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.