China's going to start focusing on building a lot of wind power generation.  Wonder when the first environmental complaints about those farms of windmills will start up.  "Last chance to see Yu Long Snow Mountain before it turns into a wind farm."

Another interesting tidbit: 

"[China]. currently has 50 million solar water heaters in use, mostly on rural housetops, claiming more than half the global market for such devices".

Apparently, the vacuum tube style of heater that's popular in Xianggelila are actually pretty technologically advanced, for water heaters.  Unfortunately, the new government mandated "tibetan style" building style in the old town doesn't have a flat roof to put those things on.  I guess it would ruin pictures of the old town from the nearby hills to have water heaters on the roofs.

I finish my exams here in Shanghai on 4th Jan (might not be travelling directly after though), will be travelling with a fellow Jap classmate down to Guangzhou by 10th Jan to meet a Guangzhou friend who finishes her exams there on that day, then leaving around 14th Jan. I've already been to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but not to the rest of Guangdong province. My Guangzhou friend wants to go to Zhongshan for at least 1 of the days when we're based in Guangzhou. So far other destinations that look appealing are: Shaoguan, Zhaoqing, Dongguan (Humen) and probably Foshan, if we've time. Any comments on the following will be appreciated... thanks all!

Some questions I encountered about Internet Cafes in China

Are all of them running Microsoft?

The Internet Cafes that I've seen in China come in two flavors.  There's the massive acre-sized professionally set up ones where you get a card which you insert into the computer to unlock it, or with a password written on it that they use to track your usage time.  These places will have more than a hundred computers -- sometimes hundreds, and run 24 hours a day.  Then there's the smaller "family owned" kind which are more common on the South East Asia tourist circuit, where there might be between 10 and 50 computers, and they keep track of you based on which computer you were sitting at.

This reminds me of the internet cafe user that died after not sleeping for 3 days.

 A college dropout in Nanjing has spent the last 6 months in a Internet cafe sleeping, eating and playing World of Warcraft. The woman who delivers food to him no longer wants to get near him because of the smell.

link

Following that attempt, Yantang sent civilian officials to the village to persuade the peasants to give up their allegations of wrongdoing in the interests of stability. At the same time, the two dead men's families were paid compensation, $21,250 for Deng Silong's family and $22,500 for Deng Jianlan's.

The washington post seems to be covering peasant unrest in China quite a lot recently.

http://www.dianping.com/ is a website containing restaurant reviews for a bunch of Chinese cities (website only in Chinese)

via

There was a 5.7 earthquake in Ruichang.

And I thought the water going off here for half a day was bad.  The city of Harbin, in the frozen northeastern province of Heilongjiang, is suspending water service to the city for four days due to a November 13 explosion of a petrochemical plant in Jilin.

The ever-reputable China Daily:

reported that the government shut off the water in order to do maintenance and repairs on the main water pipes.

 link, and link 

Bird flu has claimed its first victim in China.

In some ways, it seems like this bird flu thing is totally overblown.  It's in the news all the time, mainly because it has the potential to become a massive worldwide problem if the virus mutates.  I guess that thought's rather scary, but it doesn't make any sense (except from the whole "scare tactic" perspective) that it should get more news coverage than diseases which actually are problems today.  But worrying (hopefully needlessly) about a virus possibly mutating is more entertaining to the readers of the news than reading about incremental progress in the fight against cancer or AIDS.