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CHINESE “LAKE MONSTER” OR THREATENED GENTLE GIANT?
- THE TALE OF HUCHO TAIMEN -
"Does the Kanas Lake Monster, long veiled in secrecy, really exist? These questions will hopefully be answered this September". So noted ‘China Daily' this summer, reporting the launch of an RMB1.5m scientific expedition to investigate the mythical beast that is alleged to live in this beautiful lake in the Altai Mountain area of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. This follows a "sighting" of the creature by several tourists in June. Our China Briefing colleague Graham Thompson - who incidentally was once the Scottish government official who would have been responsible for the famous Loch Ness monster, had it ever been found - investigates.
The local media reported that "on the afternoon of 7 June 2005, seven Beijing tourists on a sightseeing boat on Kanas Lake were taking photos when they noticed that about 200m from their boat, the calm lake surface was shattered by a metre high wave and two large unidentified black objects appeared above water, one following the other and swimming rapidly from west to east toward the center of the lake, leaving a trail of turbulent water like that left by a speedboat, before disappearing after two minutes and the lake surface then restored its calm". The "monster" was said to be around 10m long. They took pictures, although these are somewhat inconclusive. Reports of this kind have been circulating for some years, along with tales of missing cows, horses and sheep.
It's maybe not just Kanas. A "giant vapour-breathing creature" called Chan is said to live at the bottom of a deep gorge in a remote mountain area in Hubei province. The first recorded sighting came in 1962 from peasants who were fishing in the gorge by throwing explosives into the water. Chan allegedly emerged and chased the frightened fishermen - not unreasonably, if they were dynamiting it. In 2003, a group of soldiers claimed to see an animal with "a round, black head with 10cm horns and scales on its back" in Tianchi Lake in Jilin Province. Neither story is verified.....More
- ABOUT CHINESE NEW YEAR -
The Chinese Lunar New Year is the longest chronological record in history, dating from 2600BC, when the Emperor Huang Ti introduced the first cycle of the zodiac. Like the Western calendar, The Chinese Lunar Calendar is a yearly one, with the start of the lunar year being based on the cycles of the moon. Therefore, because of this cyclical dating, the beginning of the year can fall anywhere between late January and the middle of February. This year it falls on February 9th. A complete cycle takes 60 years and is made up of five cycles of 12 years each.
The Chinese Lunar Calendar names each of the twelve years after an animal. Legend has it that the Lord Buddha summoned all the animals to come to him before he departed from earth. Only twelve came to bid him farewell and as a reward he named a year after each one in the order they arrived. The Chinese believe the animal ruling the year in which a person is born has a profound influence on personality, saying: “This is the animal that hides in your heart.”.....More
“WISHING YOU PROSPERITY AND WEALTH”
- MONGOLIA’S PRZEWALSKI’S HORSE -
Twenty thousand years ago wild horses roamed over the whole of Europe and Asia. Our prehistoric ancestors hunted them intensively as we have learned from the many caves discovered in the last hundred years, especially in France and Spain, where wall paintings abound. In most of the caves, pictures of horses far exceeded pictures of any other species, so we may assume that they were abundant. During this period there were comparatively few human beings and therefore posed little threat to the environment. These early people were very dependent upon nature for their survival.
In the course of time primitive agriculture and livestock rearing began to be practiced, and some of the animals that had previously been hunted became the enemies of the early farmers. Of all the wild creatures the horse was the one that gave them the most trouble. It broke into the enclosures and grazed on the crops raised on the hard won land and moreover the wild stallions were in the habit of taking with them the tame mares that were kept for meat. As time went on and agriculture spread, the population of humans and domestic cattle increased and the enclosing of more land meant that the wild horses were driven even further off into areas that were not suitable for cultivation.....More
- Tibetan Pu'er Tea: A Brief History -
Tibetan milk-butter tea is most certainly an acquired taste. It is oily, very salty, and frankly does not taste much like tea. However, to the accustomed drinker, the yellowish-grey liquid can come to take on almost magical properties, especially after a stout hike at 4000 meters.
The magic is simply that the fatty yak’s butter is extremely protein and nutrient rich, salt is rather critical for survival, and the tea is very nicely caffeinated. But it turns out that the benefits don’t stop there: the Tibetans’ preferred tea leaves produce some of the healthiest, if most unlikely, varieties of tea on the market. So how, then, did tea come to Tibet in the first place (where it most certainly cannot grow), and perhaps more interestingly, how did this particular type of tea become the secret ingredient in one of the world’s earliest and most effective energy drinks?.....More
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