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Laura Zhou

BEIJING
The cultural revelation
The latest Beijing Cultural Blue Book reveals that less than one in 10 Beijingers visit cultural centres five times a year. Libraries were more popular, the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences found, as two in five residents visited such sites more than five times a year. Parks lead public destinations, with more than 80 per cent of respondents having visited one in the past 12 months.
Rejected lover in stabbing
Police are investigating a man in the stabbing to death of a female student from Beijing University of Chinese Medicine on Tuesday night. Police believe the suspect killed the student after she refused his romantic advances.
GANSU
Walking with dinosaurs
The largest collection of complete dinosaur footprint fossils ever found in Asia has been discovered in the Liujiaxia Gorge in Yongding county, the Lanzhou Daily reports. The site, located 80 kilometres west of Lanzhou , contains the prints of 10 different species of dinosaurs.
Workers cotton on
An estimated 130,000 Dingxi residents have left for Xinjiang Autonomous Region in recent weeks to help with the annual cotton harvest, the Lanzhou Morning Post reports. Xinjiang's cotton harvest starts in August and lasts until late October.
GUANGDONG
Miscarriage after iPad row
A Heilongjiang couple have been detained after a scuffle with a pregnant Shenzhen shop owner that caused her to miscarry. Police said the 36-year-old victim was kicked in the stomach in a dispute over an iPad. The couple claim they had left it in the shop earlier in the week. It was unclear whether one or both of the suspects - a 25-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman - were accused of doing the kicking.
Truck crash kills 7
An articulated truck's brake failure is being blamed for a multi-car collision that killed seven and injured three early yesterday morning on the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway in Shaoguan . The truck hit six cars and another two trucks after its brakes failed, a preliminary investigation found.
GUANGXI
Windy city
The Guilin city government will invest nearly five billion yuan (HK$6.1 billion) to increase wind power capacity under the province's 12th five-year plan. Plans call for two 2.5 billion yuan projects in Quanzhou county and Gongcheng Yao Autonomous County.
Marriage is a drag
A 75-year-old man dragged a wooden cart carrying his 64-year-old wife through the streets for three hours on Thursday to mark the couple's 45th wedding anniversary. Earlier in the day, the pair had reaffirmed their vows in a formal ceremony.
HEBEI
Better school digs
Shijiazhuang city has invested 150 million yuan (HK$183 million) to build and repair 28 boarding schools and improve pupil safety in six impoverished rural areas, the Hebei Daily reports. The city government plans to relocate 240,000 rural pupils by the end of the year, in a nationwide push to provide more living quarters at rural schools.
Dangerous dining
Hubei province will assign 50,000 food safety supervisors to monitor big dining events this year due to concerns about poor cooking practices, the Hebei Daily reports. Public events in which neighbourhoods dine together, such as weddings and funerals, have been the source of frequent food safety incidents over the years, especially in rural areas.
JIANGSU
Copycat painter
A painter from a village near Nanjing has finished a faithful, 4.5-metre-long reproduction of the famous panoramic painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival from the Song dynasty (960-1279), the Nanjing Morning Post reports. The painting, which took 100 days to copy, depicts daily life in the prosperous Song capital Bianjing, now known as Kaifeng .
Time to talk
First-year pupils at Pukou Foreign Language Middle School were given a special assignment for the holiday week: building a better relationship with their parents, Xinhua reports. Teachers suggested that pupils and their parents spend a half hour after supper each day reading poems, learning revolutionary songs, talking about newspaper articles or discussing ideas.
SHANDONG
Shorter commutes
The Jinan government has announced infrastructure improvements in an effort to shave 20 minutes off the average resident's commute, Xinhua reports. The city's latest three-year traffic management plan calls for more bus stations and new bicycle lanes. The city's average commute was 50 minutes in 2009.
Sending money home
Overseas Chinese have been responsible for about 60 per cent of the foreign direct investment received by the province in the past 50 years, the Dazhong Daily reports. Figures from the Returned Overseas Chinese Federation show Chinese living abroad have also donated a total of 1.6 billion yuan to the province during that period.
SHANGHAI
Shanghai runnings
Registration opens today for this year's Shanghai International Marathon, which will take place December 2. Runners taking part in competitive races can register today, while those looking to participate recreationally can begin registering on November 1. Visit www.shmarathon.com for details.
Toll amnesty ends
Shanghai drivers will be charged reduced tolls of five yuan for two hours after the country's week-long toll amnesty comes to an end at midnight on Monday morning, the Shanghai Morning Post reports. Normal tolls will resume after 2am. The Shanghai Yangtze River Tunnel and Donghai Bridge are excluded from the two-hour "buffering" window.
ZHEJIANG
Suicide rescue from bore
A 22-year-old Hangzhou woman who attempted to commit suicide by jumping into the Qiantang River was rescued just two hours before the river's largest tidal bore of the year arrived on Tuesday, the Today Morning Express reports. The woman was reportedly distraught over her love life.
Crackdown on bad food
The Zhejiang Supreme Court has vowed to crack down on the sale of substandard food and medicines online, Xinhua reports. The court also warned that the express delivery industry has become a major avenue for distributing poor-quality food and drugs. The provincial public security bureau has detained 3,527 suspects in 1,902 food and drug safety cases since January, official figures reveal.


China Digest, October 6, 2012

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