China Scene: North

Dog owners disapprove of cohabitation in kennels

Male and female dogs had to live separately to prevent accidental conception after their owners kenneled them in pet shops in Dalian, Liaoning Province, during the National Day holiday week.

The pet-owners were very concerned about in-kennel conception as they left their pets in the shops during the holiday period while they were out traveling, said Luo, the boss of a local pet shop.

"To cater to the needs of our customers, we and many other shops let the dogs wear special trousers and make them live separately, even when we feed or walk them," he said.

(Dalian Daily)

Soldiers save boy who fell off Great Wall

Liu Song, an 11-year-old boy from Handan, Hebei Province, survived after falling off the Great Wall at Badaling in Beijing's Yanqing County while on a sightseeing trip with his family last week.

The boy fainted and slid 60 m along a steep section of the wall. Seeing him lying on the ground with serious injuries, several People's Liberation Army soldiers that were passing through rescued the boy with their first-aid kit and rushed him to the nearest hospital.

The boy was saved after receiving emergency treatments in the hospital. Doctors said that without the timely first-aid he got from the kindhearted soldiers, the boy might have lost his life.

(Beijing Youth Daily)

Don't mistake the car for a 'water closet'

While getting license plates for their new cars, people on the outskirts of Beijing were put off by a series of plates containing the letters "WC", which were issued to users at a branch of vehicle management in southern Beijing.

Because such a sequence reads so funny, many car owners hesitated to choose plates that day. Some even preferred to wait rather than put the plates on their new cars right away.

"Either way, up to 800 number plates in this series have to be issued in the following days because they were arranged automatically by computer and must be granted to users orderly," a police officer said.

(Beijing Times)

(China Daily 10/12/2007 page6)