This day, 3 October, in 2018, China signed the International Agreement to Prevent Unregulated Fishing in the High Seas of the Central Arctic Ocean. The State Council...
I am a contrarian.
All of this unpopular opining of mine may look like critical thinking, heroic truth-seeking.
But don’t be fooled; it’s just knee-jerk doggerel.
My world-view is permanently controlled by the assumption that “those millions of people talking around me can’t possibly be right”. My brain rails against whatever prevails.
Remember that, especially when you catch me writing about Chinese medicine.
Remember where I am writing from. Here or there. Remember whose those surrounding millions of voices are.
If I am in my native UK, stifled by familiarity, you will find me warmly...
By coincidence, I was recently drinking Yunnan Green tea anyway.
My favourite market-stall had been selling some. Yeah, it was cheap. And, despite the unpromising smell and ashen grey appearance, I was curious.
I had not bought any of this stuff while in Yunnan itself. I remember seeing it piled high in the market there, dusty, no effort towards preservation. “That’s not the way to treat green tea”, I thought. Moreover, the Yunnan sellers themselves told us not to buy it! Buy the pu er, they said; this can only by...
In last month’s Strainer, I wrote to you from Wales.
Well, I’m back from Wales.
But I’m not quite done with the Welsh theme yet. That’s because, you see, this is the month of St. David’s Day; 1 March, precisely.
When St. David’s Day comes around, children in Wales hold a talent show called an Eisteddfod. And every child has to dress themselves as Welsh for the day.
In most cases, that means wearing either a daffodil or a leek in the pocket of a blazer. Sometimes it’s just a daffodil, or a...
Among the anecdotal indicators of a country’s being developing or developed is the availability of drinkable tap water.
A developing nation which has laid down the world’s most extensive railway network can add safe water pipes to that in record time, and surely will. But, for now, it remains nominally one of those watershed development issues.
I say, “nominally”, because I didn’t enjoy the tap water which I drank in France this summer. I actually suspect it. Even if it left the water plant uncorrupted, it may have passed through heavy...
