6/22/13

6/22/13, Hunan Province

This morning we visited the Huanglongdong eco-park. It was gorgeous! They had some of the area we saw split up between different crops that people use. There were also a lot of windmills in the area. At the front of the park is a building with a green roof and I was told it’s the largest green roof in China. It didn’t seem very large so that was kind of a disappointment. I’m hoping there are larger green roofs in the states! Green roofs are great though, no matter the size! This one was especially cool because it was on a slant and I could see birds hanging out up there. I thought that was nice because green roofs have many benefits but it was cool to see that it was clearly giving some more space to animals.

We met some local high school students this afternoon. It was really cool to talk to them and just be in the high school! The classrooms are so different than what I grew up in. It was a different environment altogether. The students all spoke English and although it was sometimes hard to understand, it was really neat.  

Afterwards, we went to a large fancy dinner with local government officials where we were served all sorts of fancy food such as snake soup. I did not eat that of course, but there was some amazing tofu and lots of other vegetable dishes I could eat. We talked to the officials about the environment. They told us that they have improved their local environment by shutting down small factories in the area. While this seems great, I kept thinking about how that means the production of those items is just shifted to further away. So the environment might just be getting worse somewhere else. If the local factories provided items utilized in the village, it would also mean that there would be further shipping miles for the goods to travel from the new factories. On the other hand – it might not be worse for the environment because they mentioned that they only closed the smaller factories. Sometimes larger factories are able to use newer technology and might have the resources to produce the products more sustainably. This is very optimistic thinking and in many cases is probably not the reality – but it would be beneficial if that is what happened!

After dinner we went to an amazing Chinese show that had acrobats and all sorts of amazing things. I’m not sure what to call the show because it was a series of skits. I was so impressed by the acrobats! I have never seen anything so amazing! The show was inside which was nice, but we were talking about how much electricity she show consumes because it is in a large building. After the show is over, there is a second part outside which also uses a lot of lights because it takes place at night.