We know, the most common types of domain name include: dot com, dot net and dot org. Others are info, mobi, tv and so on. They are common for they are general domain names in the world.

And besides, There are national domains in all countries. For example, del.icio.us belong to USA, china.cn belong to China. I think USA and China are great nations, so their domains are known well enough.

But today, I found some domains very interesting, I don’t know their countries, and when I openned their websites, I can not understand their languages too.

http://www.softcatala.cat - This domain really cool I think, I like cat, so I like this type of domain much. But I don’t know its language. When I tried whois it, it returns an error message: No whois server is known for this kind of object. Wikipedia told me that softcatala is a non-profit organization that works for Catalan language. Catalan language? I never heart it before.

http://hunted.pl - Another cool national domain, because pl is the ext name of perl codes, so I code in Perl often, the domain name sounds like a program in Perl. As like as softcatala.cat, these national domains are really seldom in China. they are new to me today.

http://liberal.cl - This is an English website, I can understand its language. But the CL stands for which country? These national domains baffle me for a whole day, the most puzzle is that why there is no echo when I whois them :(

The enrollments of Chinese university entrance examination has been over ten million in 2007, and the number still increasing yearly.

Michael wrote a comment of great length in The elementary grade curriculum:

Dear ShangNing,

You have a great blog! I have subscribed to it and I look forward to reading more of your posts in the future. I hope you will allow me to introduce your blog to my students.

Since I’m teaching in Japan, most of my students are Japanese, but I sometimes teach students from other countries too, including China. Perhaps you’ve seen some of the work done by my Chinese students posted on my blog.

I went to Beijing a couple of years ago in order to give a presentation about curriculum development at the AsiaTEFL conference. I also managed to make time for sightseeing. Climbing the Great Wall was a life-long dream come true! I hope I have a chance to visit Beijing again. You can see some photos of my trip to Beijing on my flickr page.

As for the grade six curriculum timetable you posted, my first reaction is, wow! I’m glad I didn’t do grade six in China because all the difficult classes are in the morning! I wasn’t a morning person. I am from the English-speaking part of Canada. As you may know, Canada is officially a bilingual country. So, I had French lessons. In grade six, I had only one lesson a week. Unfortunately, I never mastered French.

I agree with you, good test scores do not mean someone is clever. Japanese students take many exams and many believe that getting good test scores is most important. When my father was a student there were university entrance exams in Canada too, but by the time I was in high school there were no more entrance examinations.

Generally speaking, universities accepted students based on the students’ grades. For example, my university accepted students with an average of 60%. However, students who wanted to major in engineering needed a higher average.

I’m only telling you the basics. The system was quite complicated and the standards changed. For example, after I entered university, the number of high school students who applied to my university increased, so the minimum acceptable high school average was raised to 72%. So, the standards change depending on the number of students that want to enter university.

Well,this comment has got very long. So, I’ll stop.

Thanks Michael first, this is an excellent comment for me, when I read it, a new topic suddenly occurred to me, Chinese university entrance examination.

1977, Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese leader, delivered a speech entitled “Respect Knowledge, Respect Talents”, indicating the possible re-introduction of the national college entrance exam that had been stopped a decade ago.

Later that winter, when more than 5 million candidates aged between 15 and 36 took the exam, it seemed as though spring had come at last. Looking back on the event, one cannot say too many in praise of the move.

After that, the enrollments every year more are coming. Still last year, over the last three decades (1977-2007), around 36 million students have been admitted into universities, colleges, and vocational and technical schools across China.

I think it is the biggest examination in the world, more than 10 million students were entered for the examination last year, and it must be more this year. Here is the historical data:

• 3,200,000 students were entered for the examination in 1998;
• 3,420,000 students were entered for the examination in 1999;
• 3,890,000 students were entered for the examination in 2000;
• 4,535,000 students were entered for the examination in 2001, (I was one of them this year);
• 5,283,000 students were entered for the examination in 2002;
• 6,130,000 students were entered for the examination in 2003;
• 7,230,000 students were entered for the examination in 2004;
• 8,670,000 students were entered for the examination in 2005;
• 9,500,000 students were entered for the examination in 2006;
• 10,100,000 students were entered for the examination in 2007;

These photos were taken last day, I went to Beijing Chinauninet Company near The World Trade Center (GuoMao).

It’s one of the most famous companies in China Internet.

The office looks so relaxed, all kinds of things covered the table and their employees dress down as much as everyone. I like office like this style, it administers to drive creativity mind of their workers.

I recieved emails from my friends usually, but some friends called me “Mr. Ning”. That’s wrong, my family name is Shang, Ning is my given name.

We Chinese name different from those of personal names in Western cultures.

Most noticeably, a Chinese name is written with the family name first and the given name next. For instance, my name is Shang Ning, Shang is my family name, and Ning is my given name. So, you can call me “Mr. Shang” or “Dear Ning”.

Thus, the family name of Mao Zedong is Mao, and his given name is Zedong. The basketball player who is commonly called Yao Ming, his family name is Yao and his given name is Ming.

The movie star Jackie Chan, his Chinese name is Chan Loong, Chan is his family name, Loong is his given name, Jackie Chan is his English name in Western cultures.

Shang, Mao, Chan, Yao are all Chinese family names. So, how many family names are there in China?

There is a family names’ book in China, its title is “one hundred family names”. In fact, there are over 700 different CHinese family names, but as few as twenty cover a majority of Chinese people.

The great majority of Chinese family names have only one Chinese character, but there are a few with two characteres. Shang, only one Chinese character, is my family name.

Traditional naming schemes often followed a pattern of using generation names as part of a two-character given name; however, this is less used today, many given names use only one character. My given name is just one character, it is Ning :)

Lei Feng’s spirit carried on in Anhui - Photo shows the students were cleaning the statue of Lei Feng in a school of Jieshou City, Anhui Province, Mar.3. The campaign ‘Learn from Lei Feng’ is popular in schools to commemorate Lei Feng.

Lei Feng still has influence as selfless model in 45 years - In early March each year, Chinese citizens may well get help from warmhearted people as various do-good-deeds activities are launched at this time in memory of a Communist Party selfless model person - Lei Feng.

Today is Learn from Comrade Lei Feng Day in China - Lei Feng (1940-1962) was a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army and after his death he was characterized by propaganda as a selfless and modest person who was devoted to Chairman Mao.

Beijing’s amazing airport - Beijing airport in the first impressions? Pretty amazing actually. It is blogged by foreigner, so let’s read his story and reviews about Beijing airport.

China review politics of only son - I blogged One family one child and Chinese children are happiest of world to introduced the one child politics, so it is Own Ideas article about this politics.

Today is the 5th March again, time flies, I took this photo last year, it means that I’ve blogged nearly one year, my first blog was posted on March 29th 2007.

This is Beijing subway’s ticket, the souvenir tickets published last year on the March 5th, this is a special day for our Chinese. Today is “Learn from Lei Feng Day”.

Who is Lei Feng? Why learn from him? Why is today?

Lei Feng was a soldier of the People’s Liberation Army of the PRC. He is a good man, he likes help people, and he helped a lot of people. But he death when he was very young :(

After his death he was characterized by propaganda as a selfless and modest person who was devoted to Chairman Mao. The campaign, Learn from Comrade Lei Feng, was started by Chairman Mao in March 1963.

Then, every year involves various community and school events where people go to clean up parks, schools, and other community locations. People help others as more as possible today.

Still now, the youth of the country was indoctrinated to follow his example.