ABC News has
a report on the village of Bama, "China's Fountain of youth." People there are said to live unusually long lives. Out of the population of 500, six people are over 100 years old.
The locals attribute this longevity to pure water (which is "a striking blue because of low alkilinity"), simple home-grown food, and a special magnetic field.
Bama has become a big tourist destination in China. Billboards promote its special powers. New hotels are being constructed there. And you can shop at a store that sells products labeled "The 100-year-old Man."
But the key phrase in the report is that "there are no birth certificates to prove age." This immediately makes me think of the
Ecuadorian town of Vilcabamba, which in the 1970s was heavily promoted as a village of supercentenarians, until researchers examined the age claims more closely and realized the locals were exaggerating their age.
If the old folks in Bama don't have any birth certificates or documentation to prove their age, then I'd be very doubtful they really are over 100, because age exaggeration among old people is an extremely common phenomenon. It's a way for them to increase their social status by claiming to have done something remarkable (lived a very long time).
Comments
Okay, time for a quick chemistry lesson. Alkalinity is a measure of how many free protons (H+) are in solution. This is measured on a pH scale from 0 (very acidic) to 7 (neutral) to 14 (very alkaline).
Pure water has a pH of about 7. Having water with low alkalinity is another way of saying it's very acidic, which might account for that blue color.
It's common to have cosmetic surgery to look older
over there.
claiming to be older than they are wouldn't be much of a surprise.
...
"... pure water (which is "a striking blue because of low alkilinity) ..."
This is a curious claim. In general, the fresh water that is most "striking blue" is water with HIGH alkalinity, such as that in limestone pools. If you look at a limestone pool or creek from above, the water looks very blue (or green if there is a growth of algae). Water with low alkalinity, on the other hand, is more clear (more or less colorless) if it has no suspended matter, but in nature is more often brown or yellow because it tends to carry dissolved tannins and, in many cases, silt. I refer, of course to bodies of water. If someone served me a clear glass of water (not blue glass) and the water looked "striking blue" in the glass, that water couldn't be very "pure," and I wouldn't drink it.
Here in the Rio Grande Valley, there are many trailer parks where the average age must be somewhere around 600, but we can't take credit for those "Winter Texan's" longevity. They were already about that old when they moved here after retiring from their pig farms in North Dakota.
It's common to have cosmetic surgery to look older
over there.
claiming to be older than they are wouldn't be much of a surprise.
Posted by Sharruma in capable of finishing a coherent on Mon Jun 15, 2009 at 09:05 AM"
I call bullshit on this.