Headline June 22nd, 2012 / "China's Mandate Of Heaven"

China's Mandate
Of
Heaven

Little known to the world at large is the fact, that in China, even the weather is subject to Beijing's official five year plan. Haha! Let me now move you to Urumqi, the administrative capital of Xinjiang, the vast and rugged region of north west China.

It is an industrial city of over 2 million people, situated astride the old silk road on a semi arid plateau 200 miles south of the Continental Pole of Inaccessibility --the place on earth that is farthest from sea. As a result of its landlocked isolation, the area is bitterly cold in the winter and insufficiently snowy. 

Snow on the ground is desirable because it lies in reserve until spring, and then moistens the land just as the plants and flowers revive. Nature could be so grand if only it would provide. So, the problem in Xinjiang is that the clouds passing overhead are too often dry. 

But the Chinese never submit without a fight. On gray days in Xinjiang, when the sky is pregnant with the promise of precipitation, they aim scores of weapons skywards, and fire into the clouds to induce the snow or rain to fall. In 2008, in the city of Urumqi alone they shot off a thousand rockets, and hundreds and thousands of weapon and canon rounds. 

And this was just a small part of the larger battlefield din. The Xinjiang region, it turns out, is home to the largest cloud-seeding operation in the world. And no one should forget that this is a rare case where no one is blaming global warming for the weather. 

In fact, dry skies are endemic to most of China, which is likely to experience increasingly violent typhoons because of climate change but has suffered from the drip torture of droughts for thousands of years. For equally long the Chinese have been looking for a solution. 

At various times the ancient Chinese responded by making public confessions on the basis of a theory, generally known as 'moral meteorology. The Ancient Chinese held imperial officials liable for the weather, and even persuaded a few of the culprits to burn themselves alive when the rains and the required weather didn't materialise on time and fullness. Hahahaa! 

The trap, as with any 'ritual' was that sometimes it seemed to work!!! But self criticism does not naturally come to people, so the imperial officials were able to deflect the blame. The Chinese believed the Dragons controlled the rain!!! Haha! 

So, how far has mankind progressed?? Oh dear!

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