What to do when rain is much needed, but not falling? In traditional societies, people would pray the gods. In progress- and technology-minded contemporary China, the answer is to turn to man’s astuteness and self create what the sky isn’t providing. Both methods have their shortcomings and limitations.

In fighting southwestern China’s current drought, the local meteorological departments all rely on their rain provoking rockets and on the army’s planes. This is no miracle solution. It can only help bringing down the water from already existing clouds or expand the scope and volume of expected rainfalls. It means waiting for days for the right conditions.

A specialist from the “municipal command center for man-made weather impacting” (市人工影响天气指挥中心) of the city of Chongqing (重庆) says: “We have been waiting for that group of clouds for half a month. The amount of water currently provided to Chongqing by the sky is too miserable and not enough to alleviate the serious drought. We can only rely on our own methods and bring down the most possible rain from the clouds.”

The rain provoking method consists of injecting silver iodide into the clouds. This induces chemical reactions, which result, if the conditions are right, in rainfalls. The method is fairly easy, cheap and without side effects.

In all of the affected areas, the provinces of Yunnan (云南), Sichuan (四川), Guizhou (贵州) and the city of Chongqing, “man made” rain has been falling these days.

Chinese sources: 重庆千枚炮弹打下及时雨; 我国空军增调14架运输机执行人工增雨作业

It is a quite well known fact that China has an active program for protecting the Giant Pandas. But pandas are only one of many animals on China’s first-level list of animals to protect (国家一级保护动物). The South China Tiger (华南虎) is another one.

Tigers used to be pretty common in China. In ancient times, there were plenty of them in mountain forests and they represented a danger for people living around. Confronting a wild tiger was considered an act of bravery as exemplified in the famous story of Wu Song (武松).

Today tigers do not represent any danger for humans anymore; they are the ones endangered. Like for the pandas, the future of the South China Tiger is now in the hands of scientists who do their best to better understand them and help them reproduce. Unlike pandas, there is few evidence that there still are wild South China Tigers at the moment.

The South China Tiger breeding station located in the city of Suzhou (苏州) is celebrating the Year of the Tiger a little bit in advance (Chinese New Year is on February 14). For the first time in four years, the centre saw a newborn tiger survive. The cub is now more than a month old and just came out of the incubator. It weighs a little more than 2.7 kilograms.

Besides of the South China Tiger, there are other types of tigers on China’s list of protected species. Recently a poacher got convicted for killing what was believed to be the last wild Indochinese Tiger in China.

Chinese source: 苏州华南虎幼崽新年露脸