Rekindling the blog, Travels in China


Sunrise, On the Great Wall - June 2009


Drum Tower, Glowing in the dusk light, Xian, May 2010


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Marriages and Fantasy Photo Albums There is enormous pressure on Chinese youngster’s to marry. In a society that is still driven by traditional Confucian ethos, despite the enormous cultural discontinuity wrought by Mao, marriage (and children) is a fundamental duty of a person towards his family and society. Given all the changes over the years, with the loss of traditional and informal avenues, many alternate methods have sprung up. Dating events (Shanghai Line 2 Metro users dating event anyone!), ‘Marriage Markets’ – spaces in parks that are taken over by parents seeking a prospective spouse for their (often only) child, on-line sites and top end ‘love hunter’ services… the range of possibilities is enormous. For a society where ‘face’ guides and drives social interactions, China can be downright cruel towards people that are perceived to have failed to secure themselves a mate. Women over 27 that have not found themselves a mate are known as ‘ Sheng Nu ’. Ditto, men are kno...
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Legendary Moleskine

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Nature Strikes Back? Really? Two charts to make us think.

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Early on at the onset of the pandemic of our generation, nCovid-19 there was much talk about nature striking back at us as ‘revenge’ for all the harm that we have inflicted on her. It made me very uncomfortable as it seemed not only to misunderstand the nature of human existence on this planet, but also ignore the tremendous improvement in quality of life that we have had in modern societies.  It is not my contention that we are in anyway living in a sustainable manner, but I think we should certainly acknowledge that the human condition has been that for thousands of years we have been at the mercy of nature and only in the last ~ 100 years or so we have won for ourselves a certain amount of respite. For nature is not just cuddly pandas, deer with dewy eyes and radiant sunsets but nature is also smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, famine, cold, floods, poisonous snakes and predators that see us as prey! Two charts that brought home the point for me are shown ab...
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