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Friday, July 20, 2012

The Goose and the Dander

When I was little, my sister took to calling me, her brother Alexander, "Dander." This is a short tale of Dander's visit to see the ganders.

Nature is not everywhere in Changchun. You have to take the #13 bus and then a taxi to get to Goose Island, but I went with my Chinese teacher and a beautiful girl, who took the photos of the geese, the dove, and the rainbow-bedecked fountain spray below.


This dove will be eaten before too long.



I took a couple photographs myself. This is my Chinese teacher eating goose, mushroom soup, and a variety of mushrooms sizzling above a Sterno. The goose liver plate is out of sight. He is sitting on a swinging chair. We drank copious amounts of bai jiu, as well.


As we walked about the premises, I peered over the wall and across a corn field at the new government building for Changchun.

This is a lamb and the grills on which they are roasted.


There was a petting zoo of dogs and a couple rams and ewes. This husky had beautiful eyes, don't you think? Especially for being locked in a cage!


This is my Chinese teacher crawling across the little pond on a rope bridge.


He forbid me from using the zip-line, but I don't take such advice sitting down and did exactly what this man is doing and zipped across the small pond.

The weather was perfect and here I atop an elephant at the gate.


Unfortunately, I am sick from some food that I may have eaten there. I have been taking Imodium and hoping that life will return to normal. I have had two IV drips and must take Chinese herbal medicine for at least a month!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Water on the Knee and Appeal

The Friday before last, I got to the Chinese-Japanese Union Hospital of Jilin University (sometimes called Number 3) at 8:30AM. It is reputedly the best hospital in the city. I have, quite obviously, water on the knee and one of my dearest friends here works in the Rheumatology Department. She was off on a Beijing-Xi'an-Shanghai trip with her sister, but was a tremendous help by text.

I checked in at the Outpatient window and paid 3RMB (50 cents). I went to see a doctor who told me that I should get an X-ray and an ultrasound. I went back to the window where I had waited to get the piece of paper that allowed me to see the doctor and got two more receipts that entitled me to the tests (100RMB each or about $31.28). I decided after the ultrasound that I would return to the Outpatient Rheumatology doctor without fulfilling the X-ray order. She was fine with that decision and sent me to Orthopedics. (We spent some time trying to get a refund for the unfulfilled order.) I was not touched by the Orthopedic doctor or, I am quite sure, even looked at by him. He simply looked at the ultrasound and said that within three weeks my knee should return to normal. It has been a week and it has barely changed at all.

Have you ever had or known anybody with prepatellar bursitis or "water on the knee"? It is very strange!

The mechanism of injury was almost certainly yoga. I am afraid if I post this photo, it may be the very last time that any of you ever look at this blog. I will take the risk. If you like it (or even if you don't care), please make a donation to support the blog.


Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Toyota to Exhibit New Hybrid Vehicle in Changchun

CHANGCHUN -- Toyota Motor Corp will display its new hybrid concept car, the Yundong Shuangqing, at the upcoming Changchun auto show slated for July 13-22 in Northeast China's Jilin province, sources with the company said on Tuesday.

The concept vehicle is equipped with a system of multiple power sources designed by Toyota's Chinese research and development center in Changshu, Jiangsu province, according to the sources.

The vehicle is an outcome of Toyota's Cloud Action plan, which was initiated on March 1 in Beijing to promote environmentally friendly products in China.

A production version of the Yundong Shuangqing, literally meaning Cloud Action Dual-Engine, will be available in 2015, according to the plan.

The vehicle made its debut at the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition in April this year.
China became the first country outside Japan to produce Toyota's Prius hybrid, when Sichuan FAW Toyota Motor Co Ltd started making the third-generation model in 2005.

In 2010, GAC Toyota Motor Co Ltd in South China's Guangdong province began making the Camry hybrid, the second hybrid vehicle manufactured by Toyota in China.

Source: China Daily

Sunday, July 8, 2012

On the Heat Wave, El Nino and Real Consequences

Despite Bill McKibben's change of heart, the evidence that climate change is not a hoax seems to be rising.

Biman Mukerji and Diksha Sahni report from New Dehli for the Wall Street Journal, "Swaths of northern India are facing water shortages due to the late arrival of monsoon rains, deepening already acute power shortages and disrupting the sowing season of staple food crops at a time when India's economy is fragile."

The "Father of Hybrid Rice" is somebody that Chinese students learn about in their English textbook during the first year in senior middle school (aka high school). He made dramatic predictions about the potential for increased grain outputs in a speech in Changchun on Thursday, but sizzling weather may interfere with this. In Changchun, we have received uncharacteristically large quantities of thunderstorms and the temperatures have hovered around 90F for the last few days.

Codi Yeager reports for Circle of Blue:
A drought in China has also impeded crop production. Arable land totaling 5.17 million hectares (12.8 million acres) in Henan, Anhui, Shandong, and Inner Mongolia is being affected by the dry spell. Furthermore, 4.28 million people and 4.85 million heads of livestock in Yunnan, Hubei, and Inner Mongolia are short of drinking water, Xinhua reported. The Chinese government called for a Level IV emergency response plan to deal with the drought in Hubei Province, where city and county governments have allocated $US 1.2 million (7.72 million RMB) to ease shortages of drinking water and food.

The return of El Niño weather conditions could further parch China and the Korean Peninsula. The weather phenomenon, part of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather cycle that includes La Niña, is caused by warmer than normal water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. El Niño generally brings droughts to Asia and Australia, while dumping rain on North and South America. 
Phoebe Sedgman and Elizabeth Campbell report for Bloomberg, "Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says this may be the first time in five years that New Zealand, the world’s biggest dairy exporter, produces less milk, at a time when surging corn prices are raising costs for U.S. farmers.... The heat wave wilting corn in the US Midwest is raising feed costs for farmers and may curb milk yields."

"Gone are the days that people in Suriname considered their country blessed by the gods against disastrous weather." (AlertNet, 28 Jun 2012)

N.B. It is quite difficult to find English articles in China about weather patterns and recent monthly weather data.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Part 1: Who Has The Power? The Li Family


The five major players in China's electric power generation industry, and their listed subsidiaries are all state-owned enterprises directly administered by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. Their listed subsidiaries are substantially independent, hence counted as independent power producers, and are major power providers in their own right. Typically each of the big 5 has about 10% of national installed capacity, and their listed subsidiary an extra 4 or 5% on top of that. They are:
According to an old article (2007), three of these companies were in the top five power companies responsible for the most carbon dioxide emissions in the world. Updated information from the same source shows that China Huanneng Group now tops the list and China Huadian Group is third on the list. China Datang Corporation is now sixth on the list and Huadian Power International Corp. is now ninth on the list, followed by China Guodian Corporation at tenth. China Power Investment Corporation has fallen from fifth place to twelfth place and this story will be told below. The only American companies that are worse than China Power are Duke, AEP, and Southern Company.

Of the states and provinces in the world, the Great State of Texas is the only place worse than China's Provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, Henan, Guangdong, and Shanxi. Put another way, Texas is the single biggest carbon producing province ("state") in the world and these Chinese provinces hold second through sixth place.

China Power International Development Limited

China Power International Development Limited (the "Company" or "China Power") was incorporated in Hong Kong with limited liability under the Companies Ordinance (Cap. 32 of the Laws of Hong Kong) on 24 March 2004 and is the flagship company of China Power Investment Corporation ("CPI Group"), one of the five largest power-generating groups in the People's Republic of China (the "PRC" or "China"). The power plants of CPI Group spread across 28 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the PRC with a controllable installed capacity of approximately 70GW.

China Power's executive is Li Xiaolin, daughter of Li Peng (aka "the Butcher of Tian'anmen" and the man who initiated the construction of the Three Gorges Dam on December 14, 1994). She was the center of a controversy recounted in an earlier post of mine. She was also featured five years ago in a Forbes piece: Chen, Jean (January 3, 2008). "China's Power Queen". Forbes (Hong Kong)

Her brother--considered a "Princeling"--is the vice-governor of Shanxi Province and a graduate of Beijing's North China Electric Power University. He is the former chairman of Huanneng Power International, China’s largest independent power provider.

This is the structure of Xiaolin's CPI Group:

Much of this information is taken from Wikipeia and carma.org.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

My Summer Plans and the Expansion of E-Vehicles in China

When I received this nice note from a fellow member of the the Beijing Energy Network, I jumped at the opportunity.
Dear BEN friends,

I am YAN Mi, from EU Delegation to China in Beijing, and am writing to invite you to the China Energy Trip 2012, which we are organizing for the third time this summer. 

The purpose of our program is to help young people from other countries to get to know the development and huge potential of energy markets in China by visiting government bodies, companies and universities. 

This summer we offer two modules (August 8-17, or August 19-27), covering renewable energy, cleantech and petroleum development. Participants can choose Modules A and/or B according to their interests. Also, some officials from the EU Delegation to China will participate in Module B.

Last summer, 18 foreign students from 11 countries and universities such as MIT, UC Berkeley, University of Oslo, IE Business School, SCIENCES-PO, and Dresden University of Technology participated. 7 graduate students from Harvard, Yale and University of Tokyo participated in 2010. 

The brochure with more details about the China Energy Trip 2012 can be downloaded here: http://sdrv.ms/KQJPPa


Thank you very much!
Kind Regards,
YAN Mi 

Please comment on the hyperlink to the description and let me know what you think I should glean from the experience. Also, if you want to make a gift to help underwrite this trip and my concomitant blogging, please click the Donate button on this page! The more I raise, the more I will write.

This article from Bloomberg is also an exciting development about more local (Changchun) efforts. Ecotality and China’s Changchun Eco-Power Technology Co. formed Tianjin Eco-Power Technology Co. to install chargers across China, according to a statement today. “China is rapidly expanding its leadership position in the electric vehicle market by implementing fleets and public transit applications that require high-power charging solutions,” Jonathan Read, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based Ecotality, said in the statement.