Having traversed the slopes of Zhângbáishān nán (Changbaishan South) and Zhângbáishān xī (Changbaishan West), it is only fitting and proper, in the best traditions of Ed (Hilary), that you should explore the other available slope at Changbai, the North Slope❅.
Zhângbáishān bêi is the most popular section of the Changbai Mountain range. Everywhere across the West slope there were buses unloading visitors, many, many visitors and (therefore) queues! Understandably, the punters were predominantly Chinese from the vast pool of internal tourists who travel from all over the country, but also discernible were pockets of South Korean tourists, including women wearing the hanbok (traditional Korean formal dress).
Before you join the hordes of people ascending the wooden staircase to get a better view of the mountain waterfalls, you might want to linger around the shop stalls long enough to sample the local “hot spring eggs” which are boiled ‘naturally’ in situ in the surrounding hot springs. After trying the eggs (also available in a range of colours), another activity that takes on the element of ritual for the secular visitors is the quasi-ceremonial washing of hands in the nearby “hand washing pool” (supposedly according to the sign posted, a very warm 42°C).
As you proceed along the wooden walkway you will see, strewn all over the ground, pock-marked water holes comprising the mountain’s naturally-heated springs. Most climbers will make for a spot on the boardwalk that will offer the best vantage for the many waterfalls cascading down from the rim of the mountains.
The waterfalls, whose origin point is the majestic strato-volcanic Changbai wonder of Tianchi lake (known in local circles as “the source of three rivers”), function as an ideal backdrop for the myriad of visitors intent on getting their full complement of selfies.
The steps to the right take you up to a quaint bridge and viewing platforms, under which the Weihe River flows down from the main waterfall which comprises a 68-metre drop from the top. Around this spot you can be guaranteed of getting the best vistas of the range and waterfalls.
After taking in the views here, you can backtrack and take the left walkway, it’s winding steps will lead you to a picturesque lake and several small but breathtaking waterfalls.
Another thing you can do here, also with an element of the ritual to it, is drink from the “sacred well”, the Yu Jiang spring. But of course, partaking of the healing waters of Changbaishan is of itself not sufficient, the authentic tourist experience necessitates visual documentation of the ritual.
While you are ‘playing’ the North Slope (as one Chinese English-language promotional blurb interestingly described it), this might also involve a trek through the wilderness down a long set of steps to explore another stretch of Changbai waters. The notice near the start of the wooden track alerting you to the fact that the proximate wilderness is the habitat of the Siberian tiger might be a salutary warning to anyone who might be foolishly tempted to wander too far off the track.
____________________________________________
❅ the East Slope is located inside North Korea (to the Koreans it is known as Paektu or Baekdu Mountain)
The early British colonists in Sydney were quick to appreciate the value that Observatory Hill held in the formative days of the New South Wales colony. This hill, no more than moderately sized, situated between The Rocks and Barangaroo in the old part of the town, is a rich part of Sydney’s history. Not long after the founding of Port Jackson in 1788, Sydneysiders started putting the well-positioned bluff and its natural endowment to greater or lesser productive use in a variety of ways.
Sydney Observatory, 1874 
Part of Fort Philip was given over in 1825 for the housing of a signal station…it’s construction by colonial architect Mortimer Lewis was prompted by the growth in shipping at the time. From here, flags and semaphore was used to communicate with ships in the harbour below. The presence of signal flags gave rise to a new name for the Hill, Flagstaff Hill (this name remained in currency into the 20th century with some locals referring to as “The Flaggie”). In 1847, with maritime activity in Sydney Town on the rise, a two-storey Telegraph House was added to Flagstaff Hill
Fort Street High – on a 1920 cigarette card! 
The next and most important use made of Flagstaff Hill was the enterprise which gives the hill the name is by known by today, the construction of (Sydney) Observatory. Astronomical observations in the Southern Hemisphere were considered of particular importance and the handily-situated bluff was thought an ideal location to observe the stars. Built from 1857-1859 by architects William Weaver and Alexander Dawson, it originally comprised the observatory and the astronomer’s residence.
There was also a time ball on the observatory tower serving two functions. Each day at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon the time ball would drop, sending a signal (accompanying by a cannon blast) to alert people in the city and more importantly shipping on the seas to the time.
Formal gardens were created around the Observatory, circa 1875, The next decade, under the Flagstaff planting scheme, a grove of palm trees were planted. In the 20th century a tennis court was added. Observatory Park, which surrounds the Observatory itself, with its sloping lawns and great, sprawling old Moreton Bay figs is a popular lunch spot for city workers. The park also houses a Boer War memorial with an antique mounted gun and a bandstand rotunda which is a favourite for wedding photo shoots.
Observatory Park, 1941 
Increasing city light and air pollution since the Seventies saw the Sydney Observatory close in 1982…the complex has since functioned as a scientific museum. Visitors today can take a tour of the Observatory, observe the stars at night through one of the facility’s powerful, modern telescopes, or look at the historic equipment, such as the 29cm refractor telescope, dating from 1874.
Canadian political philosopher John Ralston Saul is the secular high-priest of doubters and cynics, a non-believer in “the gospel” of the modern corporate state, constantly debunking the conventional wisdoms offered up as “absolute truths” in Western society
Although Saul calls his volume “a dictionary”, the term applies more to the book’s format (utilising the standard A-Z form of the dictionary) than to its content or purpose. The Companion goes on to define Dictionary as “Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order”. And Answers are merely “a mechanism for avoiding questions”. Saul decries the trajectory of modern dictionaries and language (which have been captured by the forces of a rational orthodoxy), yearning instead for a return to the Humanist dictionaries of the 18th century (Voltaire, Diderot, Johnson, etc)². 
When I first delved into The Doubter’s Companion (around 1995), my mind took me to that other great cynic’s dictionary of the early 1900s, Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. Both works, albeit very different books, are idiosyncratically unconventional takes on language and meaning in their respective societies, and both proffer a contrarian view of the established wisdom of the day. Both Saul and Bierce are provocateurs, each with their own personal axe to grind⁌.
The Doubter’s Companion, by its polemical nature is unequivocally meant to shake up orthodox thinking (TDC was described by one reader as “an abecedarium of subversion”). The dictionary form of the book is a device Saul employs to launch into short philosophical essays on topics about modern post-industrial society that concern him—corporatism, individualism, leadership and managerialism, freedom of expression, communication, public relations, advertising and the way language is distorted to control communications (see his definition of ‘ideology’). In so doing, Saul skewers the accepted veracity of many of the words, phrases and terms you will find in today’s dictionaries.
Saul savages that that most universal institution of fast food, MacDonalds:
Happy Hour is “a depressing comment on the rest of the day”.
Saul includes in the alphabetical list a number of surprising and disparate entries for a reference book on philosophical common sense. These include Ants (Saul makes the unexpected and unverified statement that the members of the Formicidae family of eusocial insects “do nothing 71.5 per cent of the time”)
Museums: Safe storage for stolen objects.
Highly influential literary critic of the first half of the 20th century, HL Mencken, heaped lavish almost doting praise on The Devil’s Dictionary… “
⇑ First (1911) edition of the Dictionary
Cynicism and satire provide the backbones of Bierce’s provocative dictionary. So, an interesting place to start looking is how he handles these terms – the words ‘satire’, ‘cynic’ and ‘dictionary’ themselves. Despite being fully versed in the craft himself, Bierce views the practitioner of cynicism less than favourably.
Romance and true love falls by the wayside with Bierce’s cynic always hovering around ground level:
The Dictionary dishes up a smorgasbord of satirical, ironic and often bitter definitions of the world as seen by Ambrose Bierce (one of the acerbic writer’s nicknames was “Bitter Bierce”). But Bierce is of course a creature of his time with all the glaring faults and prejudices of the 19th century white man’s mindset. So, through the satire and cynicism we witness the less savoury traits and predisposition of the lexicographer. Casual assumptions of racism and misogyny run through the pages of The Devil’s Dictionary. 
