Yunkun's Beijing Living

I am a warm person. You may have me round for getting knowledge about China that is a good way to promote friendship and cultural exchange.

About the article and photos posted in your column The Retired Research Fellows and Staff of CASS Enjoy a Tour of Tianjin City.

Yes, we 16 people of the group all enjoyed the wonderful excursion to Tianjin city, including a 88-year-old fellow who is disabled coming with us with a wheeled chair and accompanied by his wife.

When is Beijing at its best to live in?

The autumn of Beijing is reputable with a brilliant blue sky, cleaner and clearer wind, tenderly warm sunshine and, the most important, the world-famous colorful leaves in the suburbs.

Is there anything you miss?

It was nice to be reminded of how many good times I had. I didn't have more chances to travel to foreign countries, just like I missed out a trip to Britain.

My One-Day Tour to Luxemburg

I travelled to Luxemburg for a short visit in the year 2000.

Luxembourg, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a small, landlocked country in western Europe. Luxembourg has a population of under half a million people in an area of approximately 2,586 square kilometres.

Here I would like to compare the country with the Fengtai District where I live. Fengtai is 304.2 square kilometers in area, making it the third-largest precinct in the greater urban part of Beijing, and is home to 790,000 inhabitants. This precinct is newly urbanized in comparison to those precincts in the old city, and until mid-1980s, it was still a mostly rural area: pig pens and goat pens were common, and major parts of the precinct had no electricity. It was only during the recent years rapid economic development that the precinct was urbanized.

Luxenburg was sorted by its gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita as the first in the world, $78559, it was calculated by the value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in the year 2008 divided by the average population for the same year.

GDP dollar estimates are derived from purchasing power parit (PPP) calculations. Such calculations are prepared by various organizations, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. As estimates and assumptions have to be made, the results produced by different organizations for the same country tend to differ, sometimes substantially. PPP figures are estimates rather than hard facts.

They more accurately reflect the participation of the inhabitants of a country in the global economy.

Luxembourg is a parliamentary representative democracy with a constitutional monarch; it is ruled by a Grand Duke. It is the world's only remaining sovereign Grand Duchy. The country has a highly developed economy, with the highest Gross Domestic Product per capita in the world as per IMF and WB. Its historic and strategic importance dates back to its founding as a Roman era fortress site and Frankish count's castle site in the Early Middle Ages.