China Digest, September 21, 2012
A couple in their 50s have refused to move from a 100 sq ft shanty in Xicheng district, the reports. Their crudely built shelter sits on the pavement near a bus station, but the couple said they have nowhere else to live. A local aid centre said they would try to persuade them to leave.
A court has ordered a bus company to pay 19,000 yuan (HK$23,240) to a 25-year-old woman as compensation for dental injuries she suffered when a bus she was riding crashed into a truck in 2010, the reports.
The former director of the Agricultural Development Bank of China's Danzhou branch has been jailed for 14 years for embezzling 79 million yuan, the reports. He turned himself in to police in 2009 in Guangdong province after nine days on the run.
Twenty people have been killed in accidents involving electric bicycles in Haikou this year, according to the municipal traffic police, the reports. An engineer who examines such bicycles involved in accidents said 80 per cent of them had bad brakes. But many people still ride even though they know their brakes need repairs.
A charity that helps single mothers in Zhengzhou said it received a call on Tuesday from a woman seeking psychological advice to help her cope with stress caused by her abusive 18-year-old son, the reports. She said the son would force her to give him money, and he sometimes beat her and threatened to kill her. The mother has rented another flat.
Propaganda authorities in Xinmi denied on Wednesday that a man seen in a widely circulating online video clip beating a female worker at a China Mobile branch was a civil servant, as many internet users claimed, the reports. Authorities said the man worked for a local company and had agreed to compensate the woman.
Some classes at 21 primary and middle schools in Nanjing have been dubbed "Apple classes", because students started using iPads in their lessons this semester, the reports. The tablet computers were provided free to the students by local companies. However, the students are still assigned handwritten homework and tests conducted on paper.
Playing mahjong and the piano can help prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease, according to a doctor at the Nanjing Brain Hospital ahead of today's World Alzheimer's Day, the reports. The doctor also refuted a popular belief that intellectuals are more likely to catch the degenerative disease, which is the most common form of dementia. Some 5 million Chinese are afflicted with the disease, about a fifth of the global total, and about 300,000 new patients are diagnosed each year.
A grandmother in Dalian was surprised when she recently received a package from her granddaughter, as it contained dirty clothes such as underwear and socks. The young woman started university life in Qingdao, Shandong, this month, and she wanted her grandmother to wash the clothes and mail them back to her, the reports. The grandmother said the family had spoiled the girl, telling her she needed only to study. She had never done any housework.
For seven years, a 46-year-old British man has been distributing free steamed buns and porridge to homeless people in Lianhu district, Xian, in the afternoon every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the reports. The man, a former electrical engineer in his home country, said he had spent about 700,000 yuan on the charitable activity. He doesn't set any requirements for receiving the food.
A 20-year-old man rode his bicycle for 44 days, covering 5,010 kilometres, from his hometown in the western autonomous region of Xinjiang to Shanghai, where he recently started college life at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, the reports. Li Kaichao said he kept the trip a secret from his family, so they wouldn't worry, and he paid for it by asking his classmates to give him their textbooks, which he sold to younger students at his high school.
