Results tagged “guangdong”

"In this province we have 30 million migrants living apart from their wives or husbands whose hunger for sex has never been recognized by society or the government...

Welp, they tried. Despite the makeshift hazard suit wearing airplane temperature checkers, the proposals for ever more stringent visa regulations, and everything else the government has done to try and stop swine flu, it looks like localized "cluster outbreaks" of H1N1 just can't be avoided. As Guangdong struggles with the mainland's first community outbreak, the Ministry of Health has warned that there will likely be "serious cases or even deaths." Guangdong currently has 233 known infections, the most in China. Health officials are predicting that it may be the first place in the country to experience a swine flu-related death as well. Source: SCMP

Is it just us or does it seem like China's starting to rack up the swine flu cases faster? A man who returned to Guangdong from a tour in the U.S. and Canada was confirmed to be the country's fourth case of swine flu. He began to display symptoms en route from Hong Kong to Guangdong and was immediately put into quarantine. Meanwhile, an Italian tourist with swine flu symptoms is being treated at a hospital in Tibet. The 23 people traveling with her are now staying at a local hotel under observation. Source: Xinhua

We previously told you about one man's dream to build, and fly a tiny home-made helicopter between live power lines.

• Beijing professor's remarks spark angry protests [AFP] "About 30 protesters tried to force their way into China's elite Peking University on Friday to confront a law professor who said 99 percent of the people petitioning the government with grievances are mentally ill and could be institutionalized."
• Chinese Online Games Market Grew 63% In 2008 [Gamasutra] "New data from analyst group Pearl Research shows that China's online games market grew 63 percent in 2008 to a total $2.8 billion. In its new Games Market in China report, Pearl Research forecasts that the Chinese online market will be worth more than $5.5 billion by 2012."
• The Pavilion Wars [The Atlantic] "The upcoming World's Fair should offer the chance to build a showpiece U.S. pavilion. But thanks to behind-the-scenes maneuverings and State Department incompetence, we may end up with a Chinese-funded pavilion—or no pavilion at all."

• Top 10 Billionaire Cities [Forbes.com] "Hong Kong retains its title as the most popular city for Asian billionaires, with 21 living in the former British colony. … There are two new locales in our list of the top 10 billionaire cities: Chicago and Sao Paulo, which tied for ninth place with Mumbai and Tokyo."
• Thousands of Chinese athletes faking ages in Guangdong [Reuters] Thousands! "The sports ministry in Guangdong Province says it has undertaken X-Ray bone analysis on 15,000 youth athletes and found a fifth of them had misrepresented their age, local media reported. … The result showed 3,000 were older than they claimed, 2,000 of whom were no longer eligible for any youth sport and 1,000 who should have competed in different age categories. Ye said 16 athletes in one event had faked their age and the worst offenders were up to seven years older than they were allowed to be."
• Will China’s Food Safety Law Prevent THIS? [Cleaner Greener China] "Until a couple weeks ago when I picked up this pomelo near my house, cracked it open, and saw the injection mark. As you can clearly see from the pictures below, there is an injection mark and there was an absorption. I must admit that I got lucky when cutting the flesh of the fruit as it came out so clearly, and what is striking about it is the fact that whatever was injected… it did not bleed through to the fruit."

• Primary school students expelled for gambling ring in Guangdong [Zhongnanhai] "There were many cars waiting outside the Huadong (Dongguan, Guangdong Province) Senior High School gate over the last two days. Parents were waiting to take their kids back home, permanently. Over a hundred students in grades one and two have been involved in basketball gambling. All of them have been expelled from school."
• Saint Laurent Chinese Qing Bronzes Fetch $40 Million [Bloomberg] "Both made 15.7 million euros with fees, or 14 million euros at hammer price. The sculptures had been expected to fetch about 8 million euros each, said Christie’s. They were bought by Thomas Seydoux, Christie’s international co-head of Impressionist and modern art, taking instructions over the telephone."
• China keeps wary eye on displaced migrant workers [International Herald Tribune] "Although the government has not released updated information about rural unrest, officials have been strategizing about how best to keep large protests and riots from spreading, should the dispossessed grow unruly. This week, more than 3,000 public security directors from across the country are gathering in the capital to learn how to neutralize rallies and strikes before they blossom into so-called 'mass incidents.' At a meeting of the Chinese cabinet last month, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told government leaders they should prepare for rough times ahead. 'The country's employment situation is extremely grim,' he said."

“领导，辛苦了！"

Hong Kong is hinting that the Chinese mainland might be covering up a new outbreak of bird flu, after a number of dead fowl were found on Lantau Island. So far, 17 dead birds have washed up on Lantau's beaches in recent days, three of which had tested positive for the H5N1 virus.

Zhuhai Police sexes up its own image in a snazzy new television commercial designed to attract more recruits. The ad was produced by the propaganda office of the department.

Thomas Crampton points us to a special fundraiser held Friday night in Shenzhen by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China to benefit orphans. Star of the evening was none other than Presidential-elect Barack Obama's half-brother Mark Ndesandjo. The media spotlight was firmly on him as reporters turned up in full force to get close to Ndesandjo.

Another day, another factory closure, another worker protest. That's not new in Guangdong anymore but with the Chinese New Year drawing close, people are desperate to claim their unpaid wages so they can travel home for the annual reunion with their family. This is an otherwise regular report if not for the footage of the angry crowd pushing policemen back when they tried to stop the NBC crew from doing their work. Outnumbered, the cops could only watch timidly from a distance, quietly video-taping all the goings-on to report back to their higher-ups.

President-elect Barack Obama has a half-brother by the name of Mark Ndesandjo who's been in Shenzhen for a few years now. According to this video report by a Shenzhen TV station (we think), on the day of Obama's victory, Mark Ndesandjo sent a text message to all his friends announcing "新美国来了！” ("The new America has come!"). The video also shows Ndesandjo teaching kids piano at an orphanage and practising calligraphy in his free time when he's not running his Internet company World Nexus. And, oh, he seems to speak very fluent Mandarin too.

A pair of female Siamese twins joined at the belly have been successfully separated by doctors in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The girls are understood to be in critical condition and even their parents have not been allowed to spend time with them. The parents of the twins say that doctors had only told them during their three ultrasound checks that they would have twins but it was not until the day of the caesarian operation did they realise that the girls were conjoined. Four days after birth, the girls were admitted to the Shenzhen Children's Hospital. At that time, they weighed only 4.2kg in total, but grew to 9.6kg before doctors decided to go ahead with the operation. This is only the second case of conjoined twins to be handled by Shenzhen doctors.

Taxi driver strikes have been spreading from city to city lately. China Digital Times tells us of the latest one that took place in Guangzhou:

Cabbies in Guangzhou took to the streets Monday to protest the alleged beating of a fellow cab driver by a government official yesterday evening. The cab driver was beaten by three men after a traffic accident. Related photos, video clips and blog posts were all over Chinese cyberspace. The official media also quickly put out its own version of this protest. Read these stories from Xinhua and Shanghai Daily.

Hot on the heels of the widely-discussed closure of the Hong Kong-listed Dongguan-based toy manufacturer Smart Union comes the news that yet another toy factory — this time a much smaller one — has gone bankrupt. Once again, the local government has come to the rescue, picking up the tab for lost wages that the now jobless employees are demanding to prevent their anger from boiling over. Do we see a pattern for the future?

About 800 cats escaped the Guangdong dinner tables this weekend, as activists from Shanghai Animal Protection Association freed them from "cat dealers" in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. The animals had been locked in small bamboo cages, stacked in a truck, and were to be transported to Guangdong. According to an activist quoted in the Shanghai Daily, about 1500 cats were on the truck, but activists only managed to release around 800 of them.

An international phenomenon that started in China has finally made it back, almost instantaneously across many Chinese media outlets yesterday. The story is that a netizen from the UK who goes by markm49uk found a picture of a factory worker from Foxcon in Guangdong on his brand-spanking-new-straight-out-of-the-box iPhone. The photo is probably the result of someone testing the phone or just mucking around with them in the factory but because the worker is a sweet looking young girl, she has become somewhat of a sensation.

Photo by Aether Woo

From aujourdhuilachine.com:

"Until now, India has been the undisputed world leader in IT Outsourcing (ITO). Now the Indians are looking over their shoulders as China bids to overhaul their lead!"

Photo from Aileen Koh: Be on the lookout for these reddish spots on the hands and feet of your child.

From the RFA Unplugged blog:

Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan have dispatched several hundred riot police to Baima village, where a land dispute has flared into clashes with local residents.

Continue reading "Video: Land dispute clashes in Baima village, Guangdong"