The Wellcome Collection has introduced an online game called High Tea. You obtain opium in India and smuggle it into China, where you trade it for silver to buy tea. Millions in England are counting on you!
It’s not all that easy to play! Also, I really want a cup of tea now.
The High Society exhibition also offers a quiz, an image gallery, information about drug use in Victorian England, a companion book, and related reading.
Congratulations to Senator – President-elect – Obama!
The city calls for green. The green calls for civilization.
I have been pretty tired this week, getting back to work and finishing processing my pictures, so I’m really only halfway through the last batch. My last full day in China involved a stop in SuZhou, a beautiful little town with at least 9 formal gardens. We spent a couple of hours in the largest one, UNESCO World Heritage Site the Humble Administrator’s Garden (Zhuozheng Yuan) [Wikipedia] [my pictures at Flickr]. I am in love with these dense mixes of nature and architectural detail. More in the next few days.
China has some ADORABLE trash cans.
I have one quibble with them, though. They have English translations that aren’t so helpful. The pair above on the right say “Recycled” and “Organism.” On the left, “Organic Litter” and “Inorganic Litter.” This pair below was most helpfully labeled: “Recyclable” and “Unrecyclable.”
Also, this last pair could swing back and forth on the pins you see about midway down, which was pretty fun to see!
This is about 100 miles from my other such sighting, and a quick check on the Internet says a similar shirt (larger lettering) has been sighted in Korea. Is it some profoundly obscure reference to the bassist? Or just another one of Asia’s talismanic uses of English text?
We took a little excursion to Shanghai, holed up in a pleasant hotel, and had a slow couple of days. We stayed in an area that has mostly colonial architecture, across the river from the oddly org-chem-model-like Oriental Pearl Tower.
Today my brother and I visited a touristy area, around the Confucius Temple. We went after a long walk down the Qin Huai park, which contains a series of very surprising stone figures.
In the area, there are also quite a few figures of a dog or owl reading a book, so I am hoping that this and similar pieces are simple references to perfectly innocent children’s stories that I haven’t heard.
I took a long walk in Qingliang Shan park yesterday, exploring lots of tucked-away places. The park contains art galleries, a school, historic buildings, and many little spots with picnic tables and benches. It was ridiculously lovely.
More at my Flickr stream.
You’re probably thinking that nest was, gosh, I dunno, tucked away somewhere that I had to go out of my way to get to, attracted as a person with a 100mm lens might be, to the buzzing of insects. But no. It is hanging over a busy SIDEWALK, straight up from the head of the woman in the middle of the shot below. Perhaps you are thinking, hey, I bet the woman in pink is about to walk RIGHT UNDER IT, just happily gazing at her cell phone. You are right; she did. Fortunately, she is not very tall.
Yesterday my brother and I visited Purple Mountain, an enormous sprawling park in Nanjing, and hiked up to the Observatory. There are telescopes there, and several buildings with small exhibit halls. There are also several pieces of gorgeous old museum apparatus on display outside the exhibit halls. (Those I also shot in medium format – definitely looking forward to getting that film back.) Only the exterior exhibits were signed in English, but we mostly stayed outside, anyway, among the ridiculously pretty outbuildings, stone-paved paths, and luxurious plant life.