"Over the years I must have driven (or been driven) vast distances throughout the Fens and seen almost every large river there is to see in East Anglia. However looking out of the window of the bus as you drive through Zhejiang nothing can prepare the British visitor as to what a watery place this really is."
Just for show these days - Xitang's river and ancient surroundings
Water is underutilized as a method of transport or haulage method - in the UK. In Zhejiang, China humongous amounts of goods travel by water, mostly raw materials (like coal, gravel, bricks) on their way to all kinds of construction developments. To us, water transportation was superseded very quickly by rail. In China these super slow - but mega capacity and absolutely countless canals and rivers take a huge strain.
"When I saw the birth place of Zhou Enlai - Huai 'an Jiangsu . I felt it could be directly compared with Earith, near Huntingdon - Cambridgeshire, with its man-made canals all interlinking with eachother. However; this place was something else."
Welcome to the set of Mission Impossible II
Famous for not being in any way part of modern developments in China (except for the huge flow of visiting tourists). Xitang - said to date from the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC-476 BC) is an alcove of pure history.
Here we see access to the water, for washing clothes. Its hard for me to imagine that clothes come out any cleaner than before they are washed this way. Washing machines in the city are usual, however don't expect hot water on most of them! Still plenty of scope for some elbow grease!
"You can read on the internet, in newspapers, see on TV, hear on the radio about the construction of China. However, every route we seemed to take in the three trips colided with a new express railway line being constructed. Amazing when we look at a country like the UK, where High Speed one was the first new line constructed for 100 years."
This post is very interesting. It looks very beautiful, too. I wish I could go one day. But then again, when I was growing up our streets were unpaved and when it rained we had our own "watery village," well it wasn't exactly a village but more like a getto. Yeah, the watery getto.
Looking at the picture I detect it was a sunny day when the photgraphs were taken, but the water looks pretty grey.
There is, actually, a canal system in China that goes from Yangzhou to Beijing. It was built by order of the Chinese Emperor. I think if they spent lots of money to clean and restor this waterway system millions of people would visit it. In Yangzhou I have traveled on parts of it, with great pleasure and interest. The many ancient bridgess are spectacular works of geometry and nature: form and function perfectly combined. Their reflections make the briges look like absolute circles: and a beautiful Essay can easily be written on this excellent architectural phenomena.
Moreover some of the roads between beijing and Nanjing were, at one point, canals. But now they have been covered over and forgotten. But their Chinese names illuminate what they one were. Roads at one point in this location were indeed canals. It would be pleasing, if I was a rich man to sponsor this revival and restoration progress. It would be economically viable, I think. Moreover it would rivall the waterworks of Crung Thiep.
Meanwhile, back in the days, my childhood mainstreet looked like a bog when it rained; and when as a boy I leafed through Charles Dickens' works describing the Hard Times he himself experienced, I could plainly see from my bedroom window, that his descriptions were never embellishments.
If this experience can be somewhat compared to Canbridgshire, then I wouldn't drink your kitchen tap water, Mr. Stuart. I suggest you invest in a water purifier or move to a different Shire.
Posted by: Sally | 09/26/2010 at 10:20 AM
One of my class members was a fan of Charles Dickens. Anyone familiar with Dickens' work might know the Pickwick Papers. Most of it is anecdotal, and filled with stories and quaint goings on. For a while the local Cambridge Evening news has published excerpts.
I guess your knowledge of the canal system would tie in very well with the water systems of Zhou En Lai's home town. We tend to have a very UK centric view of the world and all its contents. But a country as powerful and vast as China must have been innovators of canal networks long before we ever dug any. That said the area close to where I live has many navigable canals and drainage systems, many of which designed by a Cornileus Vermuyden, a Dutch expert brought in to "tame the Fens," by King Charles 1st.
A strange but perhaps little known fact about the UK is how many people lived rurally in the past - compared with today. The highland clearing and the drainage of the Fens, is a case in point. Where locals were deposed off their land in favour of mass farming (be it sheep or arable farming).
Anyone thinking that UK people were only cruel to other nations only need take a short trip into history to find small boys suffocating up chimneys, women and children down mines for 12 hours a day and it is worth noting that in Manchester (1840) the life expectancy was only 26. Where a body was said to age so quickly, through rampant disease (due to overcrowding and lack of sanitation) lack of nutrition and overwork.
Cambridge has for a long time had a sewage pumping station, which is fully restored as a local museum. Luckily for Cambridge, quite often we were blessed with such technology before most. What amazes and boggles my mind is how the steam pump's technology was so quickly superseded by gas. However the two systems worked simultaneously for nearly 100 years.
Posted by: Administrator | 09/27/2010 at 12:06 PM