However, the identification of the object as an abacus is a matter of some debate. The long scroll Along the River During Qing Ming Festival painted by Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145) during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) might contain a suanpan beside an account book and doctor's prescriptions on the counter of an apothecary. People move the beads to do the calculation. One in the upper part represents five and each of four in the lower part represents one.

As it described, the original abacus had five beads ( suan zhu) bunched by a stick in each column, separated by a transverse rod, and arrayed in a wooden rectangle box. The word 'abacus' was first mentioned by Xu Yue (160–220) in his book suanshu jiyi (算数记遗), or Notes on Traditions of Arithmetic Methods, in Han Dynasty. History Suanpan on the apothecary's counter in Along the River During the Qingming Festival painting 1573 Ming dynasty style suanpan This replaces clearing the beads by hand, or quickly rotating the suanpan around its horizontal center line to clear the beads by centrifugal force. When the clear-all button is pressed, two mechanical levers push the top row beads to the top position and the bottom row beads to the bottom position, thus clearing all numbers to zero. The modern suanpan has 4+1 beads, colored beads to indicate position and a clear-all button. Unlike the simple counting board used in elementary schools, very efficient suanpan techniques have been developed to do multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, square root and cube root operations at high speed. Suanpans can be used for functions other than counting. The suanpan can be reset to the starting position instantly by a quick jerk around the horizontal axis to spin all the beads away from the horizontal beam at the center. The beads are counted by moving them up or down towards the beam. The beads are usually rounded and made of a hardwood. There are two beads on each rod in the upper deck and five beads on each rod in the bottom deck. Usually, a suanpan is about 20 cm (8 in) tall and it comes in various widths depending on the application. However, the exact design of this suanpan is not known. The suanpan ( simplified Chinese: 算盘 traditional Chinese: 算盤 pinyin: suànpán), also spelled suan pan or souanpan ) is an abacus of Chinese origin first described in a 190 CE book of the Eastern Han Dynasty, namely Supplementary Notes on the Art of Figures written by Xu Yue. I don't see my self coming back here when there are plenty of better options out there.Chinese abacus Suanpan (the number represented in the picture is 6,302,715,408) Chinese Abacus An extended version of a suanpan A modern 4+1 suanpan (soroban) with a clear-all button Suanpan- reincarnation of counting rods

On the way out we noticed another couple had come in and ordered the peking duck which looked very dry and unappetizing this pretty much sealed my opinion of this restaurant. The owner was a nice man who came over to each table thanking them for their patronage and he was very friendly but that's about the only high point I really have to say for this place. They also brought everything out at one time with no plates or serving spoons and we had to ask for them. A couple of pieces of fish in the dish seemed to have that funky fish taste going on as well indicating the fish was not very fresh. The seafood combo was pretty bland and not very memorable. The lo mein was OK, nothing to write home about. The dumplings arrived first and they were pretty decent, followed by the lo mein and the seafood platter. We ordered the dumpling combo, shrimp lo mein and the chef's seafood combination. The waitress came over to take our order and was very friendly but spoke little English and had a difficult time understanding what I was saying. I also don't know how long those chips were sitting there before our arrival. Now not being from the Lansdale I find this practice very unusual and have never encountered 'Chinese Nachos' in my entire life of eating Chinese food. We were seated immediately and there were already crispy wonton chips waiting on the table for us. First, when we walked in the restaurant there was only one other couple seated at the time which of course is an ominous sign of impending doom in my opinion. Decided to try this place for dinner the other night on a whim but wished I had chosen someplace else.

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