to move up and down
Demolition around a parked car — The pace of building the new and tearing down the old in China is so frantic, that often demolition and construction has to go regardless of the objects that may stand in its way. The scenes like this are often the result of the breakneck pace of rebuilding: A car that was left behind in a shutdown carpark is surrounded by debris after construction began to widen a street in Taiyuan, north China’s Shanxi province on May 6, 2013. The construction unit started working around the car after they failed to contact the owner several days ago. (AFP/Getty Images)
Two Chinese kindergarten students die after rival school poisons yogurt
Chinese state media say two girls have died after eating poisoned yogurt placed outside their kindergarten at the direction of the head of a rival school.
The Xinhua News Agency says police believe the poisoning was motivated by competition for students between the schools.
It says the woman confessed that she injected the yogurt with rat poison and asked a man to place it with notebooks on the road to the rival kindergarten in Pingshan county in Hebei province. (Tyler Anderson / National Post files)
Shadow of a soldier — A Chinese soldier stands guard at the main entrance door of the Bayi building, where U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey met with Chinese military officials April 23, 2013 in Beijing, China. Dempsey is on a weeklong series of engagements in China and Japan. (Photo by Andy Wong-Pool/Getty Images)
Photos show devastation of Chinese earthquake as injury toll reaches 15,000
The efforts under way Monday in mountainous Sichuan province after a quake Saturday that killed at least 188 people showed that the government has continued to hone its disaster reaction — long considered a crucial leadership test in China — since a much more devastating earthquake in 2008, also in Sichuan, and another one in 2010 in the western region of Yushu.
“Lushan was so heavily hit and my family’s house toppled. It has been such a disaster for us,” said Yue Hejun, 28, as he waited to recharge his family’s three mobile phones at a charging stall, volunteered by a communications company and co-ordinated by the government in a new addition to the arsenal of services after natural disasters. “If we can charge our phones, we are at least able to keep in touch with our family members outside and that helps to set our minds at ease.” (AFP Photostr / AFP / Getty Images)
Water splashing festivities — People participate in the annual Water Splashing Festival to mark the traditional New Year of the Dai minority on April 15, 2013 in Xishuang Banna, Yunnan province, China. People marked the 1,375th traditional New Year on Monday, according to the ethnic Dai minority calendar. The tradition is believed to wash away the bad luck. (ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)
Doomed ducklings — A duckling tries to climb out of a basket in a duck farm in Zhangzhou, south China’s Fujian province. The duck farm has had to kill more than 400 thousand new born little ducks every week after H7N9 bird flu affected the domestic poultry market. Chinese state media on April 15 urged people to keep eating chicken and help revive the poultry industry, which lost 1.6 billion USD (10 billion yuan) in the week after the H7N9 bird flu virus began infecting humans. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Two-headed pig—This picture taken on April 10, 2013 shows a newly born two-headed pig in a village in Jiujiang, east China’s Jiangxi province. A local veterinarian said it is suffering a rare deformity and would find it difficult to survive. (AFP/Getty Images)
In the sea of bicycles — Chinese students on a bicycle ride past others parked outside a campus building at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, Thursday, April 11, 2013. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Birds perch on snow covered trees in a city park after heavy snowfall in Beijing on March 20, 2013. Beijing and the northern China have been experiencing its coldest winter in more than 30 years and have seen tens of thousands of the country’s livestock dying and transport chaos as flights and highways are shut down. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)
Suit & Tie: David Beckham showed off some of his skills on Wednesday during his trip to China, playing with students at a middle school in Beijing.
Beckham is on a five-day visit to China at the invitation of the China Football Association as China’s first international ambassador. (Photos: Alexander F. Yuan/The Associated Press; Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
Photos: Chinese blacksmiths add sparks to Lantern Festival celebrations
A Chinese blacksmith throws molten metal against a cold stone wall to create sparks, during the Lantern Festival which traditionally marks the end of the Lunar New Year celebrations, in Nuanquan, Hebei province on February 24, 2013. For over 300 years, the village which is famous for its blacksmith skills, has maintained the tradition which they considered a cheaper alternative than buying fireworks during the Lantern Festival. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)
Frustrated businessman challenges Chinese official to swim in polluted river in exchange for $32,000
A Chinese businessman angry about a filthy river has come up with an equally dirty dare: He’ll give an environmental official about $32,000 just for swimming in the polluted waterway.
Businessman Jin Zengmin posted on his microblog photos of a garbage-filled river in his hometown of Rui’an city in the eastern province of Zhejiang. He dared the local environmental protection chief, Bao Zhenming, to swim in it for a cash prize of 200,000 yuan.
The challenge, made Saturday, reflects growing frustration among the Chinese public over widespread pollution and lack of governmental action. It quickly inspired at least one other offer: A posting Tuesday under an alias on an online forum offered a 300,000 yuan ($48,000) cash prize to the environmental protection chief in the nearby county of Cangnan if the official swam in polluted rivers there. (AFP / Getty Images Files)
Chinese military linked to massive hacking operation against high-level U.S. targets, security firm says
Cyberattacks that stole massive amounts of information from military contractors, energy companies and other key industries in the U.S. and elsewhere have been traced to the doorstep of a Chinese military unit, a U.S. security firm alleged Tuesday.
China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as “groundless,” and the Defense Ministry denied any involvement in hacking attacks.
China has frequently been accused of hacking, but the report by Virginia-based Mandiant Corp. contains some of the most extensive and detailed accusations to date linking its military to a wave of cyberspying against U.S. and other foreign companies and government agencies. (PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)
9 die as fireworks truck in China explodes, sending vehicles plummeting off highway
An elevated portion of highway in central China collapsed on Friday after a truck loaded with fireworks for Lunar New Year celebrations exploded, killing at least nine people and sending vehicles plummeting 30 meters to the ground.
The official Xinhua News Agency said nine people were confirmed dead and another 13 injured, including four in serious condition. It said the collapse smashed and buried at least 25 vehicles.
An 80-meter stretch of the major east-west highway collapsed in Mianchi county in Henan province. It scattered blackened chunks of debris and shattered the windows of a nearby truck stop. (AFP / Getty Images)
Kelly McParland: China is choking on its environmental complacency
It’s not very nice to enjoy other people’s misery, but when it comes to smog in China a certain schadenfreude sets in.
China has been most forthright in criticizing other countries for failing to pay adequate attention to the environment , while continuing to burn ever-increasing amounts of coal and letting the result turn the atmosphere into a floating gray mass of pollutants that choke the population.
The Chinese capital is going through another air emergency at the moment, and this one is setting record levels. According to the World Health Organization, a “safe” level of PM2.5 particles — tiny particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs — is 25 micrograms per cubic metre. On Saturday, levels in Beijing hit 600, and perhaps as high as 900. That’s between 24 and 36 times the “safe level.” Beijing is now the modern equivalent of Victorian London, whose famous “fog” was actually smog caused by coal dust that was disastrous for the health of Londoners.
