Black Dragon Cafe

This is a groundcherry , close relative of the Chinese Lantern plant , both of the Physalis genus in the Solanaceae family
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And below lots of footnotes…
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Over the past couple days there has been the distant splinter and pop of firecrackers, in just another three days it will be Spring Festival.

The spring tradition of writing poetic couplets to be placed around the doorway never disappeared from China, though it was stifled in the 1960s as a superstition. This year is the first time that I’ve seen quite a few street-side calligraphers offering to write a phrase for a couple kuai – before all I could find were those kitschy factory produced ones with glitter, accompanied by pictures of vaguely disturbing fat babies.

As for fireworks, there are even chaoji nvsheng Mongolian Yogurt Super Girl Pop Contest ones, should you wish to see Li Yuchun shoot sixty feet in the air and explode.

From the back of the packet (translation):

Delicious! Really delicious!
But some people
don’t know how good they smell,
because a drunkards’ sense of taste
is dulled.
Little Lee of the Flying Daggers is just one such drunkard,
but even though his taste has been dulled,
it cannot obstruct
his fondness for these peanuts.
When the dagger flies out of his hand,
he eats a peanut,
a thin smile breaks across his composed features.
The gratification gained from the peanuts
is equal to that of the daggers flying from his hands!

In Haiyan village southwest of Dianchi lake, Stone Dragon Temple squats on a hillside that looks across the water to the Western Hills.

The first temple on the site was built in the early Ming dynasty (14th century), with a wooden plaque inscribed in the Chongzhen emperor’s own script, “The pine trees in the wind, the moon reflected in the water”. Rebuilt during the Qing dynasty, it was once a large complex where local magistrates would hold open air feasts taking in the view across the lake.

This painting of Stone Dragon Temple is by Mei Xiaoqing, formerly vice-chairman of the Yunnan Fine Arts Association and now dean of the Kunming Art Academy.

During the anti-Japanese war (1937–45), when Kunming was under threat, the Kunhua provincial high school for girls (an institution of some note) made the temple its temporary home. There were over 1,000 students and several hundred teachers living here. Under headmaster Yang Jiafeng the school was a centre for the new progressive teaching, including printing of the Shanghai based journal Women’s Voice .

In the 1950s the statues and the entrance halls were demolished. During the 1970s’ Study from Dazhai period, the Lake View Pavilion and another temple hall was destroyed and the temple trees cut down to make way for fields of crops. Of the ten inscribed stone tablets (records of major historical events), only one survives. One temple hall was left standing, as were four trees (Cupressus funebris) over a century old. In 1986, it was listed as a protected cultural relic. In 1999 the local village committee spent some money on repairs, and organized 12 village elders to look after the place on a rotation basis.

Now the local government, in conjunction with a large real estate company, is rebuilding the temple from scratch – the existing old buildings will be demolished, though some of the stone carvings and tablets will be saved and replaced in the new building.

Sources:
Background on Stone Dragon Temple

Stone Dragon Temple recent history

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The largest astronomical telescope in China has just been installed, located at the Gaogumei Astronomical Observatory in Lijiang. The RMB 30 million, 2.4-metre imaging/spectroscopic telescope has a height of eight metres and a weight of over 40 tonnes. The Lijiang site is a highly suitable place for a telescope, being over 3,000 meters above sea level and having an average of 254 clear nights annually. There is also minimal interference from artificial light and sand.

A report for the US China Economic and Security Review Commission (21 April 2005) warned that the US had seriously underestimated China’s progress in science and technology innovation:

Last week, the WTO announced that China has overtaken Japan as the world’s third largest exporter, after a 35 per cent jump in the country’s overseas sales. Surprisingly, electronic goods now account for a third of Chinese exports…

In the past few months, China has announced a new supercomputer that operates at 11 trillion calculations per second, breakthroughs in nanotechnology, manufacture of immunochips to detect staph infection, operation of a mini-space satellite, plans to launch another 100 satellites [by 2020] beyond the 70 already launched, a state of the art new [“meltdown-proof”] pebble-bed nuclear reactor technology, plans to build 40 nuclear reactors [the US has built none since 1970], a Chinese-designed Pentium-style computer chip [the Godson II, equivalent to a Pentium III], a doubling of factory production of robots, design of a new satellite launch vehicle capable of orbiting 25 tons, successful use of cloning cell technology to produce a buffalo [10 April 2004], opening of semiconductor design centers, progress by the Institute of High Energy Physics on a electron positron collider, support of a superior conducting collider in Germany, partnering with the EU to enable the Gallileo global positioning system, and a state of the art planned astronomical observation program…

This astronomical observation program includes the Lijiang observatory, as well as:

A “giant eye” that can simultaneously monitor 4,000 celestial bodies. It will become the telescope that has the highest spectrum acquiring rate in the world.

China’s first telescope will be launched into space – telescopes in space don’t have the problem of atmospheric interference, described in a People’s Daily article as “admiring the flowers while it is foggy”.

A radio telescope, described as a “heavenly eye”, that is hoped will receive signals sent out by an “extraterrestrial civilization”. Currently, the radio telescope with the largest diameter is an American-built 305-metre telescope. The Chinese one will be the world’s largest, so large that it can fill a whole valley with a reception area of one square kilometre.

A 1-metre infrared vacuum solar tower will be built on the northeast bank of Fuxian Lake.

Sources:
China’s Progress in Technological Competitiveness – The Need for a New Assessment by Dr Michael Pillsbury pdf

Introduction of the National Astronomical Observatories and their Activities by Gang Zhao pdf

People’s Daily articles:
China’s largest astronomical telescope settled in Lijiang

Seven astronomical projects to explore space mysteries

Asia’s largest optical telescope installed in south China [photos]

Illustration by Jason Pym