Under water and under fire

For a capital city which, unusually, is situated neither on a coastline nor along the banks of a big river, Beijing has been under water a lot of late. In June last year violent rainstorms overwhelmed the antiquated drainage system, inundating roads and bringing the bustling city to a standstill. This year saw an even more devastating downpour. Officials called the storm on July 21st the worst in Beijing since records began in 1951, and initially said it had killed 37 people. Many in Beijing were convinced that was a serious underestimate; indeed the government has since been revising the death toll upwards. Currently it stands at 77. Questions are being asked about whether money spent on "vanity" projects like skyscrapers and Olympic parks might have been better spent on basic infrastructure.

A more common problem is a shortage of water. Beijing perches precariously close to the Gobi desert, and for centuries planners have worried about how to bring water into it, not how to divert it elsewhere. Guo Shoujing, a 13th-century scientist, is still revered for designing a network of lakes, weirs and waterways. These tinkled through the palaces of Kublai Khan and his descendants while barges from the south came up to the capital.

Read more:http://j.mp/NpZou5

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