All Things Chinese

Chinese leaves but not Chinese Leaves!

What we westerners call "Chinese leaves" have names such as napa cabbage, dà báicài (Chinese: 大白菜, "large white vegetable"); Baguio petsay or petsay wombok (Tagalog); Chinese white cabbage; "wong a pak" (Hokkien, Fujianese); baechu (Korean: 배추), wongbok and hakusai (Japanese: 白菜 or ハクサイ). Pekinensis Group cabbages have broad green leaves with white petioles, tightly wrapped in a cylindrical formation and usually forming a compact head. As the group name indicates, this is particularly popular in northern China around Beijing.

[If your confuser is a tad on the old and creaky side, the various non-European texts in the above may appear a blanks or meaningless blobs.]

Continuing his search for scenic decoration on the new-look tunnel top of Peterville Quarry Railway, fbb ordered a pack of deciduous trees (bushy topped trees) which seemed too cheap to be true. 20 trees for a fiver; that's 25p a tree. Much cheaper than chips.

They would come from China, post free (!) and arrive in mid June, so said the interwebnet. They arrived on Tuesday!

For 25p each, you would expect them to be small and they did not disappoint; a modest scale 32 feet high but beautifully formed. They have a brown plastic armature on which green flaky bits (called leaves on the real thing) have been glued - almost certainly by hand as the shape of each tree is subtly different.

But, alas, the long journey from China in he arid atmosphere of a huge container had not helped the health of the foliage. Bits were dropping off in profusion.

Once over-scale real raindrops descend, a version of ash die-back would apply and the richly foliated arboriculture would be bare and very plastic! 

So yesterday the Chinese leaves were liberally sprayed with matt varnish ...

... which may have solved the problem. Being on a modular base, the pub and church unit, with their newly-added foliage, can be removed from torrential downpours  - so the results should be showerproof as a minimum.

The galling thing is that the can of matt varnish cost over £9 post free (yeah right!) which makes the trees about 50p each but with plenty of squirt left in the can. A picture of the first 11 in situ will appear on tomorrow's blog - you will just have to contain your excitement.

Chinese Whispers from HMG!
Do you remember the party game so named?  The party-goers stand in a straggly line and the master of ceremonies whispers a message to the first player. The instruction is then passed quickly and whisperingly along the line and the end player reports back to the host.

The result is usually very different from the original.

Much hilarity all round!

So this from Alan, stuck in Northampton is appropriate.

He points out  that here are promises of increased frequency of public transport services accompanied by fearful exhortations not to use it, please.

Here is how Traneport for London unravels the conundrum

We have a plan to help London re-open carefully, safely and sustainably.

This follows the advice and messages published by the Government on Wednesday.

In line with Government plans to increase national rail services, we are working hard to return Tube and bus services to normal levels under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, with many staff ill, shielding or self-isolating.

By next week, over 70 per cent of Tube services (in line with national rail services) and 85 per cent of bus services will be running.

However, given the national requirement to maintain 2 metres distance between passengers wherever possible, the capacity on the Tube and buses will be reduced to around 13-15 per cent, even once services are back to full strength.

This means transport must operate very differently.

In line with new Government advice, everyone who can work from home should continue to do so. Public transport should be avoided wherever possible to free up the limited space available to those who have no alternative way to travel.

If you must travel, please plan ahead and travel outside of the busiest times, particularly first thing in the morning. Please try to take the most direct route and avoid busy interchanges. To help you plan your journey we will be publishing details of the busiest stations and lines in the next few days and will write to you again with that information.

If you can, please walk or cycle for all or part of your journey, including to complete your journey if travelling into central London. We have been introducing local improvements in partnership with boroughs to widen footpaths and provide more cycle lanes.

And, if you listen to this week's Transport Minister, drive your car to work.

In one sense, we can just about understand, but when practicalities are brought into the eqation there is no way that the intermingling of public transport, extra cars, more bikes and social distancing can ever be reliably adhered to, let alone enforced.

And when there is service disruption ...

According to one commuter reported on the radio, there was no "social distancing" in the station or anywhere on the busy central section of the Victoria line for hours after the "incident".

Down here in the wilds of Seaton, much of this anguish is irrelevant. Tesco and the Co-op are practicing social distancing of a sort, but on public transport there simply is no problem.

Perhaps government advice should be more regionally directed?

Always the resourceful one, Alan does have a practical suggestion which neatly brings together:-

Commuting

Cycling

Social Distancing

Avoiding Public Transport

There might, Alan feels, be some signalling problems with interspersing a fleet of his proposed Boris Bikes with heavy freight trains.

Chinese Whispers Sheffield-style
No sooner had fbb posted yesterday's blog about the inadequacies of information of any kind in the city, than Sheffield chum John had to report a change.

(fbb thinks his spoil cherker means "prEscribed") "May have been changed" - are they having a laugh? EVERTHING has changed!

And we all know how well equipped Traveline (phone) is and how utterly useless Traveline (on-line) is!

John's "envoi" is this:-

Seemples!

Ask Traveline!

Go on. Try it. 01709 51 51 51

A Chinese Invention
Yesterday's blog suggested that operators should publish timetables on "paper".

The oldest known archaeological fragments of the immediate precursor to modern paper date to the 2nd century BC in China. The pulp papermaking process is ascribed to Cai Lun, a 2nd-century CE Han court eunuch.


It has been said that knowledge of papermaking was passed to the Islamic world after the Battle of Talas in 751 CE when two Chinese papermakers were captured as prisoners. Although the veracity of this story is uncertain, paper started to be made in Samarkand soon after.

Because paper was introduced to the West through the city of Baghdad, it was first called bagdatikos.

Because present emergency schedules are very simple, paper versions for distribution to the public are easy to create. Yesterday morning, after consuming his Shreddies, blueberries and milk (with just a soupçon of cream left over from Wednesday's pud), he set about cresting some sample files for this week's revised and increased timetables.

They are very rough and ready but after just over 30 mins of cut and paste he had produced something like this (click on the graphic to enlarge):-

Further pages would take less time to 'ackle'.

Four and a half services fit nicely on an A5 page. As Saturday and Sunday times have not changed, you might wish to get away with just printing Monday to Friday times. But fbb thinks that the people of Sheffield deserve complete timetables.

All the changes could be prepared in house and printed (on bagdadikos!) in half a day. Another half a day parcelling up slices for each bus route

So, instead of rushing round posting pointless pink panels giving dubious information (or lack of it!), "the lads" could have trotted round and posted simple timetables for each route.

Don't be silly - that would have been helpful to the public and we really, really don't want that, do we?

 Next Saturday Bits blog : Saturday 16th May