In recent months, Guangzhou has become a battlefield in a brewing culture war. Half of Guangzhou's population of 14 million speaks Cantonese as a first language -- but when a local official last month proposed forcing the city's TV stations to broadcast only in Mandarin, China's official dialect, more than 1,000 people took to the streets in protest. Here, trolleymen wait for business on June 12, 2003.
Nicknamed "the Silicon Valley of India," Bangalore is still no high-tech paradise for most of its residents. Providing adequate electricity, water, and housing to the city's 5.4 million inhabitants remains an immense challenge for local officials. According to the Indian Institute of Science, the city's water supply could be nearly depleted within the next five years.
People struggle for space between public transport buses and trucks at the bustling Oshodi bus stop, on Feb. 6, 2006. The seventh fastest growing city in the world and the financial heart of the most populous country in Africa, this densely populated city continues to see a flood of people arriving from all over the continent, looking for work. Lagos is booming, but it still lacks the basic infrastructure needed to adequately integrate this influx.
Pashtun migrants from the North-West Frontier Province -- many of whom share links to the Afghan Taliban -- have been known to battle violently in Karachi with the city's majority ethnic group, the Mohajir. Pakistani men ride on a wood-laden donkey cart in the British-era Lea Market on Jan. 28.
A fruit vendor walks past a wall of TV sets and refrigerators on display outside a shopping center in downtown Ho Chi Minh City on April 26, 2005. International investors think highly of Ho Chi Minh City: In the last seven months alone, the municipal government attracted nearly $1.2 billion in foreign direct investment. The figure marks a 15 percent increase over the same period last year, according to state officials -- evidence of Vietnam's ongoing (if somewhat wobbly) experiment with capitalism.
Shenzhen, a major factory hub just north of Hong Kong, is experiencing growing pains. The city made headlines this summer when at least 10 people leapt to their deaths from atop a local factory owned by Taiwanese tech contractor Foxconn. Here, a lone house stands in the middle of a construction site in Shenzhen on April 14, 2007.
Kolkata, once known to the West as Calcutta, was the home of Mother Teresa and the seat of British power during the time of the Raj; it is now the commercial center of eastern India. Above, an Indian porter carries clay pots that have been brought into the city from rural villages and offloaded on the banks of the river Ganges River on Aug. 4.
In this photo, Bangladeshi Muslims offer Friday prayers on the street in Dhaka on June 26, 2009. More than three million factory workers in Bangladesh churn out shirts and other products for Western retailers such as Walmart, JCPenney, and H&M. This summer, the capital city of Dhaka saw violent protests as textile laborers destroyed equipment to protest an insufficient increase in the minimum wage.
Above, workers weld on the roof of a building on the Guanyinqiao Pedestrian Street on May 6, 2008. Nestled in the mountains of southwest China, Chongqing was the Nationalist capital during World War II. Since then, the former backwater has struggled to catch up to its fast-growing coastal brethren -- but now Chongqing is making up for lost time, its GDP growing at nearly twice China's national average.
楼主: 译四小姐
狗仔卡
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发表于 2010-8-23 13:38
发表于 2010-8-24 20:11
