electronic pianos, and digital pianos have also been developed. The electric piano became an instrument in the 1960s and 1970s genres of jazz fusion, funk music. The piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments, pipe organs have been used since Antiquity, and as such, the development of pipe organs enabled instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches
7.
Thailand
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Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand, formerly known as Siam, is a country at the centre of the Indochinese peninsula in Southeast Asia. With a total area of approximately 513,000 km2, Thailand is the worlds 51st-largest country and it is the 20th-most-populous country in the world, with around 66 million people. The capital and largest city is Bangkok, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has switched between parliamentary democracy and military junta for decades, the latest coup being in May 2014 by the National Council for Peace and Order. Its capital and most populous city is Bangkok and its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, and Indonesia and India on the Andaman Sea to the southwest. The Thai economy is the worlds 20th largest by GDP at PPP and it became a newly industrialised country and a major exporter in the 1990s. Manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism are leading sectors of the economy and it is considered a middle power in the region and around the world. The country has always been called Mueang Thai by its citizens, by outsiders prior to 1949, it was usually known by the exonym Siam. The word Siam has been identified with the Sanskrit Śyāma, the names Shan and A-hom seem to be variants of the same word. The word Śyâma is possibly not its origin, but a learned, another theory is the name derives from Chinese, Ayutthaya emerged as a dominant centre in the late fourteenth century. The Chinese called this region Xian, which the Portuguese converted into Siam, the signature of King Mongkut reads SPPM Mongkut King of the Siamese, giving the name Siam official status until 24 June 1939 when it was changed to Thailand. Thailand was renamed Siam from 1945 to 11 May 1949, after which it reverted to Thailand. According to George Cœdès, the word Thai means free man in the Thai language, ratcha Anachak Thai means kingdom of Thailand or kingdom of Thai. Etymologically, its components are, ratcha, -ana- -chak, the Thai National Anthem, written by Luang Saranupraphan during the extremely patriotic 1930s, refers to the Thai nation as, prathet Thai. The first line of the anthem is, prathet thai ruam lueat nuea chat chuea thai, Thailand is the unity of Thai flesh. There is evidence of habitation in Thailand that has been dated at 40,000 years before the present. Similar to other regions in Southeast Asia, Thailand was heavily influenced by the culture and religions of India, Thailand in its earliest days was under the rule of the Khmer Empire, which had strong Hindu roots, and the influence among Thais remains even today. Voretzsch believes that Buddhism must have been flowing into Siam from India in the time of the Indian Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire, later Thailand was influenced by the south Indian Pallava dynasty and north Indian Gupta Empire. The Menam Basin was originally populated by the Mons, and the location of Dvaravati in the 7th century, the History of the Yuan mentions an embassy from the kingdom of Sukhothai in 1282
8.
Super Junior
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Super Junior, also known as simply SJ or SUJU, is a South Korean boy band. Formed in 2005 by producer Lee Soo-man of S. M, Entertainment, the group comprised a total of thirteen members at its peak. Super Junior originally debuted with twelve members, consisting of leader Leeteuk, Heechul, Hangeng, Yesung, Kangin, Shindong, Sungmin, Eunhyuk, Siwon, Donghae, Ryeowook, Kyuhyun joined the group in 2006. Super Junior launched into international recognition following the release of their best-selling single Sorry, Sorry in 2009, over the years, they have been divided into smaller groups, simultaneously targeting different music industries and audiences. Largely due to Super Juniors success as entertainers, other Korean entertainment managements began to train their music groups in areas of entertainment. Super Junior is the best-selling K-pop artist for four years in a row, in 2012, they were nominated for Best Asian Act in MTV Europe Music Awards. In 2015, they won the International Artist and Best Fandom in the Teen Choice Awards, in 2000, SM Entertainment held their first overseas casting auditions in Beijing 101, China and recruited Hankyung, who auditioned against three thousand applicants. That same year, Leeteuk, Yesung, and Eunhyuk were recruited after auditioning for the companys annual casting system in Seoul, Sungmin and Donghae became trainees after jointly winning first place in an SM-sponsored contest in 2001. In 2002, Heechul and Kangin were recruited along with Kibum, Siwon became a trainee after being scouted in 2003. Shindong became a trainee in 2004, Ryeowook won the 2004 Chin Chin Youth Festival singing competition and became a trainee just two months before debut in 2005. Kyuhyun then joined the group in 2006, after winning third place in the 2005 Chin Chin Youth Festival, in early 2005, Lee Soo-man announced that he had been preparing for an all-boy project group of twelve members to debut at the end of the year. He called this group to be The Gateway to Stardom of Asia, as most of the members in this group were chosen for their experiences as actors, MCs, models. Heechul and Kibum were already established actors at the time, and most of the members had already made various kinds of appearances in television. This concept was then introduced to the K-pop market. For a while the group was rumoured to be called O. V. E. R, however, before the group settled with their current name, the company simply referred to them as juniors, a representation of the members young ages when they first became SM trainees. Super Junior 05 made their performance on the Korean channel Mnet on September 11,2005. At the showcase, they performed various styles of hip-hop dancing, Hankyung, Eunhyuk, and Donghae also performed a separate dance together, dancing to Ushers Caught Up. However, the performance did not air on television until May 16,2006 as a segment in the Super Junior Show, the group officially debuted on SBSs music program Popular Song on November 6,2005, performing their first single Twins
9.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
10.
Singing
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Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of sustained tonality, rhythm, and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist, Singers perform music that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir of singers or a band of instrumentalists, Singers may perform as soloists, or accompanied by anything from a single instrument up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged or improvised and it may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual, as part of music education, or as a profession. Excellence in singing requires time, dedication, instruction, and regular practice, if practice is done on a regular basis then the sounds can become more clear and strong. Professional singers usually build their careers around one specific genre, such as classical or rock. They typically take voice training provided by teachers or vocal coaches throughout their careers. Though these four mechanisms function independently, they are coordinated in the establishment of a vocal technique and are made to interact upon one another. During passive breathing, air is inhaled with the diaphragm while exhalation occurs without any effort, exhalation may be aided by the abdominal, internal intercostal and lower pelvis/pelvic muscles. Inhalation is aided by use of external intercostals, scalenes and sternocleidomastoid muscles, the pitch is altered with the vocal cords. With the lips closed, this is called humming, humans have vocal folds which can loosen, tighten, or change their thickness, and over which breath can be transferred at varying pressures. The shape of the chest and neck, the position of the tongue, any one of these actions results in a change in pitch, volume, timbre, or tone of the sound produced. Sound also resonates within different parts of the body and an individuals size, Singers can also learn to project sound in certain ways so that it resonates better within their vocal tract. This is known as vocal resonation, another major influence on vocal sound and production is the function of the larynx which people can manipulate in different ways to produce different sounds. These different kinds of function are described as different kinds of vocal registers. The primary method for singers to accomplish this is through the use of the Singers Formant and it has also been shown that a more powerful voice may be achieved with a fatter and fluid-like vocal fold mucosa. The more pliable the mucosa, the more efficient the transfer of energy from the airflow to the vocal folds, Vocal registration refers to the system of vocal registers within the voice. A register in the voice is a series of tones, produced in the same vibratory pattern of the vocal folds
11.
Guangzhou
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Guangzhou, traditionally romanised as Canton, is the capital and most populous city of the province of Guangdong in southern China. Guangzhou is currently, the third city in mainland China, behind Beijing and Shanghai, holds sub-provincial administrative status. In 2015 the citys area was estimated to have a population of 13,501,100. Some estimates place the population of the area of the Pearl River Delta Mega City as high as 44 million without the Hong Kong SAR and 54 million including it. Guangzhou is ranked as a Beta+ Global city, in recent years, there has been a rapidly increasing number of foreign residents and illegal immigrants from Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, as well as from Africa. This has led to it being dubbed the Capital of the Third World, the migrant population from other provinces of China in Guangzhou was 40 percent of the citys total population in 2008. Long the only Chinese port accessible to foreign traders, the city fell to the British during the First Opium War. No longer enjoying a monopoly after the war, it lost trade to ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai. In modern commerce, Guangzhou is best known for its annual Canton Fair, for the three consecutive years 2013–2015, Forbes ranked Guangzhou as the best commercial city on the Chinese mainland. Guǎngzhōu is the pinyin romanisation of the Chinese name 廣州, which was simplified in mainland China to 广州 in the 1950s, before acquiring its current name, the town was known as Panyu, a name still borne by one of Guangzhous districts. The origin of the name is uncertain, with 11 various explanations being offered. The city has sometimes been known as Guangzhou Fu or Guangfu after its status as the capital of a commandery. From this latter name, Guangzhou was known to medieval Persians such as Al-Masudi, under the Southern Han, the city was renamed Xingwang. Under the Qing, it was known to its inhabitants as simply The Provincial Capital. The Chinese abbreviation for Guangzhou is 穗, after its nickname Rice City, the former name City of the Immortals came from the same story. The more recent City of Flowers is usually taken as a reference to the areas greenery. The English name Canton derived from Portuguese Cantão or Cidade de Cantão, although it originally and chiefly applied to the walled city, it was also used in English in reference to Guangdong generally. It was adopted as the Postal Map Romanization of Guangzhou and remained in use until the gradual adoption of pinyin
12.
Hunan Broadcasting System
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Hunan Broadcasting System formerly known as Golden Eagle Broadcasting System, is Chinas second biggest television network after China Central Television. The television network is owned by the Hunan provincial government, the network is based in Changsha in Hunan and Xining in Qinghai. On May 20,2009, the network expanded its service to Hong Kong. Hunan Broadcasting System first aired on October 1,1970 as a television station in Changsha, Hunan province. It expanded its network through nationwide satellite television on January 1,1997, Hunan Broadcasting Systems nationwide channel Hunan Satellite Television created Happy Camp, one of Chinas first variety show. Happy Camp remained as Chinas highest-rated TV show, until its ratings were overtaken in 2008 by Jiangsu TVs If You Are the One, Hunan TV is also known for Super Girl, a national singing contest. Hunan TV also aired many highly rated dramas including Palace and Scarlet Heart, Hunan Broadcasting System took a 49% stake in Qinghai TV in 2009, increasing the number of satellite channels in its roster. Hunan TV is currently Chinas second most-watched channel, second only to CCTV-1, owned by China Central Television, as of 2008, it is airing the Chinese version of Strictly Come Dancing, a co-production with TVB
