Hi all, thought you might be interested in this.
The last full lunar eclipse to occur until 2014 is on THIS SATURDAY, the 10th of December.
The eclipse will not be fully visible to much of the world, but lucky Yunnan residents get to see the whole thing! (Check out shadowandsubstance.com/20111210ecl/USA12102011a.png for a world map).
Having seen a similar event earlier this year in India, I can recommend making the effort to get out and see it.
The local timings for viewing the event in Kunming, courtesy of NASA at eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/JLEX/JLEX-AS.html, are as follows.
The initial penumbral (partial / 'shadow cast by the edge of the earth's atmosphere') eclipse begins at 19:34.
The partial umbral (actual hard shadow from the earth) eclipse begins at 20:46.
The total eclipse begins at 22:06. As this begins, be on the look out for special colours on the moon. Once it sets in, the moon will apparently be coloured with a reddish or orange hue of unknown nature, due to unpredictable atmospheric conditions at the time. Mid-eclipse will occur almost half an hour later at 22:32. The total eclipse will end at 22:57. The partial eclipse will end at 00:18 and the penumbral eclipse will end at 01:30AM on Sunday, December 11.
It might be worth getting a little out of town to see this. I'm thinking of going to see from the cemetery parking lot on Yu'an Shan, accessible by a small road leading off the main one up to Bamboo Temple. To get there, head directly west from Xuefu Lu / Huangtupo.
If someone has a car I'd appreciate a lift!
Enjoy,
Walter
Snapshot: Chiang Mai street art
Posted byDo not miss the German-run Chiang Mai breakfast world! Best breakfast ever! Try B55A.
Around Town: Yunnan Provincial Museum
Posted byXiefei: Of course, we will probably never know the real reasons, but the result is the same. Absolute depoliticization of the site, the movement of anything still suggestive of a pluralistic history out of town to what amounts to the middle of nowhere, and the vaguaries of apologetics resulting from a lack of transparency in government decision making. What next? Personally, I expect to see a coffee shop in former exhibition space.
Study: Modern-day southern Chinese, SE Asians, from Yunnan
Posted byI believe it's hard to interpret mtDNA evidence without being an expert... there are a lot of Chinese mtDNA studies in the Yungui Plateau area.
Other studies I have read show things like the pre-modern peoples of the Yangtse delta (Shanghai) region came up the coast from Southeast Asia on boats.
Then of course we have the development of long-distance, multihull sailing vessels in the islands (some even attribute this to prehistoric Vietnam), which resulted in undeniable migration of one linguistic group (Austronesians) as far west as Madagascar and as far east as Easter Island and (by a recent article published in the prestigious journal Nature) South America ... all this allegedly from Taiwan.
See en.wikipedia.org/[...] for some background there... "some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native Americans."
The main point is, there's evidence of all sorts of things, but a coherent picture is far from agreed upon, and the picture is changing.
Perhaps it would be fair to say that what we really know about ancient Yunnan, other than its extreme diversity and ancient peopling since neolithic times, is that it was a melting pot important in the initial dispersal (by both prehistoric migration and trade) of critical technologies such as intensive rice agriculture across a broad swathe of Asia, and that this importance is not widely known in either academia or public consciousness, despite the geographic/topographic sense this makes, the continued discoveries of ancient settled agricultural sites (Jianchuan), etc.
We are only beginning to learn about our own ignorance! :)
Around Town: Yunnan Provincial Museum
Posted byIf I recall correctly I read the sign at the entrance to the old museum site on Dongfeng Dong Lu a few months ago, which suggested that the powers that be were in the process of "depoliticizing" the contents of building by turning in to some kind of modern fine art gallery, no doubt with a carefully audited inventory to raise no pesky questions about historical independence and ethnic identity.
Around Town: Yunnan Provincial Museum
Posted byI was the friend that dragged Jordan down. It's not a bad museum as far as space goes, but the exhibitions are pretty lame. The lack of translations is grating, as is the wholesale abortion of any attempt at a timeline of Yunnanese history. It's as if the curators were afraid of political backlash for actually laying out history in an honest fashion.
The Nanzhao stuff is pretty detailed, and there is a good selection of bronze age items - far more than the original provincial museum in town.
Overall it's worth a look if you're in to history, but a pain to get to.
One is drawn to question whether the remote location is intended solely to dissuade visitors or was purely a victim of political wranglings.
Good effort by some of the involved, I would say, but an overall poor showing given the investment and background, all said.
Huge areas of interest such as the bronze-age discoveries at Jianchuan, the neolithic paintings in Lincang and the historic connections with Vietnam's northern region are largely ignored. As are any links to Hindu religion in the Nanzhao period (evidenced in carvings at Shibaoshan), the historical seige of Kunming by Tai troops from what is now modern Shan state, Burma, the amazing influence of Zheng He, the history of boats on the central Yunnanese lakes, the 'qi' tiles of Baoshan, and so on...
Overall, poor show.
I wish Yunnan would get a clue about how to market their amazing history and drop the political wankery.