A 10-year-old boy fell down a 32-metre well at a construction site in suburban Lanzhou on Tuesday, the reports. He was playing with other children when he stepped on a wooden board covering the one-metre-wide well, and the board broke. The other children rushed to get help, and rescuers were able to save the boy, who suffered only bruises on his knees, chest and stomach.

Authorities with the Blood Centre of Gansu have defended a demand by some local hospitals that the relatives of patients who require a blood transfusion must donate blood themselves, China News Service reports. The order recently triggered debate online, but the authorities said the move was in line with regulations and was necessary to address a blood shortage. The centre's deputy director said that even though blood donations had increased 12 per cent this year, demand had been increasing about 20 per cent a year in recent years.

Guangzhou authorities are planning to gradually convert a sea-covered part of the Nansha New Area into developable land, the reports. A quarter of the 803-square-kilometre economic development zone is now under water. Details of the plan will be released next year, and the conversion is expected to take 30 to 50 years.

A Dongguan court has sentenced a woman to 10 years in jail for beating her son to death, and the father received a one-year sentence for burying the body in a mountainous area, reports. The court found that the mother of two boys beat her three-year-old with two clothing racks on April 19 to punish him for being naughty. The father buried the body after coming home from work to find the boy dead. To cover up their crime, the couple told police five days later that their son had gone missing.

Hong Kong-based investment in Xuzhou is increasing, with more than US$3.7 billion worth of capital injected last year, the city's party secretary said at an event in Shenzhen yesterday. Most of the money is being injected in the areas of new energy, logistics and equipment manufacturing. Xuzhou's GDP in the first six months of the year hit 190 billion yuan

The new owner of an apartment in a high-end residential community in Suzhou is negotiating with developers to help her find a solution after mushrooms started growing on her walls - a problem that several other owners in the community have also reported, the reports. The woman bought the apartment about six months ago, and her building isn't even a year old.

A 2.4-square-kilometre zone in the bustling Xujiahui shopping area of Xuhui district has been named a national tourism spot, the reports. Authorities said visitors could easily walk or ride bicycles to see places of interest.

The Xiaoyi city government is looking into online allegations that the city's deputy director of parks and forestry owned about a dozen luxury cars worth more than 20 million yuan, the reports. A government spokesman said a preliminary investigation indicated that, besides one car registered in the name of the official's daughter, all of the other cars mentioned in the accusation belonged to people with whom the official had no connections.

Three men in Pingding county, Yangquan , have been criminally detained on extortion charges in connection with stealing the corpses of an acquaintance's parents and demanding that he pay a ransom of 10kg of gold to get the bodies back, the reports. Police said the three suspects, who used to be colleagues, robbed the graves in late August and texted the son of the couple, ordering him to pay the gold within five hours. The man refused to pay, and police caught the suspects a few days ago. The bodies were found in an abandoned quarry after police interrogated the suspects.

Eagle-eyed internet users have called out the Zhaotong city government for posting online a Photoshopped image of an old picture showing police helping a couple recover their stolen motorcycle, reports. The original picture was discovered to have been posted more than a month ago on the website of the city's public security bureau. But in what internet users believe was an effort to play up the police's more recent efforts, the photo was reposted on the website of the city's Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, with the date changed and the original couple's faces replaced with pictures of different people.

Hangzhou started offering free Wi-fi in all of its central areas on Tuesday, the reports. Authorities said 2,000 Wi-fi stations had been set up across the 220-square-kilometre area, and the signal would be stronger in densely populated areas.

Prosecutors in Wenling are examining a high-profile case involving a kindergarten teacher who lifted a child up by his ears and drew the public's ire, China National Radio reports. A preliminary probe by the public security bureau found the teacher did not have a mental disorder, and prosecutors said they would decide by Monday whether to approve her arrest.