Landscapes and Local Identity: the Eight Views of Linfen

This chapter is the first part of an exploration into the history and meaning of landscapes, based on a case study of the “must-see” scenic spots or Eight Views (bajing 八景) of Linfen County in the south of China's Shanxi province. County histories not only include poems and travel accounts describing these places, but often also, from the 18th century onwards, images representing them. They are thus well-documented places, which makes it possible to trace fragments of their history and draw conclusions about the relationship between humans and their physical environment. This part of the study focuses on how the physical environment interlocked with the historical heritage of a place to form a cultural landscape that gave identity and meaning to a place and its people

An empirical study of e-service quality and user satisfaction of public service centers in China

This article describes how as part of the reform of the administrative system of China, most local governments have set up public service centers; meanwhile, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has been commonly applied to make e-services more convenient, efficient and transparent. However, the existing studies in the Chinese context are mostly qualitative and the relationship between service quality and citizen satisfaction has not been tested. This article adopted the D&M model to develop an e-service quality model and tested the impact of service quality on citizen satisfaction. A survey was conducted and 364 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The results showed that the data fit the model well. Most of the hypotheses formulated in this article was proven. Additionally, an important finding was that the impact of service quality on specific satisfaction is stronger than that of information quality and system quality, which indicates that face-to-face services cannot simply be substituted by electronic systems. Both the theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed

仰望星空—温家宝

我仰望星空, 它是那样寥廓而深邃； 那无穷的真理， 让我苦苦地求索、追随。 我仰望星空, 它是那样庄严而圣洁； 那凛然的正义，