Chinese actress-turned-director Xu Jinglei became the world’s most widely read blogger this month when her blog logged 100-million page views within about 600 days. And Xu, who has a reputation for a high intellect and integrity, has done it without writing about sex or providing a catalogue of kiss-and-tell stories.
Thirty-seven people died in a 16-hour thunder storm in south-west China that caused heavy flooding and brought air, road and rail traffic to a halt, the government and state media said on Wednesday. Chongqing municipality received 266,6mm of rain between Monday night and Tuesday afternoon, the largest volume since records began in 1892, Xinhua news agency said.
The United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday that North Korea had shut down its nuclear reactor and four related facilities, a major step in efforts to get it to give up its nuclear-weapons programmes. The announcement came as negotiators at six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme sat down to a first day of talks in Beijing.
A controversial Starbucks coffee shop in the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace at the heart of Beijing, has closed its doors after years of opposition. A campaign for its closure has been brewing since early this year, when a television anchor complained about the American chain’s presence in the symbol of the Chinese nation.
Bones and skeletons have disappeared from the Chinese version of the popular online fantasy game World of Warcraft, sparking fierce criticism from the nation’s army of players, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday. The skeletons, regular characters, grow flesh in the new version.
Accidents at Chinese coal mines killed nearly 1 800 people in the first half of this year, 14,3% fewer than in the same period of 2006, the Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday. But while overall deaths declined, there were more accidents where the toll numbered between 10 and 30.
People living in communities surrounding a large shallow lake in China have been overrun by field mice after flood waters drove the rodents out of islands on the lake, state media reported on Monday. The mouse invasion began on June 23 when the Yangtze River flooded, raising the water level in central China’s Dongting Lake.
China risks damaging its global credibility if it does not tackle its food and drug quality problems, an official newspaper said amid a series of health scares. China’s safety failings have drawn world attention since mislabelled chemical exports were found in cough syrup in Panama and pet food in the United States.
An illegal stash of mining explosives was probably to blame for a nightclub blast that killed at least 25 people in north-east China, media reports said on Friday. The explosion ripped through the Liaoning province club, killing at least 25 and injuring 41, including eight young girls holding a birthday party.
An explosion in a nightclub in north-east China killed 25 people and injured 33, state media reported on Thursday as investigators sought to pin down the cause. The blast hit an entertainment club in Benxi county, Liaoning province, at about 9pm (1pm GMT) on Wednesday, the China News Service reported.
A tornado swept across eastern China, killing 14 people and injuring 146, state media reported on Wednesday, the latest casualties from bad weather that has devastated parts of the country this summer. The tornado hit three villages around Tianchang in Anhui province on Tuesday, destroying more than 100 houses.
Athletes and visitors heading to Beijing for the Olympics should not be concerned by recent Chinese food scandals, as many safety measures are being put in place for the Games, city officials said. International alarm over Chinese food exports has been building for weeks amid reports of toxic produce endangering lives in the United States and other countries.
Chinese archaeologists have discovered an ancient and mysterious subterranean building near the tomb of the nation’s legendary first emperor, state media reported on Sunday. The building is hidden inside a 51m-high, pyramid-shaped earth mound on top of the tomb of emperor Qinshihuang in north-west China’s Shaanxi province.
Beijing’s long-suffering taxi-drivers are in the cross-hairs once again — with shaved heads to be banned from the driving seat ahead of next year’s Beijing Olympics, a report said on Thursday. Just two months after women taxi drivers were banned from wearing "too-fancy" hairstyles, new rules will outlaw beards and shaved heads for the men.
At least 48 people have been killed in rainstorms in southern and eastern China over the last five days, with 37 succumbing to lightning strikes, state media reported on Tuesday. Twelve people remain missing following the storms, which drenched areas, including the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the Xinhua news agency said.
Zhou Fenying is a living witness to the dark history that still poisons China’s relations with Japan more than 60 years after World War II. When Zhou was 22, Japanese soldiers came to her village in eastern China, grabbed her and her sister-in-law and carted them off to a military brothel, she says.
A Beijing hospital is preparing to treat injuries that might occur if next year’s Olympics are hit with a ”terrorist nuclear attack,” the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday. Beijing municipal officials said a drill would be held next month to test readiness to handle a dirty bomb attack.
A company in eastern China was ordered to stop production after food safety officials found it was repackaging the filling from two-year-old rice dumplings. Officials in east China’s Anhui province ordered a recall of all ”zongzi”, a traditional snack made of glutinous rice and other fillings usually wrapped in bamboo leaves.
China has censored part of the latest instalment of hit Hollywood movie Pirates of the Caribbean for ”vilifying and defacing the Chinese”, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday. The role of Hong Kong star Chow Yun-Fat, who plays pirate lord Captain Sao Feng, had been slashed in half to just about 10 minutes of screen time.
One of the world’s top fossil hunters unveiled a previously unknown gigantic, chicken-like dinosaur on Wednesday that may change evolutionary theory on prehistoric animals. The remains of the animal, thought to have weighed 1Â 400kg, was discovered in a freak find by Xing Xu in the Erlian basin in Inner Mongolia.
A teenage Chinese gymnast who broke her neck at the national championships on Sunday is likely to be at least partially paralysed for life, according to state media. Wang Yan (15) fell into a coma after landing head-first on the mat after catching her leg during the dismount from the uneven bars.
A Chinese court has jailed two officials after they let a blind contractor build a bridge which collapsed during construction and injured 12 people. Huang Wenge, township head of Bujia in Jiangxi, and colleague Xia Jianzhong were sentenced to 18 months and one year in jail, respectively, for not stopping the project.
Police in China, where most of the 1,3-billion people share just 100 surnames, are considering rules which would combine both parents’ family names to prevent so much duplication, state media said on Tuesday. At least 100 000 people share the name ”Wang Tao”, the China Daily said, citing the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Torrential rain has killed at least 71 people in floods, house collapses and rockslides across southern China with more heavy rain predicted for much of this week, state media said on Monday. About 643 000 people were evacuated and 56 000 houses destroyed and 104 000 damaged, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Torrential rain has killed at least 66 people in floods, house collapses and rockslides across southern China with more heavy rain predicted for much of this week. Flooding had damaged 94 00 houses and destroyed 48 000 in the region and forced the evacuation of about 591 000 people.
A clerk with no knowledge of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown allowed a tribute to victims slip into the classified advertisements page of a newspaper in south-west China. An investigation was launched by Chinese authorities to find out how the advertisement slipped its way past censors.
About 180 000 people have been evacuated from their homes in China’s south-west following a powerful earthquake that killed at least three and injured 313, the official Xinhua agency said on Monday. The tremor shook the tea-producing city of Pu’er early on Sunday morning, bringing down over 90 000 rooms and crushing a four-year-old boy.
China sought to defend its role in Africa on Monday ahead of this week’s G8 summit, saying its long friendship with the continent was a force for good. some G8 ministers are worried Beijing is too willing to lend money without strings to African countries.
A strong earthquake hit a tea-making city in south-west China on Sunday, killing at least two people, injuring 200, causing houses to collapse and damaging roads, Xinhua news agency and a local official said. The quake shook the city of Pu’er and the surrounding area in mountainous Yunnan province in the early morning when most people were asleep.
China urged the international community on Thursday to show patience with Sudan and said new sanctions would only complicate efforts to implement a United Nations peace plan for Darfur. The United States imposed unilateral sanctions on Sudan earlier this week and sought support for an international arms embargo.
All religious artefacts in places of worship in Tibet belong to the Chinese state, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday, in Beijing’s latest attempt to exert control over religion in the restive Himalayan region. Beijing is wary of religious groups and has jailed Tibetan monks and nuns it accused of stoking ”separatism”.
More than 20% of toys made in China for its domestic market are substandard or potentially dangerous, state media said on Tuesday in the latest example of the country’s lax consumer-product controls. At least 10 000 children are hurt by dangerous toys each year, the China Daily newspaper said.