China Daily
Top News
Cotton pickers from neighboring provinces start arriving in Xinjiang from mid-September to help harvest the crop. Polat Niyaz / China Daily
The sun is sweltering and rows of cotton pickers are bent over in the fields, carefully plucking cotton from the prickly bolls. Among them is Wang Aihong, who, for more than a month, has spent 13 hours a day picking cotton. It is early autumn in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. There is a bumper harvest this year for cotton farmers, which means a lot of backbreaking work for cotton pickers like Wang. But the 40-year-old, who has traveled more than 3,000 kilometers from Liangshan county in eastern Shandong province, is happy. "This is good money for me, as much as I can make," Wang says.
Sunday Digest
China's exports significantly expanded in September while imports resumed growth after a decline in August, suggesting a recovery in overseas markets and a moderate improvement of domestic demand amid a bottoming-out in the world's second largest economy.
Sunday People
Today Shi Yang Shi looks out of place. The tall, happy extrovert looks as if he would be better placed in the landscape of his childhood, in the valley where the Yellow River flows.
Sunday Expat
Badr Benjelloun is not the sort of person who goes to great lengths to keep his hobbies and interests private.
Sunday Image
A group of villagers has managed to cultivate more than 300,000 trees in an effort to rejuvenate Eyuyu Island, a barren plot of land, off Xiamen in Fujian province. When they found the island in the 1980s, there were only five trees. At that time, they were a bigger crowd but the majority decided to turn their backs on the "hopeless" land. Only a few persevered to bring life to the deserted plot and their efforts have paid off. These villagers now have grand plans - they tell Zhu Xingxin that they plan to turn the island into a holiday resort. Watch this space for more updates.
Sunday Sports
Novak Djokovic reached his 10th final of the season when he beat fourth-seeded Tomas Berdych 6-3, 6-4 in the Shanghai Masters on Saturday.
Sunday Life
Down through the ages, both a charm and a curse
Sunday Style
Wang Qian adores jewelry, and Folli Follie is her brand. Every few months, the 27-year-old heads to a Folli Follie store to pick up another ring, necklace, watch or pair of earrings. Why the fascination with the Greek fashion label with the flower motif?
Sunday Food
Where else in the world can you find chefs as immersed in literature as in China? It is also probably the only country in the world where the naming of each dish demands knowledge of rhythm and rhyme, and where the kitchen gods constantly draw inspiration from the scholar's shelves.
Sunday Kaleidoscope
Having established itself in just five years as the most comprehensive and lengthiest event of the 798 Art Zone - thanks to a large number of participating artists, galleries and art centers - the annual 798 Art Festival is turning to play an educational role by increasing interaction between international and local artists and their audiences.
Travel Special
Its beaches are still the color of butter cream, and its water still that pure true blue they call cyan. But other than that, this is a very different island from the one I knew in the 1990s when it was a favorite escape during long weekends from Hong Kong.
