Beijing doesn’t snow/rain for three month

January 26th, 2011 Filed under English entries, Life

The media recently are buzzing with reports of drought in North China. The drought, which influences the major wheat production areas in North China provinces such as Heibei, Henan, Jiangsu and my hometown, Shandong, is reported to be the most serious in the recent 50 years. The drought is threatening the wheat production and, in some cases, lives of people and cattle.

China Drougth Distributioin

It’s now already two month of winter but I’m still waiting for the first snow fall on Beijing. As far as I know, there’s no single piece of snow fall into the Capital in this winter. I remember that the first snow fall soon reach Beijing when winter comes last year. Last weekend, when I drove along the Wenyu river, the mother river of Beijing (though many people don’t know), I saw the water level is quite low. Most of the surface is frozen and in some areas that are still unfrozen, I find many wild ducks resting there!

The weather is quite weird in recent years in China. While traditionally there are supposed to be snow falls in North China and rain falls in South China during winter, the real situation is that while the north is suffering drought, the south is suffering heavy snow fall. In 2008, the heavy snow fall in South China caused transportation failure and electricity network failure due to lack of preparation for unexpected snow falls. In the past, the South China didn’t need to prepare for a snow because they simply don’t have snow. But nowadays, they need to update their infrastructure standard in order to cope with heavy snow falls.

I’m now worrying about two things because of the drought. Will the drought result in deduction of grain production and thus further push up the inflation? Seems the market is worrying about that because all my agriculture stocks’ price is declining sharply (over 10%) recently. I guess that the government want to frozen some liquidity by smashing the stock market before the Chinese Lunar New Year in order to curb the inflation. However, this measure won’t work for long period. The decrease of grain production due to drought would soon be reflected into grain price spike. The second thing I’m worrying about is the life of relatives back in my home town Shandong province. They are all peasants. I don’t know whether they can cope with the drought. Most of their incomes are from wheat grow. If the drought is too severe and the irrigation system fail to work properly, their income could drop significantly. I will go back to hometown next week during CNY holiday. Hope all goes well

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