Lessons from Beijing, Xian, Luoyang and Glastonbury.

Abstract

In a globalising and rapidly modernising World, comparisons are fraught with difficulty. But differences provide lessons. Two recent, contrasting, visits suggest that we can learn from and may come to copy what might now be seen as unusually rigorous environmental controls, as applied in
the cities of Northern China and at the Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts. There are also intriguing contrasts between the festival’s nostalgia for traditional lifestyles and ways of adapting the vernacular to current needs, and the Peoples’ Republic’s use of modern technology and a dynamic economy to meet what, from a North European
perspective, are quite exceptional rates of change.