China Scene: North
Moral: If you donate blood, don't overeat
The number of blood donors in Beijing doubled during the lunar new year holiday as many chose to celebrate the festival in a special way.
During Spring Festival, Beijing collected 2,915 bags of blood, 200 cubic centimeters
each, from volunteers, twice the amount on ordinary days, the Beijing Red Cross Blood Center reported. The Bloodmobile stationed on Wangfujing Avenue averaged nearly 50 donations a day. However, nearly half of the donors were refused because of a high level of fat or transaminase, a result of holiday overeating.
(China News Service)
Teacher converts cans into famous panorama
A 72-year-old retired primary school teacher in Tianjin Municipality spent a year using about 70 pop-top cans to make a 4.5-meter collage, which was displayed last weekend at a temple fair.
It was the first pop-top collage version of the
"Riverside Scenery on Pure Brightness Festival" one of the classical paintings of the Northern Song Dynasty (AD 960-1127), which features a panorama of daily life, business activities and social interaction in Kaifeng, then the capital of ancient China. By cutting pop-top cans and putting them together, Song Rufeng depicted 685 people, 80 animals and 25 boats in the collage, which she hopes will be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
(Daily Update)
Pig-year babies boom already in Shenyang
The Woman and Baby Hospital in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, began its own baby boom during Spring Festival 80 babies born in the first seven days of the lunar new year.
Many babies were born by Caesarean section rather than normal labor. The parents believe that 2007, the Year of the Golden Pig, will be a prosperous and auspicious time for newborns. Many doctors and nurses had to work overtime to help with delivery; some even gave up their holidays altogether.
(Shenyang Evening News)
Shoplifting ex-teacher starts serving jail time
A retired teacher in Haidian District of Beijing began serving a sentence of 13 months last weekend for shoplifting, which also dragged her family into the mire.
The woman, surnamed Qiao, was so addicted to shoplifting that she stole almost everything when she shopped. One of her rooms was fully loaded with stolen goods. She was caught red-handed at a supermarket last year. Police also charged her husband and son as accomplices, saying they carried some of the stolen items back to their hometown in Shanxi Province. The status of their case is unknown.
(Beijing News)
Railway station clerk saves hobbling woman
A clerk at Shenyang Railway Station in Liaoning rescued an elderly woman with poor hearing last Thursday before a train hit her.
Intending to take a shortcut to the platform where her train would arrive, the old woman used a crutch to hobble across an adjacent track, apparently unaware of an approaching train. Han Qiuling, the clerk, saw the danger and rushed at the woman and pulled her away just as the train rumbled toward them.
(www.sohu.com)
Sculpting on rice grains turns into necklace sales
A middle-aged woman from Cangzhou, Hebei, can sculpt as many as eight Chinese characters, mostly lucky words or a blessing
such as "happy birthday", from a grain of rice by using a fine needle.
It takes only a few minutes for the folk sculptor, surnamed Li, to produce the characters on an ordinary grain of rice, and then several grains make up a necklace.
The rice necklaces she carves became popular among local young people during Spring Festival. Li could earn as much as 200 yuan ($24) a day by selling them.
(Yanzhao Evening News)
(China Daily 02/28/2007 page6)
