Thursday 19 June 2014

The Dragon Sleeps

Every landform in China is inhabited by dragons. These occasionally rear their backs and spill houses down mountainsides. More people have died from them in China than anywhere else on earth. In 1556, 830,000 died, in 1920, 200,000, in 1976 242,000 and in 1996 in Lijiang, 210. This has produced the extremes in relief we see today. Fortunately we have not witnessed a dragon rearing on this trip. Zhanglteng, prior to AD 132, invented the first seismograph. He placed 8 carved (from stone) dragons in an octagonal pattern with a ball in each mouth. The ball falls out of a mouth of the dragon facing away from the epicentre.

IN

2 comments:

  1. So where is the report of the camp out? I just spent 15. Days in a swag under the stars. Come on boys. How was it.?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's coming, it's coming. Kyrgyzstan!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment. It's nice to see you sharing our adventures.