More Flora & Fauna

In many of the places we visited the trees had metal tags on them, which I thought simply identified their species. As the tags were inscribed in Chinese I couldn't tell anything to the contrary. However, in Beijing, our guide Michael, enlightened me that green labels on trees denoted an age of 100-300 years. A red label indicated that a tree was 300-500 years old! According to Michael there were 45,000 such tagged trees in Beijing alone. Unfortunately I did not get the breakdown of how many of the 45,000 were green labels and how many were red. However, the fact that there were so MANY old trees existing in such an urban area as Beijing (remember 17-20  million people) was amazing.

Beijing has two flowers to represent it. Chrysanthemums are for cold weather and roses are for warm. Since we visited in May we were treated to a dazzling display of roses, the likes of which I have never seen. Down every highway median and on the walls lining either lane of traffic roses bloomed for miles and miles. Beijing has six "ring roads" which circle the city and it seemed like there were roses on all of the rings. I can't imagine the amount of money that was spent on growing and planting the flowers, but I did on numerous occasions see workers tending them (as opposed to Shanghai where I never saw anyone tending the various plants and blossoms, although they were obviously well cared for). The blooms were quite large in rich colors of red, pink, salmon, yellow, tangerine, and white. The roses were absolutely glorious and they made being stuck in traffic almost enjoyable.

Paige stops to smell the roses.

One final related tidbit -- at the Olympic Park in Beijing we were tickled to see a sign on the grass that read: "Tender fragrant grass, how hard-hearted to trample them."

This picture taken by Beverly West Leach

Peggy