Solar eclipse in China by Romana Otockova

In China, after a 2008 that began with heavy snowstorms at the Chinese New Year, followed by China's deadliest earthquake in a generation, then river flooding — and even a huge algae bloom at the Olympic sailing site, at last happenned something positiv.
Finally, China had an act of nature it could celebrate. After an Olympic year of freakish natural disasters, crowds of Chinese watched a total solar eclipse along the country's ancient Silk Road on Friday, one week before the start of the Summer Games in Beijing.
The eclipse began in the Canadian Arctic, then passed over Greenland, western Siberia and Mongolia before reaching China. Following the northern route of the ancient Silk Road, it passed over the western desert county of Yiwu, where about 10,000 tourists gathered to watch after astronomers said it would have the best view; over Dunhuang, where the oldest known map of the stars was found in a desert cave a century ago; and over Jiuquan, where China launched its first manned spaceflight.
But adopting the solar eclipse as a good sign meant stripping away the old superstition about it being the unluckiest event in the sky. In ancient times, it was believed a dragon was eating the sun. Emperors were blamed and had to apologize for angering the heavens.
Later, being able to predict solar eclipses and show control over the skies became so political that some eclipse reports apparently were manipulated, said John B. Henderson, a history professor at Louisiana State University who has written about Chinese cosmology.
After the eclipse ended, people coming down from the wall paused at the sight of a more than 6-foot-long telescope mounted on a bicycle cart.

by Romana Otockova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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