【Frogs, the first to know when water gets warm 】
Please remember these: It is cold at times and warm at another throughout the season. The temperature varies remarkably between days and nights. The city is humid and foggy. Thunder awakens snakes, worms, rats and ants from hibernation on the day of Insects Waken (Jingzhe), the 3rd of the 24 solar terms in the traditional Chinese calendar. Such is the ambience of this spring, a long-lost one in Hong Kong.
In any cold and dry winter, white ginger lily (Hedychium coronarium) sacrifices its branches and leaves for survival and stores nutrients down in the roots underground. It then quietly awaits the coming of spring, when its sprouts will emerge with branches and leaves stretching out again. And in summer it blossoms.
While the interaction between geo-climate and plants forms the rhythm of life and death, the co-existence between geo-climate and human beings stimulated the development of the solar terms system. Who can tell whether it is a good idea to revisit the wisdom of living of the farming era!
I am no prophet, and in no capacity to predict the future. As a lucky guy born in the 70s, I have witnessed the modernization, digitalization and aging of the world, as well as global warming.With observation of the changes on the Earth for more than half a century, I have also witnessed: while desolate country parks are now resided with sky-climbing trees, sea resource is about to be exhausted owing to over-fishing; while wildfire destroys every living creature, the ice at the North and South Poles melts, gradually turning the areas into a new world favoring subtropical species.Hong Kong’s natural environment has been changing as a result of human activities. While local species, endangered species, invasive species, ornamental garden plants, and genetically-modified species have gradually become “features” of our local ecology, the incapacity to study nature is now the norm of Hong Kong people.That’s the reality. Let me repeat, I am not a prophet. I can’t foretell the future of Hong Kong if the flame of changes is burning so vigorously. Snapshots of the past can serve as reference for predicting the future, perhaps.
