EsiWoLe

giantpandaphotos:

© Jeroen Jacobs.

What? What? What?!

parisologist:

And a Chinese Knotweed, on the subject of plants that look like people.

newyorker:

Tibetan Self-Immolations

In the span of barely a year, Tibet and its activists have become known for self-immolations. Until recently, suicide-as-protest—not to be confused with suicide bombings intended to kill others—was so rare in the political vocabulary of Tibetan activism that a protester named Thupten Ngodup, who set himself on fire in New Delhi in 1998, is memorialized in a white stone bust in the exile town of Dharamsala. That has changed abruptly, with thirty-two self-immolations in little more than a year, in markets, remote cities and towns, and now expanding to New Delhi. In the beginning, the protesters were mostly monks and nuns, some in their teens, who doused themselves in kerosene, and, in some cases, filled their stomachs with it to maximize the conflagration. Their deaths remained largely invisible, captured by little more than grainy cell-phone footage, and rarely investigated because police barred foreign reporters from the area.

But lately that pool of protesters has widened, mostly strikingly with Jamphel Yeshi, a twenty-seven-year-old refugee who told friends he had been tortured in China before fleeing to India. Last Monday, as Chinese President Hu Jintao prepared to visit India, he set himself aflame and ran screaming down a street lined with photographers. By day’s end, he had died in a hospital, and the horrific photographs of his protest had appeared around the world.

- Evan Osnos writes about the alarming trend of self-immolations in Tibet: http://nyr.kr/HRiQ1f

fotojournalismus:

People buy flowers at the Flower Market to decorate their homes on the eve of the Lunar New Year of the Dragon in Hong Kong on Jan. 22. The Chinese New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. Flowers are said to give good luck and are given when visiting family for the traditional New Years Eve feast.

[Credit : Pedro Ugarte / AFP / Getty Images]

fotojournalismus:

Actors dressed in Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) costumes take part in the heaven-worshipping ceremony, in which people pray for good harvest and fortune, to celebrate the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, January 23, 2012.

[Credit : Soo Hoo Zheyang/Reuters]

fotojournalismus:

Decorative red lanterns are hung on a tree ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations at Ditan Park (The Temple of Earth), in Beijing on Jan. 20, 2012. The Lunar New Year begins on January 23 and marks the start of the Year of the Dragon, according to the Chinese zodiac. The Associated Press reports today on an expected “dragon baby boom”, as many people in China, Taiwan and other Asian countries believe that babies born in the auspicious Year of the Dragon are gifted with prodigious quantities of luck and strength.

[Credit : Jason Lee / Reuters]