i b e c h i n g

08/13

Hong Kong is one of two special administrative regions in China. A city-state situated on China’s south coast across from Guangdong province, it is known for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbor. With a land mass of only 1,104 square kilometers and population of 7,055,071, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Hong Kong was a British colony from the First Opium War in 1842 until 1997. During this colonial era, the region espoused minimum government intervention under the ethos of positive non-interventionism. This greatly influenced the current culture of Hong Kong. Under the principle of “one country, two systems,” Hong Kong has a different political system from mainland China. Its independent judiciary functions under the common law framework, stipulating that Hong Kong shall have a “high degree of autonomy” in all matters except foreign relations and military defense.

The lack of space has caused demand for dense constructions, which has developed the city to a center for modern architecture as the world’s most vertical city. The dense space has also led to a highly developed transportation network with a public transport travelling rate exceeding 90 percent, the highest in the world. Hong Kong’s financial and economic competitiveness, quality of life, corruption perception, and Human Development Index are all ranked highly.

According to both UN and WHO estimates, Hong Kong has the second longest life expectancy of any place in the world.

09/13

Nanjing was one of the earliest established cities in what is now China, and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital on several occasions.

In 1937, Japan invaded China, beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War (often considered a theater of World War II). Their troops occupied Nanjing in December and carried out the systematic and brutal Nanjing massacre. Over a six-week period, hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. Widespread rape and looting occurred. Historians and witnesses have estimated that 300,000 and 350,000 people were killed.

The event remains a contentious political issue, as various aspects of it have been disputed by some historical revisionists and Japanese nationalists, who have claimed that massacre has been either exaggerated or wholly fabricated for propaganda purposes. As a result of the nationalist efforts to deny or rationalize the war crimes, the controversy surrounding the massacre remains a stumbling block in Sino-Japanese relations, as well as Japanese relations with other Asia-Pacific nations such as South Korea and the Philippines.

The capital of Jiangsu province, Nanjing has an urban population of 6,852,984.

10/13

Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province and is the most populous city in Central China, with an urban population of 6,434,373.

It is a major transportation hub, with dozens of railways, roads and expressways passing through the city. Because of its key role in domestic transportation, Wuhan was sometimes referred to as the “Chicago of China,” and is recognized as the political, economic, financial, cultural, educational and transportation center of central China.

In the 1920s, Wuhan was the capital of a leftist Kuomintang government led by Wang Jingwei in opposition to Chiang Kai-shek.

11/13

Shenyang is the capital and largest city of Liaoning Province in Northeast China, with an urban population of 5,743,718.

A titan of heavy industry since the 1930s, the city has been diversifying its industry and now has a solid industrial foundation, a good land and air transport network, abundant natural resources, and a skilled workforce.

12/13

Hangzhou is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China, with an urban population of 5,695,313.

As a core city of the Yangtze River Delta, it has been one of the most renowned and prosperous cities of China for much of the last 1,000 years, due in part to its beautiful natural scenery.

13/13 Cities of China series

Chongqing is one of the China’s four direct-controlled municipalities, and the only such municipality in inland China. It has 5,402,721 people.

The sprawling metropolis has been making international headlines for several weeks over the dramatic downfall of its powerful leader Bo Xilai.

In Chongqing, Bo became known for heavy-handed populism. He initiated a campaign against organized crime, increased spending on welfare programs, maintained consistent double-digit percentage GDP growth, and campaigned to revive Cultural Revolution-era “red culture.” Bo’s promotion of egalitarian values and the achievements of his “Chongqing model” made him the champion of the Chinese New Left, composed of both Maoists and social democrats disillusioned with the country’s market-based economic reforms and increasing economic inequality. However, the perceived lawlessness of Bo’s anti-corruption campaigns, coupled with concerns about his outsized personality, made him a controversial figure.

Bo was considered a likely candidate for promotion to the elite Politburo Standing Committee in CPC 18th National Congress in 2012. His political fortunes came to an abrupt end following the Wang Lijun incident, in which his top lieutenant and police chief sought asylum at the American consulate in Chengdu and revealed details of Bo’s alleged involvement in a homicide plot. In the fallout, Bo was removed as Chongqing party chief in March 2012 and suspended from the politburo the following month. Bo’s dismissal was notable for exposing disunity within Communist Party ranks shortly before a leadership transition.

A security officer in Tiananmen Square is photographed by a tourist.

Bill Murray at Cannes.

The Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser Testbed weapons system is a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser mounted inside a modified Boeing 747. It is designed to destroy tactical ballistic missiles while in boost phase.

Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this of the program: “I don’t know anybody at the Department of Defense who thinks that this program should, or would, ever be operationally deployed. Right now the laser would have to orbit inside the borders of Iran in order to shoot down a missile in the boost phase. And if you were to operationalize this you would be looking at 10 to 20 747s, at a billion and a half dollars apiece, and $100 million a year to operate. There’s nobody in uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept.”

Funding for the program was cut in 2010 and the program was canceled in December 2011.

A neutron star is the crushed core of an exploded star. They are very hot and are supported against further collapse by quantum degeneracy pressure due to the Pauli exclusion principle.

Composed entirely of neutrons with the density of an atomic nucleus, neutron stars crush the mass of the sun into a sphere no larger than Brooklyn.

Exploring the cosmos at extreme energies, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbits the planet every 95 minutes. By design, it rocks north-south on alternate orbits to survey the entire sky. The spacecraft also rolls so solar panels point to the Sun for power, and the axis of its orbit precesses like a top, making a complete rotation every 54 days.

As a result of these multiple cycles, the paths of gamma-ray sources trace out complex patterns from the spacecraft’s perspective, like this mesmerising plot of the path of the Vela Pulsar. Born in the death explosion of a massive star within our galaxy, the Vela Pulsar is a neutron star spinning 11 times a second, seen as the brightest persistent source in the gamma-ray sky.

DDT is sprayed from a TIFA (Todd Insecticidal Fog Applicator) around model Kay Heffernon to supposedly demonstrate it won’t contaminate her food (a hot dog and coke), Jones Beach, New York, 1948.

by George Silk

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