China Chronicles December 27, 2012
- 东环广场
- Tongxiang, Zhejiang: 桐鄉
＊Jessica** has added a photo to the pool:
Camera: Leica M4
Lens: Summicron 35mm f2
Film: Agfa APX 100
Developing: Ilford LC29
Scan : Epson v600 - Wanted: older men for young women
Most young women in China would prefer to date men 10 years older than themselves, a nationwide survey has found.
They told researchers they preferred older men because they were more attractive, wealthier and better able to take care of them.
According to the survey of 98,000 men and women across the country, 70 percent of women aged between 18 and 25 preferred older men. Of those, about 64 percent were hoping to have older boyfriends, 17 percent had dated older men and the rest expressed a preference for older men over men their own age.
However, the women were concerned that such relationships might not please their parents and that an older man might have a family already or could be too mature for them to handle.
According to the survey, published by the Training and Communication Center of the National Population and Family planning Commission, together with Beijing-based wedding website jiayuan.com, the country has 249 million unmarried adults.
A nationwide census report in November 2010 showed that nearly 12 million men aged 30 to 39 were single and hoping to marry younger women.
The survey also found that both men and women were becoming more open-minded about sex with virginity unimportant in a future spouse.
Some 84 percent of men and 73 percent of women said they didn't care whether their future spouse was a virgin or not.
But when it came to living together, 86 percent of men were happy with idea of living together before marriage, compared to 36 percent of women.
- Court upholds sentences on Mekong River gang
THE appeals of six people convicted in connection with the murder of 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River last year have been rejected.
A Chinese court upheld the death penalties on Myanmar drug lord Naw Kham (pictured above during yesterday's hearing) and three of his right-hand men.
The Provincial Higher People's Court of Yunnan also upheld sentences on two other Myanmar convicts. Zha Bo had been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve while Zha Tuobo had been jailed for eight years.
All six had been convicted of crimes including murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping and hijacking by a court in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, in November.
Nicknamed "The Godfather," Naw Kham was the boss of the largest illegal armed drug trafficking gang on the Mekong River, which flows through China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The gang was busted earlier this year in a joint operation by police from China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand after the sailors' murders triggered calls to rein in rampant crime in the border region.
- Boost for high-speed rail plans
The world's longest high-speed rail line, which spans over half of China, began operating yesterday, further cementing the country's high-speed railway development ambitions.
The opening of the 2,298 kilometer line was commemorated by the 9am departure of a train from Beijing to Guangzhou. Another train left Guangzhou at 10am.
Running at an average speed of 300km per hour, the new route cuts the travel time between the two cities from over 20 hours to about eight.
A total of 155 pairs of trains will run on the new line daily and alternative schedules have been made for weekends and peak travel times, the Ministry of Railways said.
There will still be 183 pairs of trains running daily on the old Beijing-Guangzhou line that runs parallel to the high-speed line, allaying concerns that the new line will increase passengers' travel costs.
A second-class seat on the new high-speed line costs 865 yuan (US$138), while a sleeper on the old line sells for around 430 yuan.
G801, the first train from Beijing yesterday, is comfortable and more passenger-friendly, according to reporters.
The high speed did not seem to have an effect on comfort, but it did make cell phone connections unstable, they said.
The line has a string of measures in place to ensure safety, a major concern for high-speed rail travel since a bullet train crash near south China's city of Wenzhou left 40 people dead in July 2011.
The measures include boosting maintenance for fixed equipment and mobile devices onboard and improving the control system to address problems that could occur during extreme weather, said Sun Shuli, a chief engineer.
The Wenzhou accident was blamed on faulty signaling equipment and improper management.
Zhang Hongsheng, who has worked as a bullet train mechanic since China's first high-speed train made its debut in 2007, said inspections on high-speed trains were now conducted on an hourly basis to ensure safety. "We also maintain regular risk chec! ks and timely communication with the train driver, the conductor and the crew," Zhang said.
"I will definitely take the high-speed rail going between Beijing and Wuhan. It only takes four and a half hours," said Feng Qi, a passenger from Wuhan, a central China city on the Beijing-Guangzhou line.
By 2015, China aims to have around 120,000km of rails in operation, including 18,000 of high-speed rails and an express railway network reaching 40,000km that allows speeds of over 160kph.
Preparations for a new high-speed line linking the central Chinese cities of Zhengzhou and Xuzhou are under way.
The line will intersect the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed rail line and the Shanghai-Beijing high-speed rail line, which went into operation on June 30, 2011.
- Getting back on track
CHINA hopes Japan's new government will work with China to overcome difficulties in bilateral relations and get them back on the track of normal development, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said yesterday.
Hua Chunying had been asked by reporters what China expected from Japan and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. She said sound and stable development of relations was in the interests of both countries.
- Red Cross failed to collect quake donations
THE Red Cross Society of China said it is investigating its branch in southwest China after it was accused of leaving hundreds of donation boxes uncollected with the money inside growing mold.
The branch, the Red Cross society in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, was reported to have set up hundreds of donation boxes in public venues in 2008 after a devastating earthquake struck the province, Beijing News reported.
But those donation boxes were left unattended until June of this year, and many of them were heavily damaged, with some parts stolen.
The rest of them, about 500 produced by two companies, were abandoned in a warehouse, said the newspaper.
Photos of the abandoned donation boxes show that paper money inside them has gotten moldy. Advertising leaflets and other rubbish were also seen inside the boxes. The 1-meter-tall boxes have TV screens on the top to play charity videos or ads.
According to an official with Maisheng Investment and Management Co, the Chengdu Red Cross signed a contract with the company to install 3,000 donation boxes in Chengdu's public venues after the earthquake on May 12, 2008.
The official told the newspaper that the contract was signed on June 25, 2008, and that Maisheng and another company would invest in building and installing the boxes, while they could play advertising videos on the boxes' screens to earn money. The contract requires that the Chengdu Red Cross collect cash from the boxes regularly, but it didn't say who would be responsible if the devices are broken or money left uncollected.
Maisheng invested 5 million yuan (US$801,205) in a plan to install 1,000 donation boxes in 2008, which would have been the one third of the 3,000 in the contract. But after they set up 726 of the boxes, the Chengdu Red Cross violated the contract due to "changes of personnel," the Maisheng official told the newspaper.
Installation of the remaining 274 boxes was delayed, and after the company negotiated with the C! hengdu Red Cross "over hundreds of times," the problem is still not solved, the official added.
A senior Maisheng official surnamed Wei said that of the 726 boxes the company originally installed, only 391 are still in public venues and only 190 are still functioning properly.
The Chengdu Red Cross sent officials to the warehouse to count the cash in the boxes this June.
It announced later that it had received 6,116 yuan from donors.
- Graft trials start with aide to ex-railways chief
THE former boss of a state-owned transport company and reported right-hand man to Liu Zhijun, the disgraced former railways minister, faced graft charges in court yesterday in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
The trial of Luo Jinbao is the opening salvo in court of a series of graft cases that have entangled officials with the Ministry of Railways.
Luo, former board chairman of China Railway Container Transport Co Ltd, was charged with 32 counts of bribery when he was an official with the Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan high-speed route and railway head in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Luo was appointed to head the transport company in April 2010.
Earlier reports described him as a middleman between Liu and businesswoman Ding Shumiao. Ding, 57, was chairwoman of Beijing Boyou Investment Management Corp. She illegally profited from a number of railway projects up to 800 million yuan (US$128 million), investigators said.
Luo was removed from his post in October 2010 and placed under investigation at the beginning of 2011, when authorities also started probing Ding, Caixin.com reported.
Liu was probed in February 2011 and expelled from the Party this May.
At least eight senior officials at the railway ministry have been sacked in the past two years, Caixin said.
Large-scale graft and safety problems at the ministry came to light after a high-speed train collision in July 2011 that killed 40 passengers and injured 172 others.
- Farmer who drowned ill wife gets 5 years in jail
A farmer who drowned his wife, who was paralyzed and in pain, has been sentenced to five years in prison for murder by a court in Lanzhou in northwest China's Gansu Province, the Lanzhou Morning Post reported yesterday.
Jia Zhengwu, 38, pushed his wife, Zhang Xiaojun, in her wheelchair into the Yellow River on an April night in 2011. Zhang had tried to kill herself after years of suffering, the Lanzhou Intermediate People's Court said on Tuesday.
The court said Jia, from Gansu's Jingning County had taken good care of his bedridden wife for years and didn't kill her for an evil purpose, and thus got a lesser penalty. But the court rejected his lawyer's argument that it should be classified as a mercy killing, the paper said.
Zhang was diagnosed in 2003 with ankylosing spondylitis, or chronic inflammation of the spine, which causes back pain and stiffness. She had been paralyzed since 2007. Her treatment also nearly bankrupted her family.
In Jia's first trial, held in October, he sobbed, saying he did it after she had spent 12 hours begging him to kill her when the couple strolled along the river bank in Lanzhou.
"I told her not to lose the will to live because I would make every effort to cure her. But she said we had huge debts and she couldn't pass the burden to our two children," he added. The family had spent 180,000 yuan (US$28,840) on medical treatment.
Despite huge expenses, Zhang's condition didn't improve. She became depressed and told her family she wanted to die, the court found.
- 金門大發粿
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- 捕魚人
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- 冬至祭祖
Seiko Tsai 蔡顯國 has added a photo to the pool:
- Break the ice to save the seals
A seal emerges through a man-made opening in a frozen pool in Yantai City, Shandong Province. Park workers at the Yantai Fortress Resort today broke up the frozen surface of the pool to help trapped seals and fed them with food and vitamin pills.
- China issues white paper on medical, health services
CHINA'S central government today issued a white paper on the country's medical and health services, noting that medical and health care systems covering both urban and rural residents have taken shape.
The white paper, "Medical and Health Services in China", was released by the Information Office of the State Council, or China's Cabinet, saying that China has kept advancing the reform of its health care system to ensure that every resident has access to safe, effective, convenient and affordable services.
The paper revealed that the health of the Chinese people is now among the top in developing countries with an overall life expectancy of 74.8 years in 2010, 72.4 years for males and 77.4 years for females.
The mortality rate of children under five has kept dropping from 34.9 per thousand in 2002 to 15.6 per thousand in 2011, attaining ahead of schedule the UN Millennium Development Goal in this regard, the white paper said.
The infant mortality rate had gone down from 29.2 per thousand in 2002 to 12.1 per thousand in 2011, it said.
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