In Chinese lit. just "Four Great Masterpieces".
The literal Chinese name says it all: "Fake Mountain". The stones evoke the feeling of the beautiful rock mountains of China.
The term "奇石假山" (qi2 shi2 jia3 shan1, lit. "weird shaped stone fake mountain") is also used, almost as a synonym by many people, since the stones are often chose in interesting shapes. Choosing the right stone is basically an art form in itself.
The stones used are generally limestone, which as a sedimentary rock is weaker, and more likely to be eroded into interesting shapes.
The United Kingdom is a great place to cycle in general as there's plenty of small country roads and interesting new small towns to discover, perhaps much like the rest of Europe, as opposed to the United States, which likely has some huge infinitely long straight roads with a lot of nothing in between.
Of particular interest is the large amount of airfields and small air raid shelters in the fields, an ominous reminder of world war 2. The airfields are in various states, from functional military fields, many converted to civilian usage, some have barely any tarmac left but still see usage. And some were just completely abandoned and decayed and became recreation grounds and farms. The UK is therefore also a great place to be if you want to learn to fly as a hobby!
Good starting point:
Next, you want to decide about nice destinations to reach/go through, and these are good ideas to look into:
- Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
- National Trust
- Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
There are valid reasons to be pro-Brexit, given the uselessness of the European Union.
The problem was how the campaign was conducted, in a purely nationalistic, populist and fake news manner, and largely supported by business leaders who immediately after still wanted to hire cheap foreign labour, use tax havens and move headquarters to other countries, e.g.:
Chinese thing better known in the West as Japanese by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-10 +Created 1970-01-01
They are not public in any meaningful modern sense, just like "public universities" in the United Kingdom: are public universities in the UK owned by the Government?.
- www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/16/private-schools-charitable-status-strip-benefits "Private schools don't act like charities, so let's strip them of the benefits"
The British are very pragmatic. This has good and bad effects.
For example, a good effect is that many things work pretty well, such as the government. This also helped industry develop.
A bad effect is that they sometimes settle on local minima forever. Examples:If it ain't totally broken, just let it continue forever! See also: Section "History of the University of Oxford".
- as of 2020, they are still using imperial units in everyday life, rather than International System of Units, which was setup by the French, who are much more idealistic, and can therefore can break from such insanity more often.
- the persistence of the insane system of colleges of the University of Oxford
- the incredibly late date of the decimal day in 1971, and that was partly due to the advent of the computer. That one was too much, even for the Brits, or maybe it helped that the greedy financiers were involved
- the British train system as of the 2010's, which is completely not unified, each part operated by a different company with different standards. Private and public unification efforts are ongoing, Trainline being one of the best/only private buy from any line unification approaches.
- Church of England priests can marry, which reduces the proportion of pedophiles. Also women were accepted starting in the 1970's in certain dioceses (non uniform rules as usual, typical of English pragmatism), including for bishop
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