These occasionally colourful trees capture no carbon

Now that I can blog (tweet and facebook) again legitimately, I'll file one more quick post before I leave Chinese territory. So from the Hong Kong airport, some electric trees photographed in Xi'an.

During the day these specimens look like a deciduous trees with particularly unattractive autumn foliage. Except that it's spring and these brown things are not leaves.

The whole tree is wired up for a very pretty night-time show.

Don't see those natural wood and leaf things doing this do you? Sure the electric versions aren't doing much carbon sequestration but there are plenty of real trees in Xi'an. In fact in this sense it's becoming a particularly green city (the street trees in following picture are Chinese Scholar Trees, mentioned in last post); shame about the air and water pollution.

But this post is about celebrating these colourful trees and my trip to Xi'an. Everything is on a colossal scale in the new parts of Xi'an, learning it has to be said from the old parts of town which include many miles of city wall over 17 metres thick, and from ancient emperors who did things like bury 8,000 ceramic warriors... At the end of the Great Tang All Day Mall, lined with electric trees, you get this.