Mind the gap! Wingsuit stuntman shoots through narrow slit in mountainside at 75mph

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These too will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China is always changing. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is...

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09/26/2011

Mind the gap! Wingsuit stuntman shoots through narrow slit in mountainside at 75mph

A wingsuit pilot has taken the sport of sky diving to new heights after hurtling through a narrow slit in a mountainside.

Jeb Corliss launched himself from a helicopter at 6,000ft today, zooming through the air at 75mph towards the imposing Tianmen mountain in Hunan Province, China.

The stuntman's wingsuit, which has thin membranes between the limbs and torso, allowed the 35-year-old to glide through the air while losing altitude gradually instead of plummeting directly towards Earth.

Posted by wdbox on 09/26/2011 at 12:20 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink

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09/26/2011

Mind the gap! Wingsuit stuntman shoots through narrow slit in mountainside at 75mph

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