It was very foggy here in Beijing yesterday, but thankfully the skies cleared up today and I am hoping they will hold for the weekend when I’m planning an assault on the Lama Temple (Yonghegong) and Jingshan Park which I am hoping will give me some great views of the Forbidden City.

In the meantime, I’ve started posted some photos of the Summer Palace I took last weekend of in this new gallery here.

Today we have announced our new VIA VN1000 digital media chipset, the most the most power-efficient DX10.1 platform available on the market today. Combined with the VIA C7 and VIA Nano processors, it provides a world class multimedia entertainment platform for small form factor desktops and all-in-one PCs that take full advantage of all the advanced new features of Microsoft Windows 7.

In addition to DX10.1 support, the VIA VN1000 also delivers smooth playback of the latest Blu-ray titles with superb video hardware acceleration of the most demanding H.264, WM9 and VC1 codecs over the latest display technologies, including Display Port and HDMI. Other features include DDR3 SDRAM, one x8 lane and four x1 lane PCI Express II expansion slots, support for up to five PCI slots, and a VIA Vinyl HD 8 channel audio codec.

Here’s a picture of the Chery QQ 311, one of the small, energy-efficient cars that is benefiting from the current boom in auto sales in China.

According to the latest government statistics, over 13 million cars have been sold in China this year – making it the largest auto market in the world. It’s going to be interesting to see how multinationals such as GM, Ford, and Toyota will fare against growing competition from domestic makers like Chery, Geely, and BYD. The latter two companies have already attracted significant investments from Goldman Sachs and Warren Buffet respectively, indicating their rising position in the market. 

I used to be a strong believer the power of free markets embodied in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, but I do have to admit that I am beginning to have my doubts about this as I compare the effectiveness of China’s response to the global financial crisis to that of the major Western economies.

Whereas the UK and the US have focused on shoring up the financial system in the hope that the banks will start lending again once their balance sheets have been solidified, China has made enormous efforts to encourage domestic consumption, particularly in smaller cities and the countryside.

I’ve read quite a number of historical and fictional accounts of the frenzied destruction of the Summer Palace and Old Summer Palace by the Imperial powers over the years, but by far the best one I’ve come across is in Flashman and the Dragon.

As with all the Flashman novels, this is a delightful romp with our cowardly hero getting into all sorts of scrapes until he hooks up with Lord Elgin, not to mention the future Empress Dowager Cixi, in Beijing and witnesses the madness that was unleashed on the Chinese Imperial Court. The fact that even this self-confessed coward and bounder found himself disturbed by what was happening around him shows how bad it really was.

As you walk around the Summer Palace you come across quite a few signs like this one pointing to buildings that have been restored after being destroyed by Western Imperialist forces during the Second Opium War in 1860 or the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.

But although most of the buildings in the Summer Palace have been returned to their former glory (sadly, this is not the case for the nearby Old Summer Palace [Yuanming Yuan]), the same cannot be said for the treasures that were pillaged by the looting soldiers.

It may not look anything like as grandiose as the symbols of excess of our own modern era such as Dubai World, but the notorious Marble Boat in the Summer Palace is a much more potent and enduring icon of decadence – one that has been embedded unto the Chinese people’s consciousness for over one hundred years and is set to remain there over the coming centuries. 

As every Chinese school student knows, the boat was restored in 1893 on the orders of the Emperor Dowager Cixi using funds that had been intended for creating a modern imperial navy and it quickly became a symbol of the corruption of the late Qing Dynasty and its inability to fight against the incursions of the foreign powers. Talk about Nero fiddling while Rome burns!

The clear blue skies and relatively warm temperatures provided the perfect excuse for me to return to the Beijing Summer Palace this morning and see some of the sights that I missed on a previous visit a few years ago.

Given that it covers a total of 290 hectares, I didn’t get to see everything this time either – but I enjoyed a very pleasant walk along the western side of the Kunming Lake, which gave me some quite stunning views of Longevity Hill (see above). 

I’ve put the finishing touches to the Taipei Confucius Temple photo gallery here.

I didn’t get a chance to talk with this man playing a Chinese style flute, but his haunting music certainly added to the atmosphere of the place.