揚葩簌簌傍疏籬, 薄翅舒青勢欲飛。‘Ode to the Green Cicada Flower’
幾誤佳人將扇撲, 始知錯認枉心機
The flower flutters softly by the feeble hedge,My translation.
Its raw-green wings spread out, ready for flight,
The beautiful woman attempts to swat it with her fan
Before she realizes her mistake, her effort wasted.
Asiatic Day (Commelina communis, 鸭跖草).
Now (and every late summer), hundreds of these flowers spring up in wet shady places around Yuelu Mountain. The flowers only last for a day, but every day there will be new ones appearing. The flowers also have a long history of human use: they provided the blue colour in old Japanese woodblock prints and Traditional Chinese Medicine claims they have the effects of removing water, clearing away heat, cooling blood, and detoxification.
Squilla ssp.? (虾蛄属).
A mantis shrimp on Gulangyu Island, Xiamen. I thought I saw a prawn burrowing into the sand and I pulled it out with my toes for a closer look. Had I known what it was, I would have been more careful.
The Banyan King (ficus microcarpa, 细叶榕) in Fuzhou National Forest Park. Seeing it was one of the highlights of summer travels in Fujian province. This tree is said to have been planted 900 years ago in the Song Dynasty and its coronal has grown to cover over 1300 square meters. I hope it will still be there 900 years from today.
Scopimera intermedia.
Spotted on the beach by the Hulishan Cannon Fort in Xiamen. There were many small crustaceans surrying around in the evening, but this is the only one I managed to take a clear picture of, against the oncoming darkness and the camouflaging sand.
Louise Bogan
'The Dream'
O God, in the dream the terrible horse began
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.
Coward complete, I lay and wept on the ground
When some strong creature appeared, and leapt for the rein.
Another woman, as I lay half in a swound
Leapt in the air, and clutched at the leather and chain.
Give him, she said, something of yours as a charm.
Throw him, she said, some poor thing you alone claim.
No, no, I cried, he hates me; he is out for harm,
And whether I yield or not, it is all the same.
But, like a lion in a legend, when I flung the glove
Pulled from my sweating, my cold right hand;
The terrible beast, that no one may understand,
Came to my side, and put down his head in love.
Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913), p. 362:
The room for choice is so limitless that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make catalogues which shall be supposed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of the One Hundred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library. It is all right for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good books; and if he is to go off for a year or so where he cannot get many books, it is an excellent thing to choose a five-foot library of particular books which in that particular year and on that particular trip he would like to read. But there is no such thing as a hundred books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for one man at all times; and there is no such thing as a five-foot library which will satisfy the needs of even one particular man on different occasions extending over a number of years.
Tailless Lineblue (Prosotas dubiosa, 疑波灰蝶).
Another typical blue: this one was haunting the Hulishan Cannon Fort in Xiamen. This species has a wide range from all over India to Australia; and across the southern coast of China though rarely further inland.
Tiny Grass Blue (Zizula hylax, 长腹灰蝶).
A typical blue butterfly, that does not seen to come so far north as Hunan. This one we spotted in the morning in Huweishan Park in Xiamen.
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Sir Sidney Colvin, 5 vol (London: William Heinemann, 1924), V, p. 184 [‘To Edmund Grosse’, Dec. 1894]:
I do like to be deceived and to dream, but I have very little use for either watching or meditation.
Lindley's Butterflybush (Buddleja lindleyana, 醉鱼草).
A common deciduous shrub in the rocky regions of southern China. Some sources claim it flowers from June to July but on Yuelu Mountain, and in parts nearby, its white and purple flowers can also be found throughout August as well.
Samantha Harvey, Orbital (New York: Grove Press, 2023), p. 28:
Maybe one day we’ll look in the mirror and be happy with the fair-to-middling upright ape that eyes us back, and we’ll gather our breath and think: OK, we’re alone, so be it. Maybe that day is coming soon. Maybe the whole nature of things is one of precariousness, of wobbling on a pinhead of being, of decentring ourselves inch by inch as we do in life, as we come to understand that the staggering extent of our own non-extent is a tumultuous and wave-tossed offering of peace. Until then what can we do in our abandoned solitude but gaze at ourselves? Examine ourselves in endless bouts of fascinated distraction, fall in love and in hate with ourselves, make a theatre, myth and cult of ourselves. Because what else is there? To become superb in our technology, knowledge and intellect, to itch with a desire for fulfilment that we can’t quite scratch; to look to the void (which still isn’t answering) and build spaceships anyway, and make countless circlings of our lonely planet, and little excursions to our lonely moon and think thoughts like these in weightless bafflement and routine awe. To turn back to the earth, which gleams like a spotlit mirror in a pitch-dark room, and speak into the fuzz of our radios to the only life that appears to be there. Hello? Konnichiwa, ciao, zdraste, bonjour, do you read me, hello?
