Ningbo Postcards – mid summer edition
Last year I missed them by a few weeks, this year I have finally managed to see them in all their glory, live on campus: Nelumbo nucifera – the lotus flower.
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The industrious and untiring indolence of the Chinese
These pictures were taken over the period of 3 days during my travels in China – Xi’An, Shanghai and Beijing to be exact, so it is safe to say that this is not a regional phenomenon. And funnily enough, they were not taken during lunch time, or perhaps in the evening either, but in bright daylight, often at their work place – one whilst buying tickets for the great wall. Economic boom anyone? … And … they can sleep on anything … anywhere!
The Forbidden City and the Temple of Heavenly Awesomeness
A couple of days ago I watched Bertolucci’s ‘The last emperor’ again and now the Forbidden City makes far more sense than it did when I went to see it last weekend. It’s such as a huge place and unfortunately as it is only a stripped down version of its former glory, when thousands of people lived in it, it looks rather triste and empty and is thus quite difficult to take in.
Will somebody please turn the tap off …
As some of you might have read: China was facing a severe drought not too long ago (sometime at the beginning of Feb). Indeed, China declared an emergency water shortage in eight northern and central drought-hit regions, where almost four million people were suffering water shortages. With much of China’s farming still relying on rainfall, since farming communities still have a poor irrigation system, prolonged drought and therefore a meager harvest could have devastating effects.
And you might have also read about the artificially created snow fall in Beijing, where a special chemical (most probably silver iodide) was sprayed into the clouds to make artificial snow to combat the drought. Results were pretty immediate and within a few hours Beijing was covered in snow, ending the longest drought in 38 years. Ah, the wonders of cloud-seeding … and ignoring some of the controversy surrounding the effectiveness (and ethics?) of this process: problem solved you might think. But think again …
Since my return from Japan, I have not done much else but teach and tackle various other academic jobs such as research paper writing, meetings and admin, so I am due a blog entry and my g*d I was due a trip off campus. So finally the excuse lent itself that a very good friend of mine was in the country and we could return to Hangzhou. Unfortunately he had to fly out again a day before we had the chance to go, but nevertheless some other friends of mine and I decided to set off as planned.
Over the last few months I have been documenting some of the flora on campus – and as the semester draws to a close, the floral display on campus is reaching its zenith. So last weekend I took a few hours off work to try and re-generate from my marking marathon and bring you some more of the sublime floral fireworks that are exploding all over campus.