Results tagged “infants”

Taobao - the place where you can buy everything... even, it seems, babies. An anonymous seller put an infant up for sale on the online auction site yesterday for the low price of 1RMB. Of no surprise to anyone who's read of unwanted babies in China - this one was a girl.

China is still lagging behind national and global breastfeeding targets, according to China Daily. Just 45.3% of newborns were breastfed for a full for months and only 20% of mothers breastfeed their infants for at least six months. WHO targets suggest that all infants six months or younger be fully breastfed. Part of the reason has been the "aggressive promotion of baby formula products" which mislead young mothers through exaggerations that their product make babies "smarter" and "healthier." This is despite the whole melanine scandal, which seems to have little impact despite all the unfortunate deaths.

• Bruce Lee's siblings authorize Chinese biopics [AP] "Bruce Lee's older sister and younger brother have authorized a Chinese company to make a series of biographical films about the late kung fu icon, saying they want to produce a historically accurate account of their brother's life. Phoebe Lee and Robert Lee appeared at a signing ceremony with J.A. Media in Beijing on Monday, 36 years to the day after Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong at age 32 from swelling of the brain."
• Chinese News Sites Go Down After Reports on Gov't Scandal [IDG News Service] "Two of China's most popular technology news Web sites went offline Tuesday after carrying news reports that linked the son of China's president to a corrupt African deal. The technology news sections disappeared for several hours from major Chinese portals Sina.com.cn and NetEase.com early Tuesday afternoon, when they started redirecting viewers to general news pages. Both tech sections had carried reports on a state-owned company accused of bribing Namibian officials in the last day, but those reports were missing when the Web pages reappeared."
• A Verdict in China Faces Court of Public Opinion [WSJ] "A local court Monday meted out a three-year prison sentence for Hu Bin, the 20-year-old Hangzhou college student whose reckless driving and reported lack of remorse incited outrage on Chinese Internet portals back in early May. Prosecutors elected to charge Mr. Hu with vehicular manslaughter... rather than “endangering public security,” a much more serious crime punishable by death. The three-year sentence was met by general cynicism (in Chinese) on one of China’s main Internet portals, with many anonymous postings claiming that justice had been bought rather than served."

We don't know if this is what happens every summer in this city, but it seems like this month there have been a lot of really depressing stories about children drowning. First, there was the woman who allegedly threw a two-month-old infant into the river. She has been detained and is rumored to be suffering from post-partum depression. Then a little boy fell into the river near the Yangjia Bridge last week. He has yet to be found. And now Shanghai Daily tells us that a toddler has drowned in a freak septic tank accident in Baoshan District. Someone left the top of a septic tank open and a 5-year-old girl fell in and wasn't discovered til two days later. Good god. So keep an eye on your kids, parents, especially if they happen to be playing anywhere near water.

Bucking tradition, Shanghainese parents are agreeing to have more female children and causing the boy-heavy gender imbalance in the city to decline for the first time in eight years. Boys are now only born 114.8 to every 100 girls, down from 115.2 in 2007. The natural ratio for boy to girl births: around 105:100. Okay, so it's still a ways off from reflecting nature, but any improvement at all is good news for womenfolk (and the menfolk who pursue them). Even better, it seems that the city influences migrant workers - their male:female birth ratio fell from 123.4:100 to a significantly lower 121.9:100. Source: Xinhua

Dumex, the powdered-milk unit of France's Danone, is now under investigation in Shanghai for possibly producing milk powder tainted with melamine. 48 Chinese infants who drink Dumex have allegedly suffered kidney illnesses, though the company says there is no evidence right now that the infants were sickened by the milk powder. Source: Xinhua

From Reuters:

UP TO five per cent of infants in Shanghai could have kidney stones after drinking tainted milk formula, media reported on Friday, as publicity surrounding the scandal was muted by China's manned space launch.

Continue reading "Up to 5% of Shanghai infants could have kidney stones"

Welcome to the latest episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese.

• Zhang Zhenling, Sanlu's vice president, has made a public apology (see video on right) but did not explain why the company took so long to take proper measures in letting the public know about the contamination.
• A second baby has died and 1,253 infants have been diagnosed with illnesses linked to the contaminated milk powder. The Health Ministry expects a 'possibly rising' toll. (Update: Three babies have died, more than 6,244 others have fallen ill, with 158 strickened with kidney failure)
• Sanlu Group has sacked Tian Wenhua, the board chairwoman and general manager of the group. Tian has also been stripped from her post as the secretary of the corporation committee of the Communist Party of China.

Anxious parents queue up yesterday afternoon at Sanlu Milk's main distribution centre in Ruzhou, Henan (河南汝州) to return the infant milk powder they bought from the company. The queues spilt over into the streets and caused massive traffic jams.