Olympic fans are not only enjoying the excitement of competitions in Paris, but also feeling the cultural glamor of the city from local stores.
Paris is not only famous for magnificent museums and splendid palaces, but also interspersed with century-old stores, which like a living landmark of the city.
Nestled in the heart of Paris, a kitchenware brand has a history spanning more than two centuries with its current owner still form the founding family.
"When we chatted with customers, they emphasized that nothing should change. This store has a soul," said store owner Eric de Hilleran.
When it comes to art, the notes that flow from the corner stores end up in the symphony of the entire capital.
The guitars made by Jerome Casanova have accompanied many music masters on important stages. With a lot of strange tools invented by himself, his exquisite craftsmanship and high concentration have brought wide popularity to his guitar shop.
"Because the restoration is about the date, the (different kind of ) wood that guitar are produced of, materials and techniques. It's quite important to have many documentations to start the restoration work," said Casanova, the principal of a guitar store in Paris.
Picking a unique umbrella or a suitable cane was gentlemen's pleasure more than 200 years ago. Today, visitors can also share this pleasure in the same store 400 meters away from the Louvre.
"The Louvre and the Paris Opera [are nearby]. We have gotten different monuments that people come [to visit] year after year. [Our store] evolved with time with different products," said accessory store owner Sophie Lecarpentier.
Sophie personally selects all the items for sale. Although the price of each umbrella and cane is very different, they all have a unique style and it's hard to find a same one from other places in the world.
"It's a real snake, this one can really be put into use. (Only) two pieces in the world, like this," Sophie introduced a cane to a reporter.
From buttons for 5 euros a piece to colored threads for 6 euros a bundle, Parisians' definition of fashion is never influenced by money. The casual appearance of a small tailor shop at street corner may subtly arouse people's pursuit of beauty.
E-commerce and mobile phones may have changed the lifestyle of locals, but can never erase their persistence in refinement and elegance.
Century-old stores promote culture of Paris to Olympic fans
Shanghai, a leading force for Chinese modernization, is accelerating the pace of building itself into a science and technology innovation center with global influence.
The tech-savvy metropolis is now speeding up the transition from structure building to function strengthening. Taking strengthening the capability of fostering original sci-tech innovations as the main task, it is pursuing both sci-tech innovation and institutional innovation to significantly improve its comprehensive strength in science and technology as well as the overall effects of innovations.
Over the past 10 years since Shanghai began building itself into an international science and technology innovation center, it has reaped fruitful results in sci-tech innovation, which has pushed the metropolis' GDP across the 4-trillion-yuan (about 570 billion U.S. dollars) mark.
In 2023, Shanghai's total research and development expenditure accounted for 4.4 percent of its GDP, and the city's fiscal expenditure on science and technology rose by 36.7 percent to 52.8 billion yuan (about 7.47 billion U.S. dollars).
Driven by science and technology advances, Shanghai's industrial transformation has sped up. The combined scale of the three leading industries of artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and biomedicine in the city has reached 1.6 trillion yuan (about 226 billion U.S. dollars).
At the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center in Shanghai's Zhangjiang Science City, Qinglong, an open-source general-purpose humanoid robot with a height of 182 centimeters and up to 43 active degrees of freedom, is being trained to pick up oranges.
"After some training, the robot will be able to complete this move by itself when it encounters a similar scenario in the future," said Shi Zhihua, trainer of robot Qinglong.
Thanks to an advanced control software, Qinglong can skillfully perform fast walking, avoid obstacles, go uphill and downhill, and resist impact.
"We plan to build a venue that can simultaneously train 1,000 robots by 2027," Shi said.
The Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), a third-generation medium-energy synchrotron light source facility with 46 laboratories, has been operating around the clock to serve researchers from around the country, whose experiments cover a wide range of fields such as life sciences, materials science and chemical catalysis.
"We are using the SSRF's light to observe the phase change process of this material when it's heated to 1,100 degrees Celsius," said Song Shuang, a PhD candidate of Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
"Our team is developing materials for the energy sector," said Miao Zhikai, a researcher of Tianjin University.
"We are developing cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries," said Li Guodong, a researcher of Fudan University.
Though the laboratories at the SSRF have been running at full capacity, researchers still have to apply for them months in advance, reflecting the vibrancy of innovation in Shanghai.
Shanghai blazes sci-tech frontiers to boost innovation-driven modernization
