of larks and skylarks

Chinese violins of the Lark and Skylark brands have a terrible reputation - even though they're probably not all bad. Hence they are going very cheap and I found a pair of Skylarks and a big pile of sheet music all together for £ 30 on gumtree and took the opportunity to find out more about the notorious skylarks.

What I got was a 7/8 violin which I'll present later and a full size one (4/4) which I'll discuss here. It has a lovely label inside with the manufacturing year given as 1991. (I'm not sure what the model number MV--005 means does anybody know? The 7/8 violin that came together with this one has MV--007.)

I'm guessing that the Lark and early Skylark violins that ruined the brand reputation were a lot earlier because this one isn't worse than the cheapest Stentor student model you can buy today. The only thing that needed doing was to replace the bridge which was a bit warped (and also narrower than it should be?!):

but with a new bridge (Stentor from a derelict violin I am plundering for spares) and a bit of cleaning the instrument looks and sounds acceptable. A little bit boxy on the G string but good enough for folk as they say. It still has the strings it came with which may be quite old, so if anybody wanted to play it seriously, they might want to invest in a new set.

I do love the Skylark shoulder rest that came with it, which has a real steampunk vibe:

and it also came in the original Skylark case:

I think the pirate luthier series now needs some navigation aids as I have presented a few different instruments here (and they now have systematic numbers, violin number 9 arrived on the premises this week).

violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.

violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 that I am plundering for spares and accessories as it has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below.

violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.

violin 5) is my new favourite and the one I currently play in folk sessions.

violin 7) is the one discussed above.

now we're 8 billion

This year, there are 8 billion humans alive on the planet, and very soon there will be more people in India than in China. As I am old enough to remember the passing of the 4 billion milestone as well as that of one billion Chinese, these figures sound a bit scary, but interestingly, continuing population growth today is less worrying than it was back then. It's no longer exponential, we can see the peak coming later this century, and right now we have several other global problems to be scared of.

I've picked the first feature of the new year for a look forward at the likely development of human population in the rest of the 21st century, and the problems we're facing. The feature is out now:

Human population at the crossroads

Current Biology Volume 33, Issue 1, 9. January 2023, Pages R1-R3

FREE access to full text and PDF download

See also my Mastodon thread where I highlight all CB features of 2023.

The car-centric lifestyle of countries like the United States cannot be scaled to the global population of eight billion. (Photo: pixaoppa/Pixabay.) Personally, I find two billion cars more frightening than eight billion people.

learning from Balzac

Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise

Dai Sijie

First published in 2000 and hugely successful, this is a short novel about two teenage boys caught up in Mao’s Cultural Revolution and sent to the remote countryside for re-education by the hardworking villagers. Instead, they find intellectual solace in an illicit stash of French novels by Balzac, Dumas, Flaubert et al. and also use them to re-educate themselves as well as the little seamstress of the title. Lives are changed, although perhaps not quite in the way they may have hoped.

(Cover of the 2001 folio edition I have, too. Later editions typically have images from the film.)

I managed to miss this when it came out and was swiftly made into a movie as well, I only vaguely remember seeing the title some time and wondering what it was about. Catching up with it now, I enjoyed the novel and I was amazed at how well it connected with my own experience of growing up around the same time. I was also stuck in the sticks, maybe not as remote and spectacular as the phoenix of the sky mountain villages with their dangerous paths, but still, as a vastly exaggerated fairytale metaphor for my youth, the novel works surprisingly well. And I found solace in the very same 19th century French novels. Today, I wouldn’t find time for Balzac, but I might revisit Flaubert one day.

It does make me think. Maybe there was a bit of Cultural Revolution going on in Europe as well? Between 1900 and 1960, everybody from whom I inherited DNA lived in towns and cities (eg Heinrich the cellist did all his life). Then, in the 1960s, People got cars, moved to the sticks, commuted to work. A slippery slope. I still get an allergic reaction when, ahead of the TV news, I see trailers for shows pretending that moving to the countryside is a good thing. The Cultural Revolution caused between 200,000 and 20 million deaths, depending on who you choose to believe, and traumatised millions like the author, Dai Sijie. We should heed that warning.

it's complicated

Open Archive Day

The evolutionary history of our species used to be simple due to the scarcity of data. We had about seven data points and drew a squiggly line to connect them and that was that (maybe I'm simplifying this slightly). Now we have genomes of modern and archaic humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, increasingly documenting migrations and admixture, so it's getting more complicated as there are so many dots to connect. Plus, finds in Asia could still undermine the whole out of Africa thing.

A year ago, I had a closer look at fresh palaeoanthropology from China, but I suspect things are changing so fast I may have to rewrite this account pretty soon. Anyhow, here it is again, on open access, enjoy it while it is still more or less true:

A new continent for human evolution



A collection of 47 human teeth discovered at Daoxian is anatomically modern yet surprisingly old. (Photo: S. Xing and X-J. Wu.)

water challenges

China is changing dramatically, and one of its key challenges is the freshwater provision in the face of urbanisation, growing industries, and expanding deserts. I had a glimpse of these problems when I attended the CS3 summit on (global) water issues and wrote the White Paper about it, but have now been able to address the specific situation in China more comprehensively in my latest feature which is out now:



China's water challenges

Current Biology

Volume 28, Issue 4, 19 February 2018, Pages R135–R138


FREE access to full text and PDF download






The Gobi desert in the north of China has been expanding in recent decades, while a gigantic tree-planting scheme aiming to stop this expansion is being criticised as misguided. (Photo: Christopher Michel/Flickr, CC BY 2.0.)

eastern evolution

Homo sapiens came out of Africa and conquered the world, more or less in one sweep, or so we used to think. Exciting new finds from China, however, suggest that a significant movement to the East - convenient inasmuch as it allowed people to stay broadly in the same climate and vegetation zone - happened much earlier than previously thought, and much earlier than the expansion into Europe.

I've discussed the latest discoveries from China, also including two archaic human skulls that have been speculatively linked to the Denisovans so far only known by their DNA, in my feature which is out now:

A new continent for human evolution
Current Biology Volume 27, Issue 7, pR243–R245, 3 April 2017

FREE access to full text and PDF download







The Xuchang 1 (A, superior view) and 2 (B, posterior view) crania discovered at the Lingjing site. (Photo: Xiu-jie Wu.)

save the elephants

Elephants have been in the news a lot recently, with two international conservation conferences calling on countries to ban all internal ivory trade in line with the international trade ban that has already been in force for decades. The reason is a new crisis in poaching and ivory trading, caused this time by buyer interest from China.

Read my take on the situation here:

The plight of the pachyderms

Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 19, R865–R868, 10 October 2016

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Confiscated ivory items displayed ahead of the first official ivory crush held by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2013. (Photo: Gavin Shire/USFWS.)

megadam mania

I used to think that dams and hydroelectric power plants are generally a good thing as they produce renewable energy which should more than offset any problems they may cause locally. I learned from my research for this latest feature, however, that large dams in tropical climates tend to release methane produced by fermentation of submerged vegetation and algae. In the worst-case scenario, this may mean that a large dam built in the wrong place may be no better for the climate than the equivalent gas-fired power stations. If we're very lucky, someone might find a way of collecting all that methane - by burning it one could both produce more energy and reduce its climate impact. But while this kind of solution is still in the dream stage, countries like Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo keep building ginormous dams.

Read all about it:

A global megadam mania

Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 17, pR779–R782, 12 September 2016

OPEN access to full text and PDF download

The Three Gorges Dam in China is currently the largest power plant of any kind, but maybe not for much longer ...

By Source file: Le Grand PortageDerivative work: Rehman - File:Three_Gorges_Dam,_Yangtze_River,_China.jpg, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11425004

reading the world

I was very impressed when I read that the author Ann Morgan had managed to read one book from each of the 196 countries represented at the 2012 Olympics in London. Her list of books read and others that were recommended to her is here, and the book she wrote about the experience is reviewed here.

Thinking about how embarrassingly far I would fall short of that figure I estimated I would be lucky to make it to 50 countries (in my life so far, not in a year) and started my own list to prove it. If and when I've reviewed a book on this list, I've included a link to the review. If I can't remember whether I've actually read it (even though it's on my shelf), I've marked it with CR. NFY means not finished yet. Still struggling to get to 50 though.

1. Algeria – Mehdi Charef: Thé au harem d’Archi Ahmed (CR - saw the movie though)
2. Argentina – Federico Andahazi: El anatomista (The anatomist)
3. Austria – Daniel Kehlmann: Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the world)
4. Belgium – Amélie Nothomb – L’hygiène de l’assassin
5. Brazil – Paulo Coelho: Der Alchemist (The alchemist)
6. Canada - L. M. Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables
7. Chile – Isabel Allende: La casa de los espiritus (The house of the spirits)
8. China – Hong Ying: K – the art of love
9. Colombia – Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Cien años de soledad
10. Congo, Republic of the – Alain Mabanckou: Verre Cassé (Broken Glass)
11. Cote d'Ivoire – Fatou Keita: La rebelle
12. Cuba – Zoe Valdes: La nada cotidiana
13. Ecuador – Alicia Yanez Cossio: El cristo feo
14. Equatorial Guinea – Guillermina Mekuy: El llanto del perro
15. France – Anna Gavalda: Ensemble, c’est tout (Hunting and gathering)
16. Germany – Charlotte Roche: Feuchtgebiete (Wetlands)
17. Guatemala – Miguel Angel Asturias: Leyendas de Guatemala (CR)
18. India – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Heat and dust
19. Iraq - Weam Namou: The feminine art
20. Israel – Ephraim Kishon: Oh, oh, Juliet
21. Italy – Umberto Eco: Der Name der Rose (The name of the rose)
22. Kyrgyzstan – Chinghiz Aitmatov: Jamila
23. Lebanon - Vénus Khoury-Ghata: Les fiancés du Cap-Ténès (CR)
24. Madagascar – Michele Rakotoson: Dadabé
25. Mexico – Laura Esquivel: Como agua para chocolate
26. Mongolia – Galsan Tschinag: Die Karawane (NFY)
27. Morocco – Tahar Ben Jelloun: Harrouda (CR)
28. Netherlands – Anne Frank: Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank (Diary of a young girl)
29. New Zealand - Katherine Mansfield: Stories
30. Nicaragua – Gioconda Belli: El pergamino de la seduccion (The scroll of seduction)
31. Nigeria – Sefi Atta: Swallow
32. Peru – Mario Vargas Llosa: El sueño del Celta (The dream of the Celt)
33. Poland – Stanislaw Lem: Stories
34. Russia – Mikhail Bulgakov: Master and Margerita
35. Senegal – Ousmane Sembene: Guelwaar
36. Sierra Leone - Aminatta Forna: The memory of love (NFY)
37. Spain – Almudena Grandes: Castillos de carton
38. Sweden – Astrid Lindgren: Pippi Longstocking
39. Switzerland – Max Frisch: Homo faber
40. Syria - Rafik Schami: Die dunkle Seite der Liebe (NFY)
41. United Kingdom – Esther Freud: Lucky break
42. United States – Megan Clark: Seduce me
43. Vietnam - Kim Thuy: ru (NFY)

Own photo of my reading pile some time in early 2014.

PS: I'll keep updating this with any further reading adventures, hoping that one day I can travel around the world in 80 books ... So this post will also serve as a directory to my reviews of world fiction.

demographic challenges

My latest feature in Current Biology looks into the recent changes to China's one-child policy, which has been in force for 34 years now. Changes announced recently allow parents a second child if they are single children themselves, avoiding the one-child-rule from becoming effectively a one-grandchild (per set of four grandparents) rule.

Where next for China's population policy?

Current Biology Volume 24, Issue 3, 3 February 2014, Pages R97–R100

Restricted access to full text and PDF download (free access after one year)

Shopping street in Shanghai. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Agnieszka Bojczuk

Vermeer's China

Vermeer's Hat: The seventeenth century and the dawn of the global world by Timothy Brook

I raved about this book a few years ago after reading just a review of it - I was so jealous of the idea.

Years later, after laying hands on an actual copy and actually reading it, I'm not quite as excited any more (it may be a sign that I forgot to post the review here after I wrote it in May and posted it on amazon).

The author uses the compact and widely known oeuvre of Vermeer and, particularly, the objects pictured in it as a window into the 17th century world. (Very fittingly, as windows (or more likely, the same window) often feature in these pictures.) There is some great storytelling and intriguing connections between Old Europe, the New World, and China, which in this day and age we are very prone to interpret as the "dawn of globalisation."

I was a little disappointed, however, to find that Brook didn't stick with Vermeer - of the eight works he discusses, only five are Vermeer paintings. As an expert in Chinese history, the author is ultimately more interested in the global trade routes in the 17th century than in Vermeer, and he only uses the painter as a tool to popularise his academic discipline. Of course he has every right to do so, but I'd still be interested in a book that tries to shed light on the story of every object of every single Vermeer painting. There aren't that many, so it should be possible.

neuroscience in China

In a rare departure from my comfort zone, I wrote a big feature article about neuroscience in China, which (like much of Chinese science) has seen a massive boost in the last 12 years, to the extent that new institutes can now attract both Chinese researchers returning from the US and international experts willing to try a new experience.

From the epic list of addresses at the top of my thank-you email I gather that it took at least 12 kind and helpful people to help me find my way in this big topic, and during the four weeks when I kicked this around, I certainly learned a lot.

So, the result of all this is out today:

Boom time for neuroscience in China
Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 12, R441-R444, 21 June 2011
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.06.001

and as it is part of some bigger event across the Cell Press journals, it is on open access here:

summary page / PDF file.

It is accompanied by a Q&A piece featuring Fang Fang (not mine, this interview was set up by the editors separately), which is also on open access.

climate change special

Today's issue of Current Biology is a special issue on "Biology and Climate Change", and very exceptionally I have two pieces back to back in the magazine section at the front.

First there is a news feature on climate change policies and debates in the US, UK, China, and Germany ahead of the climate change summit in Copenhagen:

Climate crunch year
As countries around the world prepare for the crucial climate change conference in December, China tries to boost its green investment, Germany debates the pros and cons of carbon sequestration, the US debate a groundbreaking energy bill, and the UK counts the cost of mitigating climate change in the developing world.
Current Biology, Volume 19, Issue 14, R537-R539, 28 July 2009
PDF file (restricted access)

The second is about an Earthwatch industry partnership to investigate how mangroves in Kenya can help mitigate the effects of climate change:

At the frontline
Mangroves are at the frontline in the fight against the consequences of climate change.
Current Biology, Volume 19, Issue 14, R539-R540, 28 July 2009
PDF file (restricted access)

quite a tale, but I'm kind of detached from it

Daughter of the river
By Hong Ying
Bloomsbury 1998

Having read K-the art of love recently, I became very curious about its author and decided to read her autobiography next. It didn’t exactly tell me how she came to write K, nor how she came to write at all, but it turned out interesting nonetheless.

Hong Ying was born at Chongquing in 1962, at the end of a major famine that hit China as a result of population growth and mismanagement of the agricultural production. Thus, her novelized recollection of her childhood, culminating in discoveries about herself that she makes on her 18th birthday, could have easily produced one of those misery memoirs that have been so epidemic in recent years.

What saves it from descending that road is the curiously detached voice of the author who never seems to pity herself or the other protagonists. She describes hunger, violence and the regular sight of dead bodies floating down the river with equal emotional detachment, making the reader wonder whether this is a natural defence that children develop when they grow up in horrific circumstances, or whether there is an Asperger gene or two at play. For a teenage girl, our heroine cares remarkably little about what other people think. She sometimes even muses about her own detachment and aloofness.

Driven by her quest to solve the mysteries of her past, this story is quite gripping, even though the signposting often gives the events away beforehand. Most of all, it makes readers born at around the same time in a different place (like me, for example), consider ourselves very lucky indeed. What we now need from her is a sequel telling us how she escaped from the life of misery that could have become her destiny, and how she became a writer recognized around the world.

culture clash

book review

K – The art of love, by Hong Ying


K is the story of a strange encounter between two cultures. At the surface, it’s about Chinese and English culture, and also about the very Martian culture of a man and the Venusian one of a woman. But it soon becomes clear that the protagonists aren’t representing these cultures. If anything, they struggle to define an identity within small subcultures at the margins of their respective societies.

The Englishman, Julian Bell, is like his eponymous real-life model a product of the Bloomsbury Group which had a set of values quite radically different from what was considered normal at the time. Son of the painter Vanessa Bell (who had an open marriage with a bisexual man) and nephew of Virginia Woolf, he tends to judge everything with the measure of the intellectual cult he grew up in, and initially sneers at the idea that Chinese poets may be producing anything comparable.

The Chinese woman, called Lin Cheng in the novel, but based on the biography of the writer Ling Shuhua, is also associated with an intellectual circle, the New Moon Society. Her contradiction is that she believes in the Daoist “Art of Love”, which to her intellectual peers is just a feudal old nonsense. The arrival of the Englishman gives her the opportunity to put this theory into practice.

And practice they do, quite a bit, and it’s sensitively and sensuously described in the novel, even in the English translation I read, which is by Nicky Harman and the author’s husband Henry Zhao. The eroticism is, of course, a problem for some people in China and in the UK, and so it came to pass that Ling Shuhua’s daughter sued the author for libel in Chinese courts for defamation of the dead, and eventually succeeded in having the book banned in mainland China.

It hasn’t quite been banned in the UK, but I’m getting the impression that it has been ignored on purpose. I find it quite shocking that I couldn’t find a single review of the book. The English edition was published in 2002, so if it has been reviewed, the reviews should be on the web. Probably people perceived it like the subject’s nephew, whose name is also Julian Bell, who didn’t object to its publication but compared it to “black lace” type genre fiction.

Maybe it takes readers with intercultural sensitivity to appreciate this, but this is definitely not black lace material (and unlike Julian Bell, I have read black lace novels, I even know somebody who writes them). K really has something to tell us about what happens when cultures collide. The culture clash proves a bit too much for the English protagonist, who concludes towards the end of the book:

“The fanatical love of this Chinese woman, like the violence of the Revolution, and everything else Chinese, was simply too alien for him to comprehend or accept.”

I’m worried that this may be true for the British readers as well. I discovered the book in a charity shop, clearly unread. Somebody missed out on an amazing intercultural experience.


Publishers website re. the libel case


PS: A new paperback edition has appeared on Jan 27th, 2011: