Next year 2012 is the Chinese year of Dragon. The new year's eve will be January 22nd, which is coming in less than a month. People are getting prepared for the most important traditional festival - Spring Festival. You can feel the it stronger in the villages and water towns. Dried sausage, salted chicken and dried fishes, etc. can be seen all over the ZhuJiaJiao water town.

Although Christmas is not a traditional festival in China, you can feel it everywhere in Shanghai. The shops have put on Christmas decoration, hotels with Christmas trees in the lobby, Merry Christmas wishes on the streets...XinTianDi in the former French Concession has put on the Christmas theme very early - Nut Cracker and the Kingdom of Gifts this year. The Shikumen houses will be popular among young people at Christmas eve.

The Shanghai World Financial Centre, or nicknamed the "bottle opener", has been opened since 2008. It enjoys a lot of No. 1 titles - the world's highest observatory at 100th storey, the world's highest hotel of Park Hyatt, and Shanghai's highest building. In the photo competition this year, there is an interesting picture showing the growth of Shanghai World Financial Centre. Shanghai Tower is going on the same process. It will be the next highest building in Shanghai after completion.

In southern China private gardens, Taihu lake rocks were widely used as garden decoration. Bonsai is another type of decoration at home. Sometimes you can find the combination art of rock bonsai. Natural rocks from the Taihu lake earned high reputation for their shapes. People, especially scholars, have started to appreciate rocks from nearly 1,000 years ago.