I have a fascinated interest in China's history; the culture has shown such richness and literary colour. (Yes, admittedly there was brutality, cruelty, factions fighting each other... There were also the gorgeous ceramics and painting, invention of paper, agricultural advances (paddy field cultivation, using biological pest prevention with a combination of creatures and plants to ensure that the crop didn't fail, etc.), gunpowder, etc., and some really extraordinary poetry and other writings.)

China under its current government is not helping China become glorious in every sense of the word - in my view - although political heavy-handedness seems to be playing out in quite a lot of countries currently.

It's my hope that human beings as a united race will put into practice behaviours that stop harming fellow people (whether they are of the same ethnicity or not, whether their views are the same as the majority (or the power) or not, whether they are wealthy or not... and that stop harming the earth and the environment. There's no viable backup plan if our actions damage the earth - and without wanting to be a smug finger-wagger mounting my high horse, it's difficult for me not to become despairing and outraged and worried by the lack of action now to prevent a point-of-no-return disaster.

... And the amount of plastic being used...!