China Scene: South

Truckloads of bees ruin toll collectors' day

Five people manning highway tollbooths were left nursing multiple sting wounds after four trucks loaded with bees passed by in Wuming county, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, on Monday.

The incident took place at about 10 am, when swarms of bees poured from the trucks as they pulled up to the tollbooths.

The toll collectors were stung on their faces, necks and arms.

It took toll collectors more than three hours of spraying the air with water guns to drive away the swarms.

Why the bees attacked the toll collectors is still unknown.

(Guangxi Daily)

Security guard looms over sightseers in Foshan

Kang Jianhua became a star in Foshan's Sanshui district after getting a job as a security guard at a local scenic spot.

Kang, who comes from Henan province, stands 2.25 m high, only 1 cm shorter than Yao Ming, the NBA All Star center.

The tall guard immediately drew a crowd when stepped off the coach at the Sanshui coach terminal on Monday.

Kang's wife is also tall, standing 1.87 m high. Their combined height of 4.12 m makes them the country's second tallest couple, after Yao Ming and his spouse.

Their daughter is 1.86 m tall.

Kang is, of course, a basketball fan.

(Guangzhou Daily)

Chen Xiangjun is considering applying for a new Guinness ever since he successfully bred more than 5,000 crickets within a year in Haikou, capital of Hainan province.

Chen, a native of Xiangfan, Hubei province, bought two crickets for 300,000 yuan ($42,900) in Shanghai and brought them to Haikou in July 2006.

During the past year, Chen, a retired serviceman, has bred three generations of crickets and thinks he could be in the running for recognition as the world's most prolific cricket breeder.

Chen says the cricket raising industry has a rosy future as more and more people on the mainland have been showing interest in cricket fights as living standards have risen.

Chen said he also wanted to develop the China's cricket culture, which has a history of several thousand years.

(Hainan Special Zone Daily)

Macao gearing up for big-ticket mahjong fight

The Second World Mahjong Competition will take place in Macao between Sep 19 and 22 this year.

The players will be competing for some $1 million in prizes, with the champion slated to win $500,000, the biggest purse in the world of competitive mahjong.

More than 1,000 people from around the world are expected to participate in the four-day event.

The event's organizing committee started accepting applications to participate this week.

This will be the competition's second year.

(Wen Wei Po)

(China Daily 04/25/2008 page6)