*Beijing* 北京

[big-dog]

Green rooftops help clean up Beijing's air

Updated: 2012-04-02 09:38

By Cheng Anqi (China Daily)

Greening more rooftops can help the capital clean up its air, Cheng Anqi reports in Beijing.

As public debate on air pollution heats up, many are increasingly looking to the Chinese capital's skies to cool rapid urbanization with more greenery. The Beijing municipal government has already announced plans to improve the quality of the city's air by covering 100,000 sq m of roofs with greenery by the end of this year. "Plants and water have been proven to be one of the most effective measures to degrade and dilute PM2.5," says Tan Tianying, president of Beijing Green Roof Association, referring to fine particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less that are small enough to enter the smallest airways.

"If the city can make better use of building facades and rooftops for greening the environment, or add to the vertical landscape, carbon dioxide can also be greatly reduced."




Green rooftops in cities can filter pollutants and carbon dioxide from the air and help reduce the concentration of PM2.5, the fine particulate matter that can be harmful to humans. [Photo by Yang Enuo / For China Daily]



Greening rooftops in cities, or maintaining "living roofs", includes partially or completely covering them with vegetation planted over a waterproofing membrane. Similarly, the vertical landscape, designed to be modular, involves cultivating a garden that grows on walls.

Both methods can filter pollutants and carbon dioxide from the air. This can help people suffering from related afflictions such as asthma.

There are nearly 140 million sq m of bare roofs and walls that are not used for vertical landscaping in Beijing, Tan says.

The exposed spaces not only mar the beauty of the city, but also can add to an unhealthy environment.

"Vertical landscaping and green rooftops hold great potential in urban areas," Tan says. "They benefit more than just their owners."

If each person in Beijing grows just 1 sq m of green area, he says, the capital will be guaranteed with another 20 million sq m of greenery, equivalent to the park area of "dozens of Summer Palaces".

Rooftop plants can also alleviate the urban "heat island effect", Tan says. A layer of plants and earth can cut the rate of heat absorption through the roof in summer by 84 percent, he says. The greenery becomes a great way to stay cool.

Beijing also started to convert 13,000 hectares of land along its 6th Ring Road into forest this month. The green moves are part of a major development program under the capital's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), which has set a target of afforesting 67,000 hectares of land.

Wang Xianmin, secretary-general of the World Green Roof Association, says that 13,000 hectares of trees can absorb 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide and release 1.09 million tons of oxygen every year.

"The recently announced afforestation and roof greening projects are some of the greatest moves I have seen in 60 years since I've been living in Beijing," he says.

"Rooftop greening is one of the most effective ways to reduce the concentration of PM2.5."

Wang offers Canada's rooftop greening efforts as an example for Beijing.

Canada is a heavily forested country, with a total forest coverage of 44 percent, but it still promotes rooftop greening and vertical landscaping in its cities' downtown areas.

Only 3 to 5 percent of negative ions of oxygen - which are beneficial to humans - can reach the downtown areas from forest regions near cities like Toronto, Wang says.

As a result, the Canadian government calls for greening roofs to control the emission of PM 2.5 and reduce the "heat island effect".

The amount of negative ions of oxygen measured at noon one day last summer at Beijing's Tiananmen Square was merely 600 units per cubic centimeter but reached 70,000 units in Miyun district, a suburban area two hours' drive from downtown, Wang says.

In the Greater Hinggan Mountains in northeastern China, the level can easily hit 110,000.

"I hope that the successful experiences of Canada can give us some inspiration on how to improve air quality in the country," says Wang, who believes that the continuous increase in the number of vehicles is one of the major reasons behind the city's air pollution.

The number of vehicles in the country already hit 217 million in 2011, industry figures show. During a traffic congestion, Beijing, which has more than 5 million vehicles, would experience PM 2.5 levels that were up to six times of what was measured on normal days.



Two visitors in a hut with vegetated walls at an exposition in Beijing. [Photo by Chen Xiaogen / For China Daily]

The Great Wall Hotel on the capital's 3rd Ring Road was a pioneer of rooftop gardens in northern cities in 1983, when there were less than 200,000 vehicles in Beijing.

"People often held parties on the hotel roof at night, which seldom happens today as the air pollution is getting worse," Wang says.

Beijing Asia Hotel by the 2nd Ring Road is held up as another good example of rooftop greening. The hotel turned the roofs of its office building into a chain of gardens in 2004.

As part of a pilot project in Beijing's Dongcheng district, the roof gardens also feature a 800-sq-m coverage of needle stonecrop (Sedum lineare), an attractive plant that is also popular for its ability to contain water, the hotel's guest service manager Wang Hui says.

"We regularly invite horticulturists to advise us on roof garden cultivation and maintenance," he says. "So we don't spend much money on repetitive works."

While the temperature on conventional roofs can reach 40 C at 1 pm in summer, the hotel's green rooftop is usually much cooler, Wang says.

While a number of real estate agencies believe that vertical landscaping is not worth the expense, that is a misconception because the greenery can protect buildings as well as increase the value of the property, Wang says.

The development of rooftop greenery in Beijing is held back by other wrong practices, including inadequate waterproofing that leads to leakage. All these serve to discourage more people from greening their rooftops, he says.

[big-dog]

by 黑水， Beijingupdates.com

[big-dog]

by 黑水， Beijingupdates.com

[HKG]

Spring in Beijing 2012
http://www.lvwo.com/bbs/viewthread.p...%3D1&frombbs=1

[big-dog]

2012 Winter















by 彪悍如水, baidu.com

[big-dog]

Beijing street










by 彪悍如水, baidu.com

[big-dog]

2012 Srping - Summer's Palace









by 彪悍如水, baidu.com

[big-dog]

2012 Srping - Suzhou Street







by 彪悍如水, baidu.com

[big-dog]

2012 Srping - Suzhou Street







by 彪悍如水, baidu.com

[gs001]

3d photo taken in Beijing several days ago
seeing with red-blue eyeglasses
image hosted on flickr

image hosted on flickr

image hosted on flickr

image hosted on flickr

[big-dog]

Cool. How did you take them?

[big-dog]

Beijing puts 2.8 b yuan into traffic improvement

Updated: 2012-04-12 20:47

(chiandaily.com.cn)

Beijing plans to allocate 2.84 billion yuan ($450 million) this year to further improve the capital's notorious traffic, China News reported on Friday.

The fund will be used mainly to open up dead-end roads, widen road bottlenecks, and rebuild roads that cause congestion.

Roads near schools and old residential communities are top of the list of priorities for improvement, said an official of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform.

Beijing has already introduced a series of measures to tackle the jams, including a monthly quota for license plates. But since the number of cars registered in Beijing passed the 5 million mark in February 2012, vehicles are usually slowed to a crawl on major road networks.

[gs001]

Originally Posted by big-dog

Cool. How did you take them?

That's easy,
1)take a photo
2)move your camera rightward for about 6-10cm and take another photo
3)mix the two photos with a quite simple software named-i3d photo
then you can get a 3d picture.
You can download i3d photo here
http://www.skycn.com/soft/55039.html

[HKG]

Beijing Yuyuantan park 2012 北京玉渊潭公园
http://s1271.photobucket.com/albums/...ijing%20China/

[big-dog]

Originally Posted by gs001

3d photo taken in Beijing several days ago
seeing with red-blue eyeglasses
image hosted on flickr

image hosted on flickr

image hosted on flickr

image hosted on flickr

finally I can see your 3D pictures with my red-blue glasses, very interesting!

[big-dog]

This is indeed a very interesting phenomenon when comparing Shanghai vs. Beijing

Beijing's bills or Shanghai's coins?

Updated: 2012-04-13 08:07

By Chen Weihua (China Daily)

In the United States, a bipartisan Congress group has been pushing for the paper dollar to be replaced with a dollar coin.

The campaign has been supported by a study of the Government Accountability Office which said the government could save about $5.5 billion over 30 years if it replaced dollar bills with coins. Paper bills last about three years on average before being shredded into waste paper. Coins can circulate for some three decades before they are worn out and recycled.

With the US federal deficit exceeding $1 trillion, supporters of the so-called Currency Optimization, Innovation and National Savings Act say it will help solve the debt problem.

"At a time when we are staring down a record-breaking $1.3 trillion deficit, any commonsense measure that cuts billions needs to be given serious consideration. That is exactly what the COINS Act will do and why I am introducing it," said David Schweikert, a member of the House Financial Services Committee and the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy.

However, it will not be easy to make this change.

Support for dollar coins among the American public seems to be lacking: previous efforts to introduce more dollar coins ended up with more coins being held in the Federal Reserve vaults due to their unpopularity.

And while ordinary people might base their preference on which they consider more convenient, there is clearly a tough fight involving complicated economics and politics. The key congressmen supporting the dollar coins come from Arizona, a major supplier of copper for the mints, while some key opponents are from Massachusetts which supplies paper for the dollar bills.

Every time I come from Shanghai to Beijing I am reminded of this coin versus bill debate.

In Beijing, one-yuan coins are less popular than one-yuan bills. If you give a shop assistant several yuan coins, you are likely to receive a frown. Every time I tried to find out why people prefer paper money, I was told that coins are inconvenient.

In Shanghai where one-yuan coins are the norm, the answer is exactly the opposite. Shanghainese not only consider the one-yuan bills inconvenient they also consider them dirty. They like the sound of coins jingling in their pockets.

The preference for coins or bills is not just a manifestation of the rivalry between the two municipalities, nor is it a characteristic of north and south. In Guangzhou in the south, for example, one-yuan bills are more popular than coins, while in Shenyang, a key metropolis in Liaoning province in the northeast, one-yuan coins are preferred.

Some people have suggested that the country's mints, which are located in places such as Shanghai and Nanjing, are linked to the popularity of coins in these regions.

But it is probably a result of the campaign launched by the central bank in 1992 to promote the use of the longer-lasting coins in Shanghai, Jiangsu and neighboring regions.

Ten years ago one of the officials in charge said there has been good progress in promoting the use of coins in Shanghai, Zhejiang and Liaoning. But he admitted it would be a prolonged battle for it to succeed nationwide.

It seems this prolonged battle will last longer than expected if cities like Beijing hold on to the bills.

The author, based in New York, is deputy editor of China Daily US edition. Email: chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn

[Bannor]

If it really is cheaper to use coins, don't you think it is very odd for a regime like the CCP who are so financially interrested to not enforce the use of larger coins? Finding simple ways to outphase coins/bills once inflation has made them useless shouldn't be very hard.

Just set a date for when a certain type of bills will get worthless. Then everyone has say 1 year to trade in their old bills into new coins, and the society saves alot of funds. Even a 2 and 5 yuan coin should be within the reach of China nowadays considering the inflation and increasing wages.

[big-dog]

The metal of coins may last longer than bills but I found bills are easier to carry, I just hate filling my wallet with heavy and bulgy coins.

[Bannor]

Originally Posted by big-dog

The metal of coins may last longer than bills but I found bills are easier to carry, I just hate filling my wallet with heavy and bulgy coins.

Yeah, i agree. But I allways found it strange in China that they have 0.5 yuan bills. There should be a limit... And the coins can be very small. Like the old 1 penny copper coins in the uk. Those weren't so bad, if they had only been worth a bit more that is

Most of the problem with coins is the idea that if the value is high, the coins has to be larger. Just general human narcissism I suppose :/

[everywhere]

Futuristic building ready for national TV
(Shanghai Daily, May 17)

THE futuristic building - with two leaning towers linked with a 90-degree twist at the top - has attracted much controversy since the design debuted a decade ago.

Now, it is ready for occupation by China's national TV broadcaster, China Central Television.

Construction of CCTV's new headquarters in Beijing officially concluded yesterday - 10 years after Dutch firm OMA envisioned a skyscraper that would symbolize China's rise on the world's stage.

Like the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube - signature venues for the 2008 Beijing Olympics - the CCTV building is part of a new architectural wave that is redefining Beijing.

Nestled amid a cluster of skyscrapers in the capital city's central business district, the 54-story, 234-meter structure has two leg-like structures leaning toward each other, meeting in mid-air with a right-angled deck-like connecting body hanging 160 meters above the ground.

'Big boxer shorts'

Its bold design has drawn praise and brickbats and earned it the nickname of "big boxer shorts" from city residents.

Chief architect Ole Scheeren - a German who co-designed the building with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas - said it was designed for interconnectivity crucial for a media giant such as CCTV.

"One thing this building has done is it has asked a lot of questions. It has questioned what is architecture, what can architecture be, what can it do," Scheeren said.

"This question can be answered far more deeply and interestingly now that the building will start to live and will start to be utilized."

CCTV looked worldwide for the design of its new headquarters in 2002, shortly after China joined the World Trade Organization and won its bid to host the Olympics.

Construction began in 2004 and by summer 2008, its exterior was completed.

But then disaster. A fire in February 2009 engulfed an adjacent building in the complex that was to house a luxury hotel.

An illegal fireworks display to mark the end of the Lunar New Year was to blame. One firefighter died and eight others were injured.

The disaster became an embarrassing episode for CCTV. Its head, Zhao Huayong, was replaced and 20 people sent to prison.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/nsp/Nat...national%2BTV/