China 2009 - 5

13 February 2009 - Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden.

We were given a tour of the museum as part of our program during the first day. The entrance had this living sculpture.


















A ficus tree with the stems fused into a vase form. It kind of reminds me of the sculptural project ongoing at John C. Campbell folk school.















There was a large koi pond on either side of the walkway to the entrance as well.











The reception desk is made from an interesting piece of wood. I didn't get to take a close look at it to see what it was, but it reminded me of a strangler fig skeleton.











Here's a relief map of the garden and conservation area.










The first room we visited showed a lot of botanical and zoological specimens from the region, including these very interesting Dipterocarpaceae fruits.












Winged seeds are always of interest to me. I use the textural motif of these kinds of specimens as inspiration in my wood art.










Giant legumes!













Shelf fungi also serve as inspiration for some of my artwork.












The strangler fig remains was beautiful - I think that may be what that reception desk was made from.











One area of the museum was devoted to the Dai people, the largest ethnic minority in the Xishuangbanna region. There was a reconstruction of a Dai house there, which made a good Woodcentral sightings pic.









The low table and short stools is typical of the region.













We didn't have enough time to really explore this room, but it seems as if plants are used for just about everything in the home.














Fish traps and earthenware pots.


















Nets and seins for fishing.
















A bamboo fish or crab pot?













Lunch pails made from large pieces of bamboo.











I can't remember the name of our guide, but she told us about the Dai water festival. It sounds very colorful. Aside from the splashing, our guide said that the Dai have a tradition of dallyance that I haven't seen described on the web. For three days you are allowed to sleep with whomever you want to and after the festival, everything goes on as if nothing happened. Maybe something's missing in translation?







Pu'er tea comes from this region of China.













Scales














Jugs and pots












A beautiful box














Drop spindles












A Dai loom


















One of the Dai patterns










This embroidery pattern is also typical of the Dai people.















A bark cloth suit.











The bark hat that goes with the suit.
















This case featured traditional wind instruments. The one in the middle looks almost like a pipe and chanters. It's made from a gourd with bamboo pipes.












Dai candles











Pots













A drum that looks very much like a djembe.













A xylophone















Fireworks made from bamboo sections












A very interesting instrument that reminded me of a zither.

China 2009 - 4

13 February 2009 - Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden

We arrived at the garden sometime in the late part of the morning. This is the hotel that is run by the garden and it is situated within XTBG. It's kind of run down on the inside, but everything was relatively tidy. We were housed on the third floor. There were no elevators, so getting luggage up was a bit of a challenge for me. The van driver carried my suitcase up the stairs, which was very nice of him.





These are the pavers in front of the hotel, which serve as the driveway for drop off and pick up at the entrance.












We had a few minutes before lunch so I took a quick walk around the area of the garden closest to the hotel. The garden has several gateways that are embellished with cultural symbols. This is one side of a gate that has a dragon on each side.









I thought, at first, that this structure was a temple, but it is actually a well.












Some Dai people touring the garden. The women wear such beautiful clothes, and almost all of them carry parasols to protect themselves from the sun.











Here's a closer look at the well. It's kind of lopsided.












These reminded me of the birds of paradise plants I see in Africa. They weren't in bloom, so I'm not quite sure what they were.









A palm tree with large, dissected fronds.













Lunch was served in the hotel restaurant. The greens there are from the pumpkin family. The brown stuff was a delicious mushroom.












Lunch included a variety of dishes, a soup with veggies and meat. I can't remember if this was a fish soup - it might have been chicken. Those two meats were the most common ones to be found in soups in this part of China.










Ummmmmmm, how are these to be eaten? They were deep-fried fishes and eels, whole, that is.











You eat them whole, heads, bones, fins and all. Kind of like a fishy french fry. They're very crunchy.











I got such a kick out of watching YQ enjoy his food. Every meal came first with hot tea in a glass, and then with beer. The local brews were actually quite good.









I had a bit of time to walk around the garden after lunch before our official tour was scheduled.













Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden has an emphasis on the ethnobotany of the Dai people. Throughout the garden are exhibits that show how plants are used in the region. This display is on agricultural and medicinal uses of native plants.









There are also groves of tropical trees found in the forests in the area, including a diversity of palms.











These are leaflets from an interesting species of palm.












Public toilets in the park are odiferous, even with the open air ventilation (and I thought American pit toilets were yucky).











Aquatic plants are featured throughout the garden.














Another dragon.










This bit of time was about all I had for some real birding. I'll show some pics of some of the birds I saw.


Red-vented bulbul














Oriental Magpie Robin












Oriental White-eye











Blue-throated barbet












Black-crested bulbul
















Common lora














The garden is a popular place to visit and I enjoyed watching the people that came to walk the paths.










The bees were interesting, too.












I'll show some other bamboo pics in another post, but the garden has quite a large collection of species - about 250 or so, I think. Some of the stems are nearly a foot across at the base.








This looks like an arrowroot of some sort.












I'll have to look it up sometime, but if anyone knows this plant, please leave a comment for me.










The thatching pattern on some of the shelters was interesting, and very different from what I've observed in southern Africa.









Lepidopteran diversity is also very rich. I would have liked to have spent several hours chasing butterflies, but I could only snap a photo here and there.








The waterlilies were gorgeous.












That's worth another look, up close.











It's always fun, as a biologist, to go into an area totally new. Everything is very interesting and you just undergo a sensory overload trying to take it all in. I've never seen such an unusual color of ant before.








Hibiscus is familiar, though, but this one is native to southern China.










The garden has a large collection of cycads, and these were unusual in that they are branched. Cycads had their time of dominance back when dinosaurs ruled the land.

Some changes to the blog

I had a comment to the blog to request that I add the follower's gadget. Well, I was out-of-date, to be sure, so I had to go and find out what that was. It turns out that Blogger updated templates some time ago, but I hadn't caught up with the times. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that it's because I'm usually a very busy person. However, I took the time to update the template and layout and I added a bunch of widgets.

So, if you'd like to subscribe as a follower, you can now do that. You can also subscribe via various services and the links are on the sidebar now. I've also added a key words list, so if you have any interest in a particular topic, click on the keyword and the posts will come up under that heading.

I'll explore some of the other gadgets and widgets that Blogger has to offer, and I will eventually add links to blogs that I frequently read.

More China posts to come, but it's taking forever to work through the photos. I just bought a new computer with a much faster processor, so I hope that will speed things up a bit.

Cheers for now!

China 2009 - 3

13 February 2009: Jinghong and the drive to Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanic Garden.

Here's what I woke up to on Friday the 13th - House Swifts circling the neighborhood. They have a distinctive chittering whilst in flight.

We headed off to the botanical garden, about an hour's drive from Jinghong after breakfast.




Breakfast at the Good Chance Hotel was an Asian buffet. I found it interesting that breakfasts, in general, had the same foods as one would eat at lunch and dinner. I liked most of the noodle dishes, and I always had lots of watermelon and pineapple when these fruits were available.









This man is standing in the middle of the street, taking a picture of the arch. The Dai script probably had a message that was significant to him.









I sat up front for the drive to Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG). This was our driver for the trip.

Sean still needed a memory card for his camera and our driver knew of a shop where he could buy one.









This is an upscale shopping center in Jinghong.












The sidewalk was also used by bikes and carts in addition to pedestrians.












These workers are putting grout in between pavers.













Across the street from the mall is a government facility. The architecture of the gate is from the Dai tradition.











I always worried about taking photos even though YQ said I could take pictures wherever or whenever I wanted to do so.










There was a small park across from the shopping center and so we made it our first stop. I was interested in scouting for birds. The only birds in here were a couple of species of bulbuls - "weedy" urban birds for the most part.









There were also some interesting plants to see in the park, including this one from the Zingerberaceae.












Maybe one of my colleagues will leave a comment to identify this species. It's beautiful, whatever it is.








I was really intrigued by the tables and stools that were to be found in every public area. Groups of men or women gather around to play games. This one is a strategy game, but I don't know much about it.







Most of the time I saw women playing Mahjong, but these ladies were playing a card game.










I think this guy is mixing up concrete, but maybe its grout or something similar, or, more likely, he's wetting sand to lay down as a base. He was working on the sidewalk adjacent to the park.







This game must have been really interesting.












I wish I could tell you more about it, but maybe someone who knows something could leave a comment to enlighten me.









After the brief stop at the park, we headed southeast, across this spectacular bridge.














I snapped a lot of pics along the way. I really was interested in seeing what kind of shops were out in the rural areas.









I was also intrigued by the different modes of transportation. These tricycles had a motor assist - so they were more akin to mopeds than regular bikes.











Everything you can imagine is carried on these carts.












There are also an incredible number of motorcycles, and China just recently surpassed the USA in new automobile purchases.











Here are some views of these shops that line the roads.












There are always one or more people hanging out to visit in front of the stores, too.











Everywhere you go in China you'll see new construction going on.












This looks like a taxi service of some sort.














Ahhhh - finally, we got out of the urban zone and into an agricultural/forested region. This is a patch of disturbed forest - maybe regrowth after a farm went fallow?










The slope looks too steep to farm, but the burning is an indicator of agriculture in this region.












We were in a hilly region and the road passed through many tunnels of various lengths.








Here you can see the terraced slopes for rubber tree plantations.












There were also some toll stations on every road I traveled.













This one was in the middle of a rubber tree plantation. You can see the score marks on the trunk where the sap runs into a collection bucket.









Every so often we'd pass through a banana plantation, also. The blue bags are for keeping critters off the developing fruits.












Some more shop pics from the road. . .


I was intrigued by the clothing the woman in front was wearing.











This must be the hardware section of the shops.











More hardware and automotive supplies.














Get your hot new motorbike here, too.












Taxis?














Check out the construction site with the bamboo scaffolding.











Mortuary supplies, too. These look like some crypts that are under construction, or maybe this was the graveyard. You can see the Dai architectural details in the design.

The village we were passing through here is the one adjacent to XTBG, so we were almost there.

China 2009 - 2

12 Feb 2009.


After flying from Beijing to Kunming we picked up our luggage, met YQ at the airport, and then caught another flight to Jinghong. We were on our way to Xishuangbanna.

Something is lost in translation I'm sure, but how would you feel if you were taking a flight on "Lucky Air" airline?






Here's something I've never seen on another airline - sponsorship/advertising on the overhead bin doors.












The inflight magazine was also very different compared to others I've seen. I'm not sure I'll be buying a perfume called, "Completely Woman Smell."










This article would not make it through censorship in the states. I'm sure there is a lot of relevant medical information, but . . . .












this illustration would definitely not make the cut.












Xishuangbanna airport is pretty small compared to the other airports I traveled through in China. When we left Beijing the temperature was about 32°F (0°C), but we were definitely in the tropical climate here with temps in the high 80's (F).





I was pretty surprised to find that the lights in the terminal were turned off (this pic is from the baggage area), but I found out fairly quickly that electricity is conserved throughout southern China. If there is any amount of daylight streaming in from the windows, lights are turned off or dimmed.

Hotel room lights are also very subdued with about 25 to 40 watt light bulbs in the lamps.



I snapped this photo to show the use of the brooms used for cleaning the sidewalks and streets. I saw so many people doing this activity and was totally amazed about how efficient it is for keeping an area free of debris. In the states you see landscape and city workers with noisy, gas-powered blowers. This low-tech solution is just as fast, is quiet, gives someone some real exercise, and doesn't pollute or use up fossil fuels. Hello, America? What are we doing to ourselves????

The woman that is in the long dress is from the Dai ethnic group. The women wear lovely dresses. I don't know if this woman was an airport worker or was arriving to meet a passenger.




Here's the bartering for a taxi ride to our hotel. I think we were overcharged for most of these kinds of services. Jim, Sean, and I were about the only Caucasians to be seen for this geographic area during our visit.









Xishuangbanna isn't a major hub, but there seemed to be a lot of traffic through here the day we arrived.












Here's our first botanical example that we were in a tropical region - Bauhinia in bloom in the airport parking lot.







The ride from the airport to our hotel gave us our first taste of what driving in southern China is like. Everyone drives with their horns blowing constantly. I compiled a video of the ride for you to get a sense of what it's like to drive. I'll have some more videos to post later on.







When we arrived at the "Good Chance Hotel," there was a wedding photo shoot going on near the entrance. Note the hoop slip under the dress.

So, we flew on Lucky Air and stayed at the Good Chance Hotel. I thought we should have played the lottery while we were in the area.








The lobby of the hotel was dark. This takes some getting used to, but, after a few days, it seemed pretty normal to be in dimmed rooms.










Meanwhile, the photo shoot continues outside. I loved the floral decoration of the car.














Here's another view of the decorated car.









None of the hotel desk staff spoke English, so it was really great that we had YQ to translate and navigate the details. The hotels require a deposit before you can get your room key. Their credit card connection wasn't working, so we had to pay cash up front.

I'm not sure if the red lanterns are up all year round, but these seemed to be there to celebrate the Chinese New Year.







This is the view from my room. I dropped off my luggage and then we reconvened in the lobby to go explore the neighborhood and to look for a restaurant.


One thing that is very different about China compared to America is the way merchandise is sold. We're used to shopping malls, shopping centers, and mega grocery stores in our urban areas. Big cities such as Beijing have similar arrangements in some areas, but in the rural south commerce is still done the way it might have been 30 years ago or more throughout China. Individual shops are lined along the street, most of which are open via a roll-down door at the front of the stall. There may be living quarters at the back of the store.

Every sort of store lines the streets. I have a lot of pics to post later that show some of the diversity of goods and stores, but here is a snapshot from the area around our hotel in Jinghong.




The first thing that caught my eye were these woodcarvings from the burl of some tropical tree. The shop was dark so I didn't wander in, but I think that is the norm for a lot of the shops. The only light going in was from the open door in the front.









Sean needed a memory card for his camera, so YQ went in to another store that was all lit up to ask about where he might find a camera shop.








The guy looking through the curtain is not witnessing a peep show. That was the internet cafe.












Some of the upscale shops had lights and windows, but all of the front openings, whether glazed or not, had garage-style doors that were closed at night.










I'm not sure if this was a shop or just some laundry hung out to dry.













I loved seeing all the two and three-wheeled modes of transportation.













Many of these bikes and trikes had a small motor to assist the pedaling.











I particularly enjoyed seeing the produce carts whiz by.










It was getting pretty late in the afternoon, nearing sunset, actually, and these workers were still going strong in laying concrete for a new sidewalk.










This youngster was having his own kind of fun with the wet cement.










I did a double take when I saw this rolling down the street.










After strolling around the neighborhood near our hotel, we didn't spot a restaurant that offered local fare. We took a cab to a part of town nearer the outskirts, which put us into an area that had several Dai restaurants. These are open-air restaurants with the "rooms" consisting of covered porches sitting a single group around a table.







All of these porches were already occupied when we came to the restaurant, so they put up an extra table in a courtyard in the back. You can see the laundry hanging there, too.










The place settings were wrapped in plastic, which indicated they were sterilized. That table cloth is a dozen or more thin sheets of plastic, which are peeled off one at a time after patrons finish their meal and leave.









I felt as if we were banished to the kids table, but then I found out over the next several days that the Dai people prefer to sit on short stools at low tables. More on that in a later post.










After a while a covered porch opened up and we moved to nicer accommodations. YQ did the ordering for our meal. The server is wearing a traditional Dai dress.










The meal is served in waves of dishes. These were the first to arrive to the table - a lovely soup, stir-fried banana flowers, some pork, and pineapple sticky rice. The banana flowers and sticky rice were my favorite two foods of the entire trip. Yum!







I put several foods on my plate at the same time, but this isn't how it's supposed to be done. I adapted to the local style for other meals - taking just a chopstick's worth of food into the bowl or onto the plate at a time.








I was feeling pretty jet lagged by the end of the meal and so I asked if we could return to the hotel. I had only four hours sleep after coming off that long flight, so I was really ready to be horizontal.

Here's my room at the Good Chance Hotel. All of the beds in the hotels where I stayed were very firm - as in nearly rock hard. Most of them were too short for me, too.






Here's your typical courtesy bar - everything on the top shelf is for sale. Boiled or bottled water is provided as is tea.











Here's the address for this establishment if you're interested in taking your chances at the Good Chance hotel.










All the hotels had western style toilets in the rooms, but usually had Asian style ones in the public restrooms.
















Most of the hotels offered courtesy combs, toothbrushes, soap, and shower caps as well as slippers.










I encourage you to click on the picture and actually read what this sign says. It was posted in the bathroom. After reading it, scratching my head and laughing a bit, I looked at the goods on the bathroom counter to try to figure out what category went with a particular item.














I never did figure out which one of these was an electric condom, nor how an electric one differed from a regular one, nor why anyone would want something that said "electric" to be connected with one's nether regions. Perhaps this is a cultural difference that shouldn't be explored in too much depth. . .

China 2009 - 1

This is the first of many posts about my recent trip to China. I left the states on Feb 10 and returned on Feb 22. I went over for an editorial board meeting and scientific meeting, plus a tour of some scientific research centers and a chance to visit some pristine tropical rain forest. It was a very full itinerary and I learned a lot, plus I saw a lot of really interesting things and ate some very different foods.

The flights from Ohio to Beijing are long, except for the hop to Detroit. I had a flight from Detroit to Narita, Japan and then a flight to Beijing. The flight from Detroit to Narita is more than 13 hours, which is very uncomfortable in economy class.

When I handed my boarding pass to the flight attendant at the gate in Narita, Japan I was handed a different boarding pass, which bumped me up into business class. Hurray for frequent flier status! It was so nice to stretch out for a bit and to take a nap. That flight was not quite 4 hours, but it was enough comfort to get me a bit more relaxed than I was. The nap really helped.

I was met in Beijing by the managing editor of the Journal of Systematics and Evolution, and was taken to my hotel. I arrived pretty late in the evening and arrived to my hotel (Fragrant Hills something or other) just before midnight. I had to be up early the next day for a ride to the airport to catch another flight to Kunming.

The room was comfortable and modern, but you can't drink the tap water anywhere in China. Fortunately, purified bottled water and a hot pot for boiling water are provided at all the hotels.




Most of the better hotels have a room safe. Those cylinders are for smoke hoods in case of a fire evacuation. Slippers are also provided at all of the hotels, which is something one can quickly get used to.







A driver from the Chinese Academy of Sciences took us (myself and my colleagues, Jim Doyle and Sean Graham) to the airport. We left the hotel at 6:30 am, which meant I had about 4 hours of sleep at best.

I arrived in Beijing in the dark and drove to the airport the next morning in the dark, so I really hadn't seen any of China until the sun rose while we were at the airport. The sky is very smoggy in Beijing. I put that down to being in a huge city, but it turns out that the air is smoggy in most of China. In the urban areas, the pollution is what we would expect to see in the states plus the effect of dirty coal burning power plants, but in the rural areas, the pollution is mostly from smoke. The forests are burned for agricultural clearing. More on that later.


After checking in for our flight, we found a Subway sandwich shop that sold coffee. This is about the only cup of coffee I had for the entire time I was in China, except for the time I spent in Shenzhen. Calling the stuff I had there coffee is pretty generous, though. I switched to drinking tea for the most part, which wasn't such a bad deal. The teas in China are lovely to drink.








Every flight I had in China still offers food to passengers. I was very curious about what would be in the box.












The green container had a yogurt of some sort. The roll was a sweet bun and that meat thing was some kind of salad.










Rice and some kind of fish ball stuff. Interesting, but not really very edible.













I had the window seat and found that most of the land was covered in clouds or smog. As we moved southwest, the air cleared as we approached Kunming and I saw the mountains for the first time.









This area looked to be pretty well protected with forested slopes.










The closer we got to Kunming, though, it was clear that the forest had been cut down and burned for plantations and other agricultural applications. I couldn't tell what was planted on the hillsides, but the forest was definitely gone. You can see some of the smoke plumes form the fires in this image.









Agricultural lands mixed in with urban areas,













gave way to the city. There are so many people in China! It's hard to imagine the size of the population from the states, but being in the urban areas brings it home to reality.






L to R: YQ (Qiu Yin-Long), me, Sean Graham, Jim Doyle


YQ, my colleague from the University of Michigan, is co-editor of the Journal of Systematics and Evolution. He organized our itinerary and traveled with us throughout the southern parts of China we visited. He met us at the aiport in Kunming and we caught another flight to Xishuangbanna from there.





Airports in China are a bit different than other places I've been. For one thing, the shopping areas remind me of open air markets.












Ah, yes, the ubiquitous Colonel Sanders. I can't imagine why anyone outside the states would want to eat this stuff.
















Here's something you don't see in the states - mangosteen fruits from a family called Clusiaceae. I didn't purchase any here, and, in fact, I was scolded for snapping the picture. I finally had a chance to taste some when I was in Shenzhen - delicious! More on that later in this series of posts.




Ok, ladies, prepare yourself for some different toilet experiences if you travel to Asia. This is the Asian toilet, and I have to say, this one was a very clean and tidy one. I'm standing at the front of the thing (the drain hole is toward the back). To use it, you stand with your feet on either side of the oval and squat down. You hope that previous users have had good aim so that you don't have to step in anything that is disgusting.

You don't flush toilet paper (if there is any available, that is - I carried tissue packs with me wherever I went because most of the toilets don't have TP) down the drain, but place it in a basket next to the door. So, even if there is a flush toilet, the place stinks to high heaven. There's usually an attendant present in the rest room that goes around with a long pair of wooden tongs and a stiff broom to clean up the misses (or, rather, messes). Ew.

The nicer toilet facilities have clean stalls and doors. Most do not - they have short walls with open stalls. Anyone with shy kidneys would probably die from a burst bladder - you deal with it or suffer. Oh, and btw, if you do happen to visit a toilet that offers a western style commode, be prepared to lift the seat and use it as a squat toilet anyway unless you want to sit on someone elses footprints - yes, footprints. I can't imagine the balancing act that must take place for someone to climb up on the seat of a toilet and use it for squatting. Ew, again.


Here's the other cultural difference that westerners need to acclimate to - the use of chopsticks for every meal. Restaurants tend to offer slippery plastic chopsticks that are challenging to use with slippery foods such as noodles. Tables are relatively tall compared to our usual ones in the states, which makes eating with chopsticks a little easier because your mouth is nearer the food.

I didn't go hungry, but I wasn't very fast at putting the food into my mouth, either. There were so many interesting foods to sample it's hard to know where to start. I took photos of just about every meal and I'll try to post pictures from several of them to give you an idea of what real Chinese food is like. I can say, up front, that American Chinese food is not what you eat when you're in most parts of China. More on that topic in later posts - stay tuned for some culinary adventures.