Results tagged “bans”

You know what's a damper on any big day? A Divorce. And so at least one municipality has decided it's not going to let couples unwed during the 60th anniversary. Seven out of ten Chongqing districts have said that they will not process divorces during the eight-day holiday, even as they're getting extra staff to help with the weddings. Supposedly, they can't cope with the "high demand" for weddings and also issue divorces at the same time. Luckily for them, nobody's tried to process a divorce yet anyhow, though we wonder what kind of urgent circumstances would make couples want to split during a specific week and whether it then might be a good idea for Chongqing to ban knives as well, just in case.

With only a week and a half left before the 60th anniversary of the PRC, it seems the whole country has caught National Day fever. Capturing the excitement, Boston.com has a wonderful collection of photos from various sources depicting many different preparations around China. We particularly like the fashion military parade pictures: those outfits are fabulous! But amidst all the hoopla, it's a difficult time to be in Beijing.

Five Chinese swimmers received two year bans yesterday after testing positive for the anabolic steroid clenbuterol at a national competition last June. According to the AP the athletes' coaches also received one to two year bans.

While rock is currently experiencing a revival all over this country, the spirit of revolution inherent in the first generation of Chinese alternative music is noticeably absent.

Finally some good news that will make anyone in China rest assured that the food on our table is safe. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) continues to be busy at work ensuring food safety for us all. After banning soy sauce and wasabi imported from three Japanese producers found to be tainted with toluene and ethyl acetate last month, AQSIQ has now withheld about 312 tonnes of Irish pork across the country, on global concerns that pork from Ireland contain potentially harmful levels of the cancer-causing agent dioxin. Even as many other countries are starting to ban Irish pork, this latest move by AQSIQ will hurt the Irish pork industry big time as China is a HUGE pork-consuming nation. Between September and now, China imported 2,047 tonnes of pork from Ireland.

      

EastSouthWestNorth has uncovered Zhao Bandi (赵半狄), the man behind the Kung Fu Panda protest, as an unabashed panda lover and a fashion designer who has a line inspired by the national treasure. Check out the images from Zhao's fashion show below. Apparently he got China's internet celeb numero uno Furong Jiejie (芙蓉姐姐) to model for him and that one picture of her is priceless: