I’m killing a few hours at Hong Kong International Airport, so I pick up the latest issue of China Today. There’s a number of really interesting articles, but two little snippets jumped out at me. The first is a short note on the Chinese Caterpillar Fungus, Cordyceps sinensis. No, I’d never heard of it either, but it turns out that it is important in Chinese traditional medicine, and that it has not been possible to grow it in the lab. Until just now that is, hence the note in the Sci-tech Info section announcing the possibility of mass-production.
The other really nifty piece of sino-information occurs in the opening section of an Around China piece on the Zhenyuan Yi-Hani-Lanu Autonomous County. It seems that this ancient tea-growing area, with its tea-dominated forests, boasts what is considered the oldest and largest tea plant in the world. At 25 metres tall, almost 3 metres in diameter and an alleged 2,700 years of age, it is apparently quite the tourist attraction, and “its fleshy, glossy leaves produce a strong and lasting flavour.”