Hole in the Clouds


Tag: China

Middle school

Dec 10, 2009

Two girls who have recently immigrated to the United States, one from China and the other from Pakistan, have learned enough English and reading in Michele Manno's sixth-grade class to enjoy storybooks. Ms. Manno observes that both girls are good kids, eager to learn and interested in school, but one of them studies hard and the other "wants it spoon fed." They live and attend school in Queens, New York.
 

Queens   Pakistan   New York   sixth grade   Michele Manno   middle school   China   (Image credit: Michele Manno)  

Burning the Midnight Oil

Jan 1, 2011

As the year turns, the astronauts in the International Space Station have been steadily circling the globe about 400 miles above us. A couple of nights ago, when they were flying over the ocean near North Korea, they picked up their little Nikon digital camera and pointed it westward, toward the Asian mainland. That's Beijing in the upper left, Tianjin in the lower right, glowing out into space.

This is what new years will be looking like for a long time to come.

Meanwhile, may 2011 bring health and glowing good cheer to you and yours. This past year wasn't all that great; there is plenty of room for improvement. 

Good mornings, y'all.

birdseye view   night   China   Asia   Beijing   (NASA: International Space Station)  

Season of the Scour

Jul 20, 2013

The Chinese term for what's going on here gets translated as sand-washing, but the operation is really more like sand-blasting. Every summer, just before the rainy season, specialized gates in a dam holding back the Yellow River are opened wide, and the river bursts through under such high pressure that the sand and silt in the river water scour the river bottom for the next 800 km.

The nozzles will be left open for about three weeks, till the water level in the Xiaolangdi Reservoir is low enough to accommodate summer rain and the riverbed downstream has been blasted deep and clean. In its lower reaches, the Yellow River meanders slowly and is prone to silt buildup and flooding. In recent years, sand-washing has been undertaken at least once and usually twice a year.

The photo above shows the sand-washing last week; recent rains had stirred up the sediment in the water, turning it all yellow. The photo below shows the beginning of last summer's sand-washing operation, which took place after a dry spell during which the sediment had precipitated out of the water column and settled to the bottom of the reservoir.

China   (h/t: Cathy Goldwater)   river   dam   flooding   sand-washing   reservoir   Yellow River  

The Sun Sets On Yet Another Place We've Never Been

Feb 18, 2014

As today's contribution to the occasional series "Places We've Not Been and Have No Business Trying to Write Anything About," please consider this roofscape scene taken in Lijiang village, a UNESCO World Heritage site high in the hills of southwest China, near the border with Myanmar.

Human habitation in Lijiang has been continuous since before there was such a thing as a roofscape, or even a roof; paleolithic cave-dwellers were here. The ancient Silk Road passed through here. Townspeople grew wealthy through trade and tribute, and they began to rebuild their town in more elaborate, decorative styles.

Civilization was flourishing here in the thirteenth century. And fortunately for some, within about eight hundred years, give or take, the tourists showed up.

landscape   sunset   China   village   Lijiang   UNESCO World Heritage Site   Yunnan   (Image credit: Trey Ratcliff via Stuck in Customs)  

The Emptiness Within

May 19, 2016

The supermarket at 1015 Yuyuan Road in Shanghai is said to look like any ordinary Chinese convenience store, its shelves stocked with colorful bottles and boxes of foodstuffs and other items from all over the world.

There's the usual convex mirror in the corner to watch for shoplifters. There's a cash register and a cashier, and lots and lots of customers.  The prices they pay are exactly what people in Shanghai would expect to pay.

The only thing at all unusual is that the packages are all empty. Every last one of them. Artist Xu Zhen and his conceptual-art corporation, MadeIn Company, bought all the thousands and thousands of items found in a convenience store, patiently pricked or otherwise opened each one to remove the contents, and then carefully resealed them.
 
"Store" visitors, perhaps surprised at first by the lightness of a secretly emptied soft drink can or candy bar wrapper, nonetheless walk up and down the aisles, studying and touching the merchandise. They make their selections. As often as not, they decide to buy something, even though it's only a package of nothing.
 
They pay full price. Maybe they feel that they're actually buying art, and for art, the price looks good.
Shanghai   China   marketing   supermarket   Xu Zhen   conceptual art   packaging   consumerism   (h/t: Atlas Obscura)  

Four Hundred Thirty-Eight Miles Above the City

Feb 20, 2017

On the morning of May 13, 2016, NASA's Landsat 8 satellite collected thermal, infrared, and visible-light data from high above the city of Shangqiu, home to more than 1.5 million people in the midst of the wheat, cotton, corn and sesame fields of the North China Plain.

Shangqiu is a transportation hub, located at the junction of China's major north-south and east-west railroads. Also, the largest frozen-food processing company in China is headquartered there.

The lush agricultural land surrounding the city shows up as deep green in this image because Landsat's sensors are particularly sensitive to the vigorous plant growth characteristic of freshly planted fields in mid-spring.

The small brownish blotches in the farmland are agricultural villages. Almost 6 million people live in villages in the Shangqiu hinterland.

China   satellite imagery   springtime   farmland   North China Plain   Shangqiu   (Image credit: NASA Landsat 8)