Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 61/No. 42 i Beijing Review

INDONESIA A bridge collapsed after an earthquake and tsunami in Palu, Central Sulawesi. The death toll from the most powerful quake and tsunami in five years to strike the area on September 28 had risen to 2,045 as of October 11, with more than 5,000 still missing SWITZERLAND A Super Puma helicopter performs during an annual air show of the Swiss Air Force on Axalp near the Meiringen Air Base on October 10 UKRAINE Ammunition debris is carried away on a truck after Ukrainian army ammunition depot explosions near Ichnya, Chernigov, on October 9. More than 12,500 people were evacuated in the wake of the blasts THE UNITED STATES People attend the Columbus Day Parade on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in New York City on October 8. The U.S. holiday took…

Every September, He Faping, an employee at Canon (Suzhou) Inc., looks forward to the company’s Mid-Autumn Festival evening party, which took place on September 14 this year. The event has reached a professional level comparable to TV galas or star concerts in many aspects including programing, stage design and live sound and attracted thousands of people. People-oriented development The Canon Mid-Autumn Festival event in Suzhou in east China’s Jiangsu Province, originated from a traditional summer festival event organized by Canon Inc. in Japan. Workers and their families are treated to fireworks, temple fairs and acts including singing, dancing and short sketches. He has attended every company gala since they were launched in 2002. During the activity, everyone can enjoy performances by colleagues and share development achievements from the past year.…

Liu Han used to carry delicacies to eat when she went home in the northwestern province of Qinghai during the National Day holiday week from October 1 to 7. But this year, she had a surprise for her parents. “I bought three electric toothbrushes costing around 600 yuan ($87) for them and myself,” the middle school teacher working in Beijing said. “They had never used such a gizmo before but soon found it useful.” Like Liu, thousands have upgraded their lifestyles during the holiday known as the “Golden Week,” a peak period of consumption and traveling. In recent years, economic and social development has propelled Chinese consumer spending toward upmarket and improved demands and taste. In view of this, the holiday has become an important indicator of domestic consumption upgrade…

Shanghai Expo to Spotlight Hi-Tech When the China International Import Expo (CIIE), the first expo of its kind in the country, opens in Shanghai on November 5, the spotlight will be on hi-tech products and new technology. From industrial robots and aviation electronics to machine tools and radiation therapy equipment, overseas firms are rushing to bring their latest technology to the CIIE to tap into an expanding market amid economic upgrading. At the expo that runs till November 10, Swedish medical equipment producer Elekta will debut two advanced radiation therapy devices in the Chinese market. “We hope the CIIE platform can create more interest from the government, experts and hospitals in cancer treatment and help the industry grow,” Gong Anming, Executive Vice President and China CEO of Elekta, said. Elekta…

Given that a large number of people who go to bookstores do not buy books, but only go to read books and use bookstores as free libraries, some Chinese bookstores have begun to charge an admission fee. A bookstore in Shijiazhuang, north China’s Hebei Province, began to charge a 20-yuan ($2.89) admission fee as of September 18. If a customer ends up buying a book, the 20-yuan ticket can be used as a coupon. In addition, once a ticket is bought, a person can enter the store several times on the same day. There is also a 5-yuan ($0.72) ticket, which allows people into the store but can’t be used as a coupon. The bookstore named A Study in the City was formally opened early this year, but operational costs…

Successful Debut The newly launched high-speed rail link between the mainland and Hong Kong had recorded 880,000 passenger trips, the rail service operator MTR Corp. said on October 7. Since commencing service on September 23, train operations have been smooth, MTR said. The cumulative number of tickets sold, including those sold in the pre-sale period, has exceeded 1 million. The high-speed rail provides comfortable and convenient train services for passengers traveling between Hong Kong and mainland cities, MTR CEO Lincoln Leong said. The high-speed rail connects Hong Kong with 44 stations in the Chinese mainland without changing, including six short-haul and 38 long haul destinations. “As we are still in the early days of operations, there may still be teething issues which may cause some inconvenience to passengers. We will…

Nanpu means the south wind in Japanese. When Jun Okuhara planned to open a restaurant in Suzhou in east China’s Jiangsu Province, along with his Chinese partner Wang Yue, in 2015, he decided to call it Nanpu, since he is from Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan. Located southeast of the Chinese mainland, the prefecture, a famous tourist destination, has had close ties with China for centuries. “We have many things that originated from China and Okinawa-style noodles are one of them,” Okuhara said. “When I decided to serve it in Suzhou, I wanted to indicate that it’s coming back home from the southern islands [of Japan] and show this interaction between us. So, our restaurant was named Nanpu.” The restaurant sits on what has come to be known as…

The gigantic screen in the hall packed with university students shows an image of Dolly snuggling against her “mother.” Dolly, the most famous sheep in the world, became a celebrity even before she was born as she was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell in 1996. The image leaves viewers puzzled. Why isn’t she an exact replica of the adult sheep? Instead, her face is white, while her “mother” is blackfaced. Then British biologist Ian Wilmut, Director of the MRC Center for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, the United Kingdom, steps in to unravel the mystery. In his presentation on cloning, Wilmut, regarded as Dolly’s “father” for leading the team that produced the world’s first sheep through asexual reproduction, explains that the difference is…

Shenzhen in south China’s Guangdong Province is a famous pioneer city of the country’s reform and opening up, transforming itself from a fishing village to a megacity with a population of 12.5 million in the past 40 years. Today, it is world-renowned for its full-scale adoption of electric buses. In 2017, Shenzhen became the first city in the world with a fully electrified bus fleet of 16,359 units, the largest as well. At the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit held in San Francisco in September, Shenzhen’s e-bus fleet was often cited as an example of zero-emission transportation by participants. During a high-level panel discussion on the topic, Wu You, Deputy Secretary General of the Shenzhen Municipal Government, was invited to share the city’s story with leaders of metropolises and states…

What do you get if you have a dead wolf, an elephant and a horse? No, it’s not the start of a bad joke but just some of the artifacts on display at a special effects makeup studio located in the Dachang Movie Town in Dachang Hui Autonomous County of Langfang City, north China’s Hebei Province. Xiao Jin Special Effects Makeup Studio, founded by stylist Xiao Jin in 2010, has participated in the production of the 2014 fantasy film The Ghouls and made over 30 wolves, 40 sheep and 10 horses for the 2015 Sino-French co-production Wolf Totem. Xiao decided to move his studio in Beijing to Dachang as his current infrastructure could no longer satisfy the expansion needs of his business. After some initial hesitation, he visited Dachang following…

On my Chinese language learning journey, I have encountered several invaluable teachers. When I first started learning Mandarin in my native United States, I took classes at an international language center near my home. My first teacher was Fiona, an immigrant from China’s Taiwan. Fiona made it her mission to fine-tune our ears to the phonetic pitfalls of Chinese. She had a beautiful soprano voice and taught us the Chinese phonetic alphabet song. The sheet music to the song had a cartoon of a little horse clutching a microphone and singing karaoke. At one point Fiona asked us to play jian dao, shi tou, bu (scissors, rock, paper). It was quite a spectacle: eight adults playing children’s games and singing. I felt as if I were one of the Von…

Proactive Policy China will adopt a more proactive fiscal policy but will not resort to a deluge of strong stimulus policies, Minister of Finance Liu Kun said. In a recent interview with Xinhua News Agency, Liu said the fiscal policy should be more forward-looking, flexible and effective to play a bigger role in boosting demand, restructuring the economy and promoting high-quality development. He also stressed that the proactive fiscal policy will prioritize four sectors, namely cutting taxes and fees, improving weak links, boosting consumption and improving people’s livelihood. Apart from policies to reduce taxes and fees unveiled at the beginning of the year, China has announced more policies to support the real economy and technological innovation, which will help reduce companies’ burdens by more than 1.3 trillion yuan ($188.4 billion)…

At the end of the 20th century, when Japan’s Fujifilm and the United States’ Kodak were competing for China’s film market, the head office of Fujifilm forecast the market would slump and began to explore other options. They launched a branch in Suzhou, a vibrant city in east China’s Jiangsu Province, and Ji Ruikang, who had been working for Fujifilm in Japan, was assigned to the subsidiary. “The purpose was to develop the digital camera business,” said Ji, now vice president of Fujifilm (Suzhou). Witness to change The branch, Fujifilm Imaging Systems (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., is located in Suzhou New District (SND), an economic development district for hi-tech industries established in 1990. It has witnessed the different stages of the development of the new district. Keenly following the changes in…

On October 15, the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for most banks in China went down by 1 percentage point, the fourth such cut in 2018. The People’s Bank of China (PBC), the country’s central bank, announced the decision on October 7, saying the measure is mainly aimed at optimizing the structure of liquidity in commercial banks and the financial market so that the financial sector can better serve the real economy. Some of the liquidity unleashed by the reduction was used to pay back 450 billion yuan ($65.22 billion) of medium-term lending facility (MLF) due on October 15. In addition, the RRR cut also released another 750 billion yuan ($108.7 billion) of incremental capital, according to PBC statistics. The cut applied to the renminbi deposits of large commercial banks, joint-stock…

There was a long queue at the diagnostic laboratory in Shanghai’s famed art and tourist destination West Bund Art Center. But strangely, the people in the line did not look tense and anxious as they are wont to when awaiting a diagnostic test. The reason for this became clear when one looked harder. The Future Diagnostic Lab was a demonstration of what labs would be like years away, a display booth at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2018. The booth put up by Proxima, a startup providing medical imaging by using artificial intelligence (AI), demonstrated hi-tech virtual diagnosis where visitors lined up for a roleplaying game, being a doctor of the future. By simply clicking on an operation panel, these “doctors” could watch on a big screen how AI technologies…

The 15th session of the China Open tennis tournament wrapped up in Beijing on October 7 after 15 days of competition. Established in 2004, the annual men’s and women’s event features the highest level of competition and has the most players in Asia. It has witnessed the increase in popularity of tennis in China as well as the rise of Chinese players. In 2009, the women’s tournament of the China Open was upgraded to one of four Women’s Tennis Association crown jewel events. (Photos by Jiang Xiaoying) Comments to zanjifang@bjreview.com…