Botanic gardens - at last

I finally tracked down the Botanic Gardens & since I was feeling a mite cooped up (winter) I decided to go in spite of the fact that it looked like it might rain at any time. Naturally it started to rain about half way there.

I thought  when I looked at the map that it would be semi-rural but I didn't take into consideration the impact of a population of 17 million people. At least from the road, there is no evidence whatsoever of rurality. It's possible that the factories/shops/flats don't extend particularly far back from the road; but I think it's more likely that my map is out of date. 

I'm a bit curious though becasue Guangzhou is actually surronded by mountains.  I think I may have mentioned (about the second week that I was here) that I had been to a place called "Five Mountains" and there weren't any. It turned out today that that was unfair. The place is called "Fifth Mountain" and as we drove through it it was noticably higher than Tian He (where I live).

(Place names are tricky. There is an island called "Second Sand Island" - I spent months trying to find the "First Sand Island". Naturally there isn't one, but I discovered that "Big Sandy Headland" was in fact once an island until the civil engineers go to it and attached it back to the mainland.)

Camellia garden 

In fact, while trying to get out of the gardens at 5:29 - they don't give you a map - I found a sign that said "Fire Stove Mountain" (to give a literal translation) which suggests that spending more time in and around the Botanic Gardens could lead me to the Guangzhou wilderness. With a name like that, I feel a spot of vulcanology coming on. Mind you, I have a nasty feeling vulcanology is the science of rubber. Still, you can take a punt on the idea.

The gardens are huge. I did see a sign that said how many hectares it was but that kind of thing never means much to me. I prefer the "There is no way in the world you could walk around this in a day and see more than 30% of it without proceeding at forced march pace" measurement. Or you could go with the fact that they do a busy bike & golf cart rental business in summer.

It's either because I am vaguely English, or possibly from Melbourne, but I quite like walking outdoors in winter. It was raining, but it was a curious kind of rain that seemed to be more like rain than drizzzle, but leave you much less wet than a drizzle would. So even though I was without an unbrella (because I am a goose) aprt from a brief period where I felt obliged to take shelter in the conservatory (left) I was quite happy to walk around in the rain. If I come down with pneumonia tomorrow,  I guess it will have been not such a good idea.

Note that there is just as much mist inside the conservatory as there was outside. The information board at the front gate says that the gardens have been operating since 1954, but there is a huge amount of work going on. Most of everything looks substantially new - less then 3 years old, given how fast things age here.

The plant pictures are delayed by technological considerations. I can't really comment on the plantisng except to say that they have a lot of stuff. And the plantings are quite seriously massed for the most part, which is sort of good I think. It gives a bit of a feeling for how things might look indigenously, although, to be fair, massed cacti is probably more a statement by a landscape gardener than an actual recreation of an arid plantscape.

Another interesting feature of the place is that there is some seriousl archaeological work going on. Once again, there has been a great attempt to combine archaeology with public viewing but unfortunately the viewing pits were suffering from chronic condensation and poor drainage. So I didn't see very much and unless it's rock we're supposed to be looking at, I don't think anybody will be seeing very much in the future. Preservation is a tricky business.

I may have mentioned elsewhere that there is a bit of southern pride motivating the presentation of the archaeology - elsewhere there is the Nan Yue "emperor" / "jumped up garrison commander" debate; but in a way, anything that gets history public is OK (until we move into history as an excuse for invading the wherever). 

Let's be blunt though - this is a little overstated. It's interesting that the bas-relief has outlasted the Stalinist architects who introduced it to China; until the 1940's it was not at all a Chinese thing. It seems now to pay much more attention to the reality of Asian faces than the Russian version (now it's the high end women's fashion industry that seems unaware that it's in Asia). It's just, perhaps, that the nutritional inputs of a Neolithic fishing village (I know we're on the slopes of a mountain now, but it was a fishing village then) seem to me unlikely to support such muscular physical development.

So as not to lose the habit

I realised I haven't written anything since November. So, just to keep the hand in, here's a miscellany of things that haven't really fitted in anywhere else.

Being in Sydney in early December has been a bit of a distractor in terms of blogging. Pretty much every available other minute was spent preparing to be away from work and catching up with work after I discovered that I hadn't prepared well enough. Plus travel shopping & christmas shopping. I can't call myself a veteran of the markets yet, but I have to say I'm getting more comfortable there. I've found a couple of friendly vendors, at least.

This is not China. This is Goulburn. I would say that on the basis of my recent brief visit there, this is my favourite building in Goulburn. It's really very cheerful. It must have caused quite a stir when it was built - it seems much brighter than a conservative rural community's legal profession could have been expected to embrace in the (I guess) 1930's. It's obviously not Goulburn's fault that it hasn't rained there for a decade or more, but the other thing odd about this building is that the rest of the city and surrounds are just drained of colour. And it might be the only 20th century building in the city to have caught my attention.

This on the other hand, IS China. This is more views from my living room window (and me testing a new camera). I 've always liked timelapse effects. One of the interesting things about this camera is that it is teaching me about photography; I was always skeptical of people who  buy extremely expensive accessories, but look at the stationary cars at the traffic lights and you can see that, according to their headlamps they have all just samba-ed sideways. That obviously isn't very likely and the actual fact is that between my shaky hands and

 the crummy lightweight tripod (given away free with camera),  that's the result of the vibration caused by pushing the shutter button in a 1.5 second exposure. 

This is also from the living room window (the intersection is down and right). The trick here was to get a crisp shot at night of the flashing neon. The great joy of digital photography - I finally worked out how to do it without using up a roll of film and a week's developing time. And no, I didn't take 100 shots and pick the best. I have tried that technique - it sort of works, but you spend an awful lot of time picking over the 100 shots, with no actual guarantees. This is one of 8, in fact, each with a different combination of settings. It's a better picture than a sign, though.

Art - this is my best effort so far I think. Leaving aside the faintly claw-like unleafed branch in the middle.  It's quite tricky really. 

I'm hoping this is good enough to let me move on to plants and/or orchids. I know it's wrong to be impatient, but I can practise when I get home. It's going to be hard to find a teacher in Sydney though.

I think I may have already blogged a picture of this a couple of months ago - if not never mind. 

I like this picture because there are some mornings where the light is just extraordinary and walking down the road can't help but make me smile. Even though it's winter that morning light is still spring-like. This isn't actually a picure of the particular road where I most frequently notice that effect (it's nearby), but it seems to have some of the luminescence. The light might be coming out of the tree, instead of shining down on it.