"For two years we've haven't used water for rice, because it's been given to Beijing ... But I have no objection. I support it for the success of the 2008 Olympics. China must win!" a local farmer said. In suburban Beijing, farmers limit themselves to two buckets of water a day from icy wells. They are prohibited from tapping what's left in the local reservoir.

When 16,000 athletes and officials show up this summer, they will be able to turn the taps and get drinkable water — something few Beijing residents ever have enjoyed.

Though the Chinese capital's filthy air makes headlines, water may be its most desperate environmental challenge. Explosive growth combined with a persistent drought mean the city of 17 million people is fast running out of water.

Meanwhile, rainfall has been below average since 1999. The result: Water resources per person are 1/30th of the world average, lower even than Israel.

"To ensure the supply for a short period of time shouldn't be a problem, but to keep the long-term sustainable use of resources is a challenge," said Ma Jun, an environmentalist who has written about China's water issues.

In an attempt to ease the water woes, China has turned to a grand engineering feat. Workers are digging up the countryside south of Beijing for a canal that will bring water from China's longest river, the Yangtze, and its tributaries to the arid north by 2010.

The first part of the project is being accelerated to meet anticipated demand from Olympic visitors. By April, the canal is to begin bringing 80 billion gallons a year — an amount equal to the annual water use of Tucson, Ariz. — from four reservoirs in nearby Hebei province.

"I think one of the things the Olympics is showing is it's desperation time and Beijing has the power," said James Nickum, an expert on Chinese water policy issues at Tokyo Jogakkan College in Japan.

In mountainous Chicheng county, about 70 miles northwest of Beijing, dried-out corn stalks stick out of the windblown earth. Farmers limit themselves to two buckets of water a day from icy wells. They are prohibited from tapping what's left in the local reservoir.

The farmers have been ordered to grow only corn, which requires less water but also fetches a lower price than rice or vegetables.

The government offered about $30 in compensation, but farmers say not everyone received it. Too poor to buy coal, they carry discarded corn stalks home on their backs for fuel to heat their homes.

"For two years we've haven't used water for rice, because it's been given to Beijing," said Yu Zhongxin, 56, of Ciyingzi, a village of small houses deep in the mountains by the Hei river, which feeds Beijing's main reservoir.

"But the individual interest submits to the state interests," he said. "I have no objection. I support it for the success of the 2008 Olympics. China must win!"

Sitting on the northeast edge of the arid north China plain, near no major river and 90 miles from the sea, Beijing has had water problems for more than a millennium. Sui dynasty emperors built one of the world's longest canals in the seventh century to bring rice from the fertile south to the capital.

In recent decades, rapid development, intensive agriculture and wealthier lifestyles have both drawn down and polluted the city's water supply.

"Very few people used toilets in the 1950s, but right now everyone uses toilets, uses showers, uses swimming pools, and fancy buildings use lots of water," said Dai Qing, a former journalist who has become one of China's most prominent environmental campaigners.

The last decade has seen the construction of water-guzzling projects across the city from landscaped gardens and artificial lakes to golf courses and parks, many spurred by the Olympics.
But to keep those taps flowing for the Olympics, the city is draining surrounding regions, depriving poor farmers of water.

"We don't have water but no one mentions it, all the policy makers never mention that, just develop, develop," Dai said.

The city has spent around $3 billion since it won the Olympic bid in 2001. It has built wastewater treatment plants, moved water-intensive industries out of the city and cut down on pesticide and water use by farms. Near its main reservoir, the Miyun, it has closed polluting factories and relocated 15,000 residents to reduce household pollution.

Nearly all Olympic venues and the Olympic Village will use treated wastewater for heating systems and toilets. Recycled wastewater also will irrigate the Olympic Park, which will include a wooded area and an artificial lake.

But the rowing venue, built on the dried-out Chaobai river bed in Beijing's Shunyi district, will use precious water from the Miyun reservoir. Further, an eight-mile-long underground tunnel will divert water from the Wenyu River to keep the landscape green.

Rapid urban development dried out the Chaobai nine years ago. The groundwater in Shunyi dropped at twice the rate of the rest of Beijing from 2006 to 2007, according to the Ministry of Water Resources.

"From the beginning I was against the Olympics," Dai said. "There is not enough for water for us to hold Olympic Games, but they didn't listen."

Beijing's groundwater, which has fallen 76 feet in the last 50 years, is overexploited, experts warn. And construction has paved over the city, so rain drains away instead of soaking through the earth to replenish the groundwater.

A polluted and damaged ecosystem in turn creates less rain, so more water is needed to irrigate city parks and other greenery, said Wu Jisong, a senior adviser to the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee and former director general of the Department of Water Resources.

Similarly, more recycled wastewater is now needed to feed Beijing's artificial lakes, said John Pan, a director at the Beijing Water Authority.

"We cannot blame nature," he said at a recent conference in Beijing. "We must realize that it is the human activity and destruction that has briefly affected the water circulation so we should find effective ways to solve the problem."

Easier said than done in a developing country focused on economic growth. But time appears to be running out.

Waste, fertilizer and pesticides so contaminated one of Beijing's two main reservoirs, that the city stopped using it for residential water or agriculture in 1997. The other reservoir, the Miyun, is down to one-third the water it had 10 years ago, despite government efforts to cut water use by farms and move industry out of the area.

A local farmer, Zhao Fuyin, said the water once lapped at the bases of the trees around the reservoir.

"It has been a government priority to preserve this area," said Zhao as he watched a couple of donkeys amble along the reservoir's dry slopes. "But the reservoir is just not enough."

SACRIFICES

The Olympic plan is one segment of the larger South-to-North Water Transfer Project planned to tap the Yangtze River and tributaries by 2010 and quench northern China, where explosive industrial and urban growth has exhausted rivers and aquifers.

Beijing officials initially hoped the entire central route of the project would be ready for the Games, when water demand is expected to spike by up to 30 percent above average, reaching 2.75 million cubic meters a day.

But as preparations lagged, the government opted to build first the most northern leg, recruiting Hebei and neighboring Shanxi province to set aside "back-up" water to supplement river and rain sources.

The scheme has piled most pressure on Hebei, one of the country's most water-short provinces after a decade-long drought, which nonetheless supplies Beijing with about 80 percent of its water.

Hebei ranks near the bottom of China's 31 provinces and province-status cities in water resources per head, with about one eighth of the national average, according to province estimates.

Around Baoding city alone, a mostly rural area criss-crossed by the project, 31,000 residents have lost land and maybe homes for its sake, according to the city water office. Many more have been displaced in other parts of Hebei.

Even in this tightly controlled state where the majority of people are proud to hold the Olympics, Hebei's gripes have echoed in local news reports and the national parliament.

"Conflicts over water between Beijing and Hebei have been chronic," said Liu Changming, a water engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who advised officials about the scheme.

"But there was no other choice. The Olympics are a major national event for China, so sacrifices had to be made."

Wang Junqiang, a ruddy-faced farmer from Xigu Village near Wangkuai Dam, which is part of the scheme, spoke of abandoned fields and lost income.

Two years ago, Wang said, authorities more than tripled the price of water from the dam and she abandoned some of her fields.

"We're too poor to dig our own wells for all the land, and even with the high price of grain, it didn't make sense to grow," she said as she dug corn stalks from stubborn winter earth to use as fuel.

"Of course it affects us. We were poor to start with and now we're poorer."

Farmers across Hebei have received government payments to abandon fields or grow wheat rather than rice or vegetables, but some, including Wang, said they had not received such money.

None of the villagers interviewed denounced the Olympic Games or suggested they should not be held in Beijing. But many seemed stoic rather than proud about their part in ensuring Games visitors enjoy verdant views and glinting waterways.

"I don't know about the Olympics thing. We're just poor ordinary people. I can't even read," Wang said. "We have to make a living before we can think about big things."

Source: AP, ENN

Not every day, but every once in a while, I find myself in the train on my way to work starring at a boring poster and asking myself how many people possibly already starred at that same poster the same day. Everyone heard about over-packed trains in Tokyo, but with train stations such as Shinjuku being the spot on the planet with the largest number of people per day actually rushing through, Tokyo’s train stations are a true mecca for advertisement.

Being stuck in a train for hours, what else can you do except notice that ad in front of you? You can enjoy the better ones! And that is exactly what we did!

Written by Uleshka

Here are our top 10 choises of advertisement in Tokyo’s trains or stations

1. Create your own stage

Picking a seriously busy station such as Shibuya should give you proper exposure for a start. Here, we discovered a very decorative ad by Meisei University that takes up the entire wall space in Shibuya. It functions as a pretty backdrop for everyone waiting on the platform.

2. Mega Stickers

In case all wall space is already taken, try placing your ad as a mega sticker on the ground. That adds some nice color to the gray concrete as well.

3. Take-away goodies poster campaign

We have covered the seriously impressive iPod nano campaign on PingMag a while ago. Those “goodies on posters” are always in great demand. Here is a little picture story of a recent Canon ad inside Shibuya station (between Toyoko and JR Yamanote line - a good catch), which offered small packets mounted on a poster.

worker revealing the Canon campaign at around 10.30am

Someone must have been talking… Nikon had a big and beautiful ad right next to the Canon ad

after the official press shots were taken, people were allowed to step closer - and they did!

sweet grandpa grabbing one pack of every kind - like most people

Althought the graphics were quite funky, I must confess that I was pretty disappointed by the contents of this mysterious little black pack: a small brochure about a new range of Canon cameras in an entirely un-matching design. A few more images about this ad and other “take away poster campaigns” on our Flickr page.

4. Product Sculptures

Create your own product sculpture! I had a good laugh when finding all those over-over-sized Ucon-Tea bottles in Shinjuku decorating the pillars. Those were not to be missed by anyone!

5. Use what’s left

If all places seem taken, look again!

I just noticed advertising on the ticket gates at some train stations, too. Placed right next to the slots to insert your cards, the ads for TV magazine TV Japan certainly get noticed, even though they look like they could be warning signs as a part of the ticket gates.

6. Info-ride

A very elegant and often refreshing solution is to decorate the moving handrails of escalators. Aap! offer some nice solutions for this alternative display. (Takes about 1 hour to install!)

Aap! installed an interesting handrail ad model inside Nogizaka station in Tokyo: these handrails lists all sorts of brief information about shops, restaurants and attractions around the area. People can easily scan the matching QR-code to receive more information of a certain place of interest on their mobile phone while more information slowly “drives by”.

handrails installed in Nogizaka with little info or advertising units about shops, restaurants and information about the area Photo © Aap!

scan the QR code with your phone and get map and more information about a place of interest Photo © Aap!

7. Trains!

Train Jacking (buying the entire advertisement space inside a whole train for a certain period) or Train Wrapping (covering the entire outside of a train) are extremly popular in Tokyo. If you ever found yourself in one of these trains for a few stops only, you will know why people are willing to pay so much at once. An entire train telling you the same thing is impossible not to notice. There are a lot of funky ones around, here we show a rather minimal and “calm” train from Ikea. The first thing I noticed when stepping on board was, that the wagon felt so unusually peaceful….

it felt a bit like flipping through the Ikea cataloge, which - I suppose - was their intention

other wagons had colorful Ikea patterns

8. It’s real!

Since everyone spends so much time in trains, little surprises are always welcome! Adding some “real-factor” to flat posters always seems to do the trick! Here is a small selection.

Prigles ad inside a train with two pringles flying into a bowl of soup

the poster next to that one with paired up ‘real’ Pringles on their way to the soup bowl

9. Handle tricks

Not only posters “get real”. Handles inside trains can also a popular and fun medium to create some attention. Here is our favorite one: the neck tie promising you more money… well! It is an ad for a loan company…

10. Tunnel Movies

Last the creme de la creme of entertaining advertisement to find in trains are not exactly inside the trains, but inside the tunnels. When desperately trying to come up with more advertising space since everything else is full already, someone came up with an installation that works similar to a flip-book: a series of still images is the base for a short movies and it is you who moves, in this case - the train. Installed on the sides of a tunnel, the movement of the train and the perfectly timed highlighting of each still frame after another creates an up to 7 second movie viewed by looking out of the window. A little demo shows how it works best.

single frames are installed inside a tunnel… © Aap!

… lining up next to each other.© Aap!

when driving by, a sensor measures the speed of the train and lights up each frame accordingly © Aap!

here a still of a tunnel movie for Adidas viewed from within the train © Aap!

By 2025 there will be 27 megacities on the world, and Tokyo, with 36.4 million people in its urban agglomeration, is projected to remain the world's biggest megacity.

By the end of 2007, half of the world's population will be living in cities for the first time in history, the United Nations said in its report - 2007 Revision of World Urbanisation Prospects.

According to the report, by the year 2050 there will be 6.4 billion people living in cities, up from 3.3 billion now. The world's total population is expected to rise to 9.2 billion in 2050 from the current 6.7 billion.

The world's most developed regions -- Europe, North America and Oceania -- have far more people in cities than in the countryside, as do Latin America and the Caribbean. Africa and Asia are exceptions but have most of the world's people.

As urbanization increases, the world's total rural population is expected to begin declining in around a decade and should fall to 2.8 billion people in 2050 from 3.4 billion in 2007, the report said.

Some countries, like India -- home to two of the world's biggest metropolises, Mumbai and Delhi with 19 million and 18.8 million people respectively in 2007 -- aim to slow down urbanization by encouraging development of rural areas.

Despite the challenges urbanization poses for governments, Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Population Division, told reporters urbanization is often a sign of a lively economy.

"Governments would be well advised that urban growth is a proof of economic dynamism. A greater concentration of populations in urban centers is expected to help governments develop policies aimed at sustainable use of natural resources," Zlotnik told reporters.

Still, intense urbanization and the expected addition of eight new "megacities" -- cities with 10 million or more inhabitants -- by the year 2025 will pose new challenges.

Governments need to make sure large urban populations have access to basic services, above all health care, Zlotnik said.

Asia and Africa are still mostly rural but will see booming urban populations over the next few decades. Both have around 40 percent in cities and 60 percent in the countryside now.

But this is steadily changing. Half of Africa's population will be in cities by between 2045 and 2050 while Asia will reach that point between 2020 and 2025, Zlotnik said.

The fastest urban growth will be in smaller towns and cities in countries in Africa and Asia, such as Lagos in Nigeria and Dhaka in Bangladesh.

The proportion of the world's population living in so- called megacities, or urban centers with more than 10 million people, is forecast rise to 12 percent in 2025, from about 9 percent today, Hania Zlotnik said at a news briefing announcing the report, according to the UN Web site.

MEGACITIES

Asia - Tokyo:

Tokyo is projected to remain the most populous city in the world. With 35.7 million people in its urban agglomeration at last count, this should rise to 36.4 million by 2025, it is said.

Tokyo's metropolitan area, which encompasses 87 towns, has 35.7 million people, according to the 2007 Revisions of World Urbanization Prospects released yesterday.

Asia - China:

By 2025, China's booming foreign investment center Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, will join Beijing and Shanghai as China's third megacity with 10.2 million people, the U.N. report projected.

Asia - India:

"India is expected to urbanize much less than China and therefore it's expected to remain the country with the world's largest rural population," Zlotnik said.

But India's Mumbai is expected to be the second-biggest city with 26.4 million people, followed by Delhi with 22.5 million by 2025, the report said.

Meanwhile India will get two new megacities to join Mumbai and Delhi by 2025 -- Calcutta, which will have an estimated 20.6 million people, and Madras with 10.1 million.

Europe

Africa

Source: Reuters, Bloomberg

These people figured out some way of doing an incredibly distorted drawing so that when they stood a reflective cylinder (cylinder mirror) in the middle of it, the reflection showed the picture as intended. One of these is of Mission San Rafael, the exact view you'd see if I tilted my Nikon digital camera up - Escher portrait lyes inside this photo. Don't forget that other photos are inside of this post. Just click on the title to go inside. This image below is Istvan Orovitz’s Anamorphic Art. It is called Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island. At first glance, the image looks like a shipwreck on a weird-looking island. When a cylinder is put on the print, the reflection looks like Jules Verne!

Manfred Stader and Edgar Müller are the the street painters whose talent is behind these incredible pavement drawings. Having traveled the world, and studied many type of paintings, they now run their own business in Germany creating pavement paintings and street art, often for companies that pay them to create unique chalk drawing campaigns for them. If you are a regular visitor of Mighty Optical Illusions website, you'll notice some similarity with Julian Beever's stuff, mostly through colorful pallets Manfred and Edgar use, along with incredibly realistic motives.

About 93 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical, according to the poll, based on more than 50,000 interviews worldwide.

A huge survey of the world's Muslims in 40 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East released Tuesday challenges Western notions that equate Islam with radicalism and violence.

The survey, conducted by the Gallup polling agency over six years and three continents, seeks to dispel the belief held by some in the West that Islam itself is the driving force of radicalism.

It shows that the overwhelming majority of Muslims condemned the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 and other subsequent terrorist attacks, the authors of the study said in Washington.

"Samuel Harris said in the Washington Times (in 2004): 'It is time we admitted that we are not at war with terrorism. We are at war with Islam'," Dalia Mogadeh, co-author of the book "Who Speaks for Islam" which grew out of the study, told a news conference here.

"The argument Mr Harris makes is that religion in the primary driver" of radicalism and violence, she said.

"Religion is an important part of life for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, and if it were indeed the driver for radicalisation, this would be a serious issue."

But the study, which Gallup says surveyed a sample equivalent to 90 percent of the world's Muslims, showed that widespread religiosity "does not translate into widespread support for terrorism," said Mogadeh, director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

About 93 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical, according to the poll, based on more than 50,000 interviews.

In majority Muslim countries, overwhelming majorities said religion was a very important part of their lives -- 99 percent in Indonesia, 98 percent in Egypt, 95 percent in Pakistan.

But only seven percent of the billion Muslims surveyed -- the radicals -- condoned the attacks on the United States in 2001, the poll showed.

Moderate Muslims interviewed for the poll condemned the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington because innocent lives were lost and civilians killed.

"Some actually cited religious justifications for why they were against 9/11, going as far as to quote from the Koran -- for example, the verse that says taking one innocent life is like killing all humanity," she said.

Meanwhile, radical Muslims gave political, not religious, reasons for condoning the attacks, the poll showed.

The survey shows radicals to be neither more religious than their moderate counterparts, nor products of abject poverty or refugee camps.

"The radicals are better educated, have better jobs, and are more hopeful with regard to the future than mainstream Muslims," John Esposito, who co-authored "Who Speaks for Islam", said.

"Ironically, they believe in democracy even more than many of the mainstream moderates do, but they're more cynical about whether they'll ever get it," said Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

Gallup launched the study following 9/11, after which US President George W. Bush asked in a speech, which is quoted in the book: "Why do they hate us?"

"They hate... a democratically elected government," Bush offered as a reason.

"They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

But the poll, which gives ordinary Muslims a voice in the global debate that they have been drawn into by 9/11, showed that most Muslims -- including radicals -- admire the West for its democracy, freedoms and technological prowess.

What they do not want is to have Western ways forced on them, it said.

"Muslims want self-determination, but not an American-imposed and -defined democracy. They don't want secularism or theocracy. What the majority wants is democracy with religious values," said Esposito.

The poll has given voice to Islam's silent majority, said Mogahed.

"A billion Muslims should be the ones that we look to, to understand what they believe, rather than a vocal minority," she told AFP.

Muslims in 40 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East were interviewed for the survey, which is part of Gallup's World Poll that aims to interview 95 percent of the world's population.

Source: AFP

'Karaoke', 'Go to Disneyland' or 'Drinking until dawn', which one would be unexpectedly fun to do even on your own? A recent survey conducted by goo Ranking raises very interesting question to thousands of Japanese people. Well, almost; a concert could be at a club, but let’s not nit-pick!

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of December 2007 1,094 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private online questionnaire. 45.6% of the sample was male, 8.8% were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 29.1% in their thirties, 26.8% in their forties, 10.7% in their fifties, and 9.0% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

Ranking results

Q: What would be unexpectedly fun to do even on your own? (Sample size=1,094)

WhatJapanThinks