May 2
Another public holiday in China, another mountain of trash. The front page of the Haixi Morning Post (海西晨报) from Xiamen today is one of a few newspapers around China looking back on a public holiday of gridlocked traffic, congested scenic spots and – inevitably – mountains of trash, again.
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Apr 12
The newspaper Daily Sunshine (晶报) from Shenzhen in Guangdong province today includes a special section entitled “Evil returns from the grave” (恶的还魂) (or perhaps another translation could be “The recycling of evil”) as a “reflection on the relationship between animals and humans”. The largest part of the newspaper’s front page is taken up by a Xi Jinping headline and a large image on the ongoing standoff on the Korean peninsula. The top corner of the front page refers to the sudden cancelling of the Tarantino film Django Unchained. Read more
Mar 28
Just see Swallow in action – China’s champion search and rescue dog in the making. Read more
Mar 27
At the north-eastern corner of Anhui University’s old campus in Hefei, capital of Anhui province, there’s a scenic pond that’s inhabited by a bevy of black swans. The swans have been there for more than a decade already, and were – as the front page of local newspaper Star News (市场新报) laments today – an object of fondness for locals.
The black swans at Anhui University in happier times
Yet early this morning, five of these black and beautiful swans were found floating lifeless on the surface of the pond. The latest instance of floating dead animals in China – first pigs, then ducks, and now black swans – these mere five black swans became an object of heated discussion on the Internet right after the announcement was made.
How did they die? Was it a natural disaster or another man-made one? As Star News tells us today, upon hearing of the news yesterday it immediately sent a journalist to the scene to find out exactly what happened. What he found was just one more filthy pond filled with oily water and garbage. Read more
Mar 22
Has tragedy become farce? As the vile mystery of several thousand dead pigs floating down rivers in Shanghai continues to roil, Chinese newspapers today report that a thousand dead ducks have been found floating down a river in Sichuan, and fifty dead pigs (mostly piglets) have been found stranded on a shoal in the Xiangjiang River in Changsha, Hunan province.
Yet there’s no need to panic, the newspapers point out, the ducks and pigs have all been buried and no sources of drinking water have been polluted. No, only our own souls remain polluted with the stench of rotting animals cast into rivers to float out of sight and out of mind.
Feb 25
There is a little stretch of river in the city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province where black water meets an endless stream of human filth. The place apparently doesn’t have a name, but some online commentators have referred to it as Black Dragon River (黑龙江), substituting the name of one of China’s provinces to highlight the overwhelmingly black color of the river. The local people who endure living in this place have simply taken to calling it the Stinking Sewer (臭水沟). Located right next to a number of factories as well as an electronic wholesaler and resident blocks – all of whom disgorge their garbage straight into the river – Black Dragon River is already for years now a black, stinking hole.
Naturally online commentators have offered various amounts of money for the head of the local environment protection bureau to take a swim in Black Dragon River. Yet as one journalist from Shenzhen Evening News went to see for himself, people do live there, and have been doing so for years. All this time, Black Dragon River has been black and filthy. Read more
Jan 7
When a user snapped and posted on Weibo a picture of trees mysteriously uprooted on a road in Ningbo and then left there to die, a journalist picked it up and decided to investigate. What he found was no massive corruption scandal, flagrant malfeasance or incompetence; just bad management and professional neglect that left all the many trees over a ten kilometer stretch of road uprooted, and slowly dying in the open, one by one.
Also, we mention a few other stories from China’s newspaper front pages today:
Dec 3
It is well-known that the Chinese river dolphin, also known as the Baiji, is functionally extinct, in other words: as good as gone forever. The freshwater finless porpoise (江豚), on the other hand, which like the Baiji also lives in China’s Yangtze river, is currently endangered and seems to be heading for the same fate. In November, a 40-day scientific expedition was launched to carry out a survey of finless porpoises in the Yangtze river, and a journalist from Star News (市场新报) from Anhui province was invited along to capture in prose the few moments when the finless porpoise was sighted in an environment that is gradually dispelling them to the verge of extinction. Read more
Nov 22
Pollution in Ningbo has apparently been very bad of late, with ubiquitous fog, occasional dust storms and a gloomy dusk hanging over the city like a “layer of cotton yarn”. So the local Modern Express (现代快报) from Zhejiang province decided to try and find out why. The front page of this newspaper today asks “Why has Ningbo’s air quality been so bad of late?” To get some answers, the newspaper turned to an official at the city’s environmental monitoring department, who blamed normal local weather conditions for trapping the dust kicked up by all the construction in the city. Read more
Nov 20
When Peng Jun (彭军) graduated in 2011, he was all set for a career in the city and stepping up the ladder of social progress. Yet at a time when the norm is to seek to build your own fortune in the world and raise a family, Peng decided to do something completely different. He left his prospects in the city, and joined a programme for sending teachers to rural schools while working for a minimal salary. Finding himself in a small rural school in a mountainous area of Hubei province, Peng came into his own, devoting himself to the comprehensive education of his students, while developing novel teaching techniques for “joyful”, “creative” and even self-critical education. In the face of a pitifully low salary and the resistance of his parents, Peng found his rural teaching job to be his dream job. The front page of the Wuhan Morning Post from the capital of Hubei province today recounts the story of a man whose selfless devotion to the education of underprivileged kids can serve as an inspiration in times when a self-centred and narcissistic pursuit of wealth is often the norm. Thanks to Weibo, Peng’s story is now front page news.
Oct 11
It has often happened in China that buying a dog can turn into a nightmarish experience. The same little puppy that looked so lively in the shop window would suddenly become sick beyond help and die. The front page of the Beijing Morning Post today features a harrowing investigation into the dirty secrets of the pet dog market in China.
Oct 9
Yesterday was the last day of the first ever Sunflower Festival, which attracted 200,000 visitors over 18 days to Pujiang (浦江) in Zhejiang province to appreciate these beautiful flowers. But as the front page of the Youth Daily from Shanghai laments today, when all the tourists were gone, it was found that many of them had damaged the flowers by scratching smiley faces on them, or had given the flowers a ‘bald’ look. If you can stomach it, the Youth Daily front page today has graphic images of the deflowered, ‘smiling’ sunflowers, and asks: Sunflowers, why are you laughing but it looks like you’re crying? The Youth Daily is clearly fed up with all the damage and litter inflicted during the Golden Week holiday, and ends with an impassioned plea for tourists in China to act more civilized. Read more
Oct 5
This is the Thinking China Digest, a weekly roundup of recent essays and articles published on the Chinese web, with links to translations on the Marco Polo Project.
This week’s digest is taking us through various aspects of China’s urbanization process. Zhang Tianpan and Wei Yingjie’s pieces reflect on the tension between development and heritage preservation by looking at recent projects in Kaifeng and Nanjing. Zhou Qiren considers why the rate of urban land use is increasing more quickly than that of urban population. Finally, Lang Yaoyuan proposes Australian cities as a model of harmonious urban planning, contrasting them with China. Read more
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