For Pei Shiyou, this year's Lunar New year's Eve was among the few he ha spent with his extended family.

“It's one of the benefits of starting a business in my hometown,” said Pei, who was born and raised in Hefei, Anhui province, and will soon turn 60. His wish for the Year of the Dog is to see smart glass— the product his team has been developing since 2016—go into production.

    Starting a business with a creative research team and receiving government support have given him a strong sense of pride, a feeling he says he often lacked during his 25 years working in the United States, he said.

    He was among Chinas first students to travel to the US for postgraduate stud. After that, he landed his first job at Amoco Corp and later moved to California eventually becoming head of product research and development at KLA-Tencor, a global capital equipment company in Silicon Valley. Yet Pei said he still felt unfulfilled and unsatisfied.

    “It seemed there was an invisible ceiling for me when I pursued my career in the US. I felt like it was unlikely for me to achieve any higher sense of achievement or recognition.”

    He returned to China in 2017, and nine years later established a smart-glass company in Hefei with two other US-trained engineers.

    The company's product is suitable for low-temperature, flexible smart-film manufacturing and is able to self-adjust its level of transparency based on temperature changes and sunlight conditions, according to Pei, who said it has the potential to reduce the need for air conditioning and make curtains abandoned.

    Between 2007 and 2016, Pei lived and worked in several Chinese cities. “What attracts me to Hefei is that it is easy to gather tech talents here due to the city's rapid development in recent years, and also because it has several universities,” he said. Support from the local government has been one of the best attractions that convinced Pei to locate his company in the eastern Chinese city.

    In January last year, Hefei was approved as the site of a national-level science center, the second of its kind after an earlier one was built in Shanghai. The center, now under construction, will focus on areas including information technology, energy and health.

    THE WEEK IN READING: THE BEST NEW BOOK RELEASES FOR APRIL, 2017

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Welcome to Holker Hall & Gardens

Visitor Information

How to Get to Holker

    By Car： Follow brown signs an A590 from J36, M6. Approximate travel times: Windermere-20 minutes, Kendal-25 minutes, Lancaster-45 minutes, Manchester-1 hour 30 minutes.

    By Rail: The nearest station is Cark-in-Cartmel with trains to Carnforth, Lancaster Preston for connections to major cities & airports.

Opening Times

    Sunday-Friday (closed on Saturday)11:00 am-4:00 pm,30^th March-2nd November.

Admission Charges

Special Events

Producers' Market    13th April

    Join us to taste a variety of fresh local food and drinks. Meet the producers and get some excellent recipe ideas.

Holker Garden Festival    30th May

    The event celebrate its 22^nd anniversary with a great show of the very best of gardening, making it one of the most popular events in gardening.

National Garden Day    28th August

    Holker once again opens its gardens in aid of the disadvantaged. For just a small donation you can take a tour with our garden guide.

Winter Market    8th November

    This is an event for all the family. Wander among a variety of shops selling gifs while enjoying a live music show and nice street entertainment.

    You can't always predict a heavy rain or remember your umbrella. But designer Mikhail Belyaev doesn't think that forgetting to check the weather forecast before heading out should result in you getting wet. That's why he created Lampbrella, a lamp post with its own rain-sensing umbrella.

    The designer says he came up with the idea after watching people get wet on streets in Russia. “Once, I was driving on a central Saint Petersburg street and saw the street lamps lighting up people trying to hide from the rain. I thought it would be appropriate to have a canopy(伞蓬) built into a street lamp,” he said.

    The Lampbrella is a standard-looking street lamp fitted with an umbrella canopy. It has a built-in electric motor which can open or close the umbrella on demand Sensors(传感器) then ensure that the umbrella offers pedestrians shelter whenever it starts raining.

    In addition to the rain sensor, there's also a 360°motion sensor on the fiberglass street lamp which detects whether anyone is using the Lampbrella. After three minutes of not being used the canopy is closed.

    According to the designer, the Lampbrella would move at a relatively low speed, so as not to cause harm to the pedestrians. Besides, it would be grounded to protect from possible lightning strike. Each Lampbrella would offer enough shelter for several people. Being installed(安装) at 2 metres off the ground, it would only be a danger for the tallest of pedestrians.

    While there are no plans to take the Lampbrella into production, Belyaev says he recently introduced his creation to one Moscow Department, and insists his creation could be installed on any street where a lot of people walk but there are no canopies to provide shelter.

    Along the river banks of the Amazon and the Orinoco there lives a bird that swims before it can fly, flies like a fat chicken, eats green leaves, has the stomach of a cow and has claw s ( 爪) on its wings when young. They build their homes about 4.6m above the river, an important feature for the safety of the young. It is called the hoatzin.

    In appearance, the birds of both sexes look very much alike with brown on the back and cream and red on the underside. The head is small, with a large set of feathers on the top, bright red eyes, and blue skin. Its nearest relatives are the common birds, cuckoos. Its most striking feature, though, is only found in the young.

    Baby hoatzins have a claw on the leading edge of each wing and another at the end of each wing tip. Using these four claws, together with the beak (喙), they can climb about in the bushes, looking very much like primitive (远古的) birds must have done. When the young hoatzins have learned to fly, they lose their claws.

    During the drier months between December and March hoatzins fly about the forest in groups of 20 to 30 birds, but in April, when the rainy season begins, they collect together in smaller living units of two to seven birds for producing purposes.

    A photography exhibition by French artist San Bartolome entitled Moon Door Dreamers opened in the 798 Art Zone in Beijing on December 10, 2011, presenting a cross-cultural perspective (视角) on ordinary life in the capital city.

    Bartolome took these photos in August 2008, and produced a video named Two Worlds, One Dream. These works were displayed in Pingyao, an ancient city in Shanxi Province, under the title Beijing Midsummer Night Dream in September 2010.

    The moon doors serve as a keyhole through which one can catch a glimpse of a slice of Beijing life. He got his inspiration from one cycling trip to the southeastern suburb of Beijing, where he discovered a peculiar street along which a gray brick wall was built to cover the shabby bungalows. These cabins were mostly rented by migrant workers- peddlers, craftsmen, grocers and innkeepers.

    Born in 1950, Bartolome has worked as a photographer, stage director. Artistic manager, writer and diplomat. A noted Sinophile, Bartolome frequently visits China for photographic subjects. In the fall of 2003, he joined the French Embassy in Beijing as a cultural attache. His work experience in China from 2003 to 2015 further enhanced his awareness of and love for China.

    Bartolome not only loves Chinese culture but also the Chinese people. He thinks that Chinese people are kind, welcoming and diverse.

    Back from his bike ride to southeastern Beijing, he decided to shoot pictures about ordinary urban lifestyles. He observed dwellers carefully and made friends with them.

    After about 30 days and nights that he spent with these common migrants, he created a number of portraits. Meanwhile, he learned more about those rural migrants who earn their living in a city with which they are unfamiliar.

    He adopted an optimistic perspective to shoot the sights, and he borrowed the title of one of William Shakespeare s comedy works: A Midsummer Night's Dream.