How can you begin to understand the impact of China’s rapid economic development on the lives of its people? And how do you link China’s complex and confusing present with its long and rich history, the first written records of which can be found on inscriptions etched into bone or turtle shells that were used for divination during the Shang dynasty around 1350 BC?

The simple answer to both these questions is to read “Oracle Bones”, the magnificent new book from Peter Hessler. The author of the highly acclaimed “River Town”, in which he recounted his experiences as an English teacher in the Sichuan town of Fuling, Hessler chronicles the progress of some of his students as they make their way to the cities of Shenzhen and Wenzhou in search of better paid work and greater independence than they can find in their homes in rural southwestern China.

I am intrigued. These days, hardly a week goes by without an announcement of some sort of “Web 2.0” service or application (which I would broadly define as browser/broadband based), whether it be online video, VOIP, storage, and content delivery services or hosted productivity applications and suites such as spreadsheets and word processors.

In some ways, the situation is very much like the early days of the PC, when a wave of start ups competed aggressively to develop spreadsheets, word processors, games, and other applications for the fledgling new platform.

I thought it would be good to kick off the day with this view of the majestic Perfume River taken from the Heavenly Lady Pagoda. The monks at the monastery must find this an ideal location for contemplation and meditation.

Please click here for more photos of the Heavenly Lady Pagoda. 

One of the most beautiful sites in Hue is the Phuoc Duyen Tower in the Heavenly Lady Pagoda, which stands on the southwest bank of the Perfume River.

This is the oldest monastery in Hue and one of the most important cultural centers in Vietnam. Work on the pagoda began in 1601 after the governor of Thuan Hoa Province, Nguyen Hoang, heard a local legend that a vision of an old lady had appeared on the hill where the pagoda now sits and told the locals that a great leader would build a pagoda on this site and bring peace to the country. It’s no surprise therefore that he called it Chua Thien Mu: the Heavenly Lady Pagoda.

During the course of its long history, China has only had two female rulers, both of whose names have gone down in abject infamy – their reputations viciously destroyed by generation after generation of critics, polemicists, and historians. But you have to wonder whether both these women – Wu Zetian, the first and only female emperor of China, and the Empress Cixi who presided “behind the screen” over the decline of the Qing dynasty – were quite as venal and cruel as their critics have portrayed them, or have just been victims of misogynistic vitriol.  

Based on the historical records, it is true that both women were responsible for the often grisly torture and execution of many unfortunate officials, court figures, royal family members, and palace servants during their rise to power and their subsequent attempts to hold on to it. But their behavior was no different in this regard than that of male emperors, who were confronted with exactly the same problems in safeguarding their position against numerous pretenders who were constantly plotting to take their throne over from them.

Just about the only thing the architects got right about Khai Dinh’s tomb was its location, which gives it glorious view of the surrounding hills and lush vegetation in the valley below.

For more photos please visit the Royal Tombs of Hue gallery here. 

Fortunately, I won’t be flying for the next couple of weeks, but I’m still trying to get my head around the concept of only being able to take my passport and glasses aboard a plane.

I am not one of those people who are so important that they simply have to carry all their luggage onboard and hold up everyone else while they try and stuff their overloaded “carry-on bags” into an already full overhead locker. Neither do I absolutely have to spend every last minute before take-off making “urgent” calls or sending messages from my phone. I could even manage without my notebook, because I only use it on a plane when I really have to, and do not have a taste for solitaire unlike many of my fellow travelers.

Today we announced the new VIA EPIA EK Series Mainboard featuring the Luke CoreFusion processor platform and dual LAN connectors. We expect that this will primarily be used for embedded system design applications, but who knows it could finish up in an awesome case mod like Leela.

You can read the VIA EPIA EK Series Mainboard press release here.

When I was at FIC, there were more motherboard makers than I could count on the fingers of my two hands. Now, following announcement of the new joint venture between Asus and Giga-Byte, the industry is now left with two massive juggernauts (Asus and Honhai [Foxconn]), plus a handful of much smaller players.    

This is yet another sign of how much the PC industry has consolidated over the past few years as the business matures, and it is a trend that is set to continue in the future. As I was discussing with a colleague yesterday, the days when a motherboard maker could build almost instantly build a name for itself with a great review on Tom’s Hardware or any of the other enthusiast websites are well and truly over. Now scale in manufacturing and sales and distribution channels is far more important.