On a totally unrelated note to China, for those of you that are wondering what you can do to help victims of the tropical storm Ondoy (Ketsana), Red Cross Philippines is now accepting donations via Paypal at give@redcross.org.ph. And if you specifically wish to help children, donate online via UNICEF USA. more ›

Xinhua reports:

More than 1.17 million people have been affected in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region by floods triggered by continuous heavy rain that started on Saturday. more ›

For this week's edition of Opinionist, we present to you some of the thoughts of Ho Kwon Ping, founder and executive chairman of the Banyan Tree Group which owns and operates a chain of award-winning premium resorts, hotels and spas, surrounding the great Sichuan earthquake. Ho, who owns resorts in Lijiang, Shangri-La and Sanya, had a close shave with the earthquake as his flight from Chengdu to Hong Kong was almost taking off when the earthquake struck. more ›

Fengshen, the tropical storm that ravaged the Philippines and capsized a ferry last weekend, has moved on to Taiwan and southeast China. The storm has caused schools, markets and businesses to close in Hong Kong, but thankfully no casualties. It is expected to move north to Guangdong, where meteorological experts anticipate eight inches (200 mm) of rain to fall. Fengshen was downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm late last night. more ›

This tornado, captured here on video, ripped through Lingbi County (灵璧县) in landlocked Anhui Province last Friday at 2:20pm for about 5 minutes, tearing away 650 houses, damaging another 1,000, killing one person and injuring another 45. While there has been relatively scant media coverage of the tornado, over 20,000 people have been directly affected by the tornado. In 2005, a similar tornado killed 15 in the same county. more ›

For those of you that have been complaining about the wet weather in Shanghai here over the weekend, our friends in southern China have been having it far worse. Heavy rain in Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces are causing water levels in rivers further downstream in in Jiangxi, Guangxi and Guangdong provinces to rise. Of course all this is doubly bad news for Sichuan which is still reeling from last month's earthquake. Over 1.27 million people have been evacuated across nine provinces, and economic losses already amount to over 10 billion yuan. Xinhua says vegetable prices in a few cities in Guangdong shot up between 30 percent and 70 percent on Saturday alone. Hong Kong has also been swamped by record rainfall (see video), and at least two people are now missing in landslides in the New Territories. more ›

Selena Hsu of Current TV visits the Jiuzhou Stadium in Mianyang and discovers that while some parents have lost their children and everything else in life, they are more than willing to adopt someone else's child orphaned by the earthquake. [h/t to Danwei] more ›

Right: A woman over 60 years old, Wang Youqiong, was saved from the rubble 196 hours after the quake. She is now severely dehydrated and under intensive care at the Chengdu Huaxi Hospital. It is currently still unclear what damage has been done to her vital organs. more ›

Scuffles between aid volunteers and survivors of earthquake broke out in Mianyang, as victims struggled to find water and food supplies. [May 19]
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This set of powerful pictures were shot during a wedding photo shoot in Pengzhou, Sichuan when the earthquake struck. All survived the disaster but it looked like one old and very beautiful looking building was badly damaged by the tremors. Click here to view larger pictures if you find the photo effects too annoying. [h/t to China Digital Times] more ›

Via a new blog called Speak4China which comes with the hearty recommendation of the China Law Blog: On the day the Wenchuan earthquake struck, these students from a Sichuan high school were evacuated from their building and to while away their time, they took this video of themselves pretending to do an earthquake interview on live television. One girl said she didn't care about her parents and only for the pop duo Twins, another said she hoped there was an earthquake everyday and a third said she hoped the school building would collapse soon so they didn't have to go to school ever again. This soon unleashed yet another powerful "human flesh search engine" (not unsimilar to the one experienced by Duke university student Grace Wang) in which enraged netizens tracked down the students and harrassed them in every way possible (no details on how they were harrassed though). more ›

With over 30,000 dead, another tens of thousands missing, and 200,000 injured, coupled with a broken down mobile/land line and transportation system, many people are on a frantic search for each other, and Google mobilised 100 of its employees to help create a custom search engine entirely dedicated to helping people find their friends and loved ones. Other nifty tools found on this feature-rich page include Google Maps integrated with the latest earthquake and relief information, online donation facilities, and discussion forums where people can try to get in touch with each other. more ›

Scenes captured across Chengdu during the three minutes of silence, when all of China ground to a halt yesterday. For many Chengdu-ites, this earthquake has hit very, very close to home: more ›

It's early Monday morning and the China twitterati are abuzz with the news that all major Chinese web sites have been ordered to shutdown for the three days of national mourning which begins today. Here is an announcement sent out by the government in Hefei, Anhui, followed by Shanghaiist's translation. Good reason to believe similar announcements have been sent in other provinces and municipalities:

各市、县委宣传部，各市、县网宣办（外宣办），省直各厅局，各有关网站： more ›

Forwarded to us from our new friends at Chengdu's English-language magazine Chengdoo (Thanks Joe and Jane!). We are posting these up because the needs are real and time-sensitive. Many have died, but the living need help too. Now. more ›

ESWN draws our attention the heart-rending story of Chen Jian. Be very sure you watch all the way to the fourth video, or don't watch at all if you don't intend to cry today: more ›

"Any trivial matter multiplied by 1.3 billion will become a big problem;
Any astronomical figure divided by 1.3 billion will become a tiny number."
一个很小的问题，乘以13亿，都会变成一个大问题；一个很大的总量，除以13亿，都会变成一个小数目。 more ›

• The official death toll in the Sichuan earthquake has been revised upwards to 32,477. Deaths have also been recorded in Gansu, Shaanxi, Chongqing, Henan, Hubei and Yunnan. Within Sichuan, the Mianyang and Deyang regions suffered the most fatalities, with estimated deaths of 11,874 and 10,341 respectively. 209,900 people are reported injured, and the final death toll is expected to exceed 50,000
• Four foreign teams from Russia, Singapore, Japan and Korea have been allowed in to take part in rescue efforts. Teams have also been dispatched from the Greater China regions of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
• A lake with a volume of 1.6 million cubic metres formed after the quake in Pengzhou City burst yesterday and residents have been evacuated with no casualties reported. A similar lake in Beichuan is expected to burst very soon, causing thousands of residents to run to the hills while paramilitary officers, rescue workers, journalists and troops have been ordered to evacuate.

UPDATE: More than RMB 20,000 in lucky draw prizes donated so far! More details here. more ›

Lots of very encouraging news today:

• John Bergen of Sichuan Tech and Business College in Dujiangyan, the first missing foreigner that we posted here, has been found alive and kicking by NBC. He gives his account of the earthquake in the video on the right. Some of his fellow-teachers and students were not so lucky and did not escape from the earthquake, but Bergen says he is determined to stay on and help them rebuild the school.
• The group of 26 Malaysian tourists feared missing after the quake are "safe, but stranded", much to the relief of several relatives that have been in touch with Shanghaiist, including twitterer Dedric Lam. The Star reports that the Malaysian embassy was getting the Sichuan provincial government's assistance to move the group to Maoxian which is about 150km from Chengdu.
• Chad, Jenny and Matthew Graber at Aba Teachers College have also been found and made contact with their family. However, there is no news from another teacher Jan-Mark NAAIJER yet and magali and neeser123 are trying to make contact with him. Arial photos of Aba Teachers College show that the school is standing still so Naaijer is probably somewhere around. more ›

Right: In Dujiangyan, heavy wreckage, collapsed buildings, great grief and a city that's been ground to a halt. more ›

In the days following the earthquake a number of stories have started surfacing about Sichuan's enormous migrant labor force and their concerns for loved ones back home. Out of the many laborers that have moved into China's rapidly developing urban areas, more come from Sichuan than any other province. A recent article from the Wall Street Journal tells us:

According to official figures, eight million migrant workers come from Sichuan. But the official figures exclude many unregistered workers and those who have left home seeking work but stay within the province. Some estimates put the number of Sichuanese migrant workers at 20 million, out of a total migrant labor force of roughly 120 million.

As residents in China, our lives could have been irrevocably changed this week by the earthquake in Sichuan province… or, as for many Shanghai residents, it could be totally unaffected. As part of Shanghaiist’s new Green Scene column, we have “borrowed” a list that shows our readers how we can make a real difference in earthquake victims’ life- today- right now. more ›

Recently, Shanghaiist has been getting a whole load of clicks from a most unlikely source, GodHatesFags.com — official website of the loonies at the highly controversial, virulently homophobic, and dangerously extremist Westboro Baptist Church. Clicking over, we found that in addition to calling us "slant-eyed bastards" for an article we wrote about them a long time ago, the "church" has just released yet another press release (pictured here), thanking God for the "Great Killer Earthquake that He sent to kill thousands of stiffhearted Chinese rebels against God". In addition, they pray for "many more earthquakes to kill many more thousands of impudent and ungrateful Chinese". more ›

Al-Jazeera: The scenes of destruction and devastation, and the smell of death. Melissa Chan wins our thumbs-up once again with this report: more ›

If, like us, you've never been in an earthquake before, then this amateur video we found on NoCommentTV that was taken during the recent earthquake (exact location unknown) may give you some idea. more ›

Looks like evangelist Franklin Graham who previously made the news in the China Daily for "hoping to do more for China" is seriously putting his money where his mouth is. Speaking from Shanghai after a tour of Beijing, Hangzhou and Nanjing, the CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (named after his dad) and international Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse has just donated a whopping RMB2 million, or US$285,000. That's a whole lot of money, ladies and gentlemen! To put things into perspective, even Singapore, which has one of the world's highest GDP per capita, only managed a paltry US$200,000 or RMB1.4 million. more ›

UPDATE, 18:09 The first Japanese relief workers are expected to leave tonight. A group of 60 earthquake specialists together with sniffer dogs will head to Sichuan over the next few days. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has appealed for earth-moving equipment to aid rescue efforts in the region. Many relief workers are currently sifting through the rubble with their hands according to ABC News. The latest official death toll stands at 19,500 but is expected to rise sharply over the coming days. more ›

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Though reports are varied, it now appears that the current death from the Wenchuan earthquakes is somewhere between 17,000 and 20,000 (latter figure from the Time China Blog, although most of the media is still reporting the official count at a more conservative 15,000. It's still to0 early to say just how high that figure will climb once everything is said and done, but an earlier Time's estimate put that number at around 100,000 (their man Austin Ramzy is there right now). While we hope that this isn't the case, we can see why they would say that, because other sources put the amount of buried or missing at between 27,000 and a staggering 60,000, and time is running out to get these people out. more ›