Atlanta 2006 (Part I)

Atlanta Oct. 13-18th

Neuroscience annual meeting was going to be scheduled in Atlanta convention center - I knew it and was excited to visit this city starting last year.

Sunset at Downtown (from Westin hotel room)

There are always something to look at downtown, with Atlanta as the biggest city in the south. The CNN headquarter is one of the unusual ones. Two HUMMER jeeps were laying in the middle of the hall and a giant globe hanging in the air. I took a tour and noticed a famour picture along the stairways - that's the Chinese student standing before a tank in 1989. Nobody knows what happened to him afterwards.

There are two places I would like to visit in Atlanta - Carter Center and Martin Luther King memorial site. Although it is very hard to travel around Atlanta without a car and in a limited time, I managed to take a look at these two places - I would regret if I didn't.

First time President Carter impressed me is his speech supporting for Kerry at DNC 2004. Although the conference was covered by the shine of Obama's speech, Carter's speech was more sincere and moving to me. As one of the only two presidents who has made a peace agreement between Israel and an Islam country (The other one is Clinton - Jordan and Israel), I believe his new book <Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid> would be very interesting.

I started the tour with the film introducing Carter. There was a decent-dressed old man weeping silently all the time when the film was on. I felt sorry for him and know what he might feel - things could be so different if Carter were the president now.

After President Nixon visited China in 1972 and signed an agreement "One China, Taiwan is part of China", the relationship between China and U.S. didn't develop that much. President Carter is major contributor that started a conprehensive communication between these two giant countries. That helped China recover from destructive culture revolution and since then China has been on a much healthier road.