When the New Number Two Primary School fell, parents, relatives and friends of pupils rushed to the site. Sang Jun arrived about 20 minutes after the earthquake to look for his son. “There were already five people digging,” said Sang. He jumped in to help. His arms and legs, like Bi’s and other parents here, are now scarred with scrapes and bruises from the frantic efforts to pull apart the rubble and get to their kids below. Holding a pair of dirty blue jeans and a blue work shirt stained with blood, Sang said: “I was wearing these. I pulled out more than 20 children … Only five were alive.”

Zhang Chao was recovering from surgery in a hospital nearby. When he heard the school was demolished, he got up and went to help, pulling several bodies from the wreckage.

Down the road, a hefty farmer with a buzz cut named Zuo Jun hobbles with a crutch along a dirt path beside a golden field of wheat. Zuo injured his left foot prying through the rubble in search of his 11-year-old son, Zuo Hao, who appears pudgy with a crew cut and a jovial smile in family photos. At the end of the raised path in the corner of the field is a mound of fresh dirt where Hao is buried. “If the teachers had been there, he would be alive,” said Zuo with a pained look. “During the lunch break, the teachers put two classes together, locked them in and then went to play mahjong. This is what students said.”

“Did quake really kill my little girl?”, The Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 16th May, 2008

Jiang, who comes from distant Kaili city in Guizhou province, was working in the highway administration department in Yingxiu, the town in Wenchuan County at the epicentre of last Monday’s quake. Jiang was working the night shift, so was asleep at the Yingdian Hotel when China’s worst natural disaster in a generation struck at 2.28pm. “I was buried in complete darkness, but my quilt was covering my body; that must have protected me,” he said. “I knew that I wanted to live. I didn’t want my parents to grieve for me. Their voices, telling me to work well before I left home for Sichuan, echoed from time to time in my ears in that darkness.

Jiang’s mother, Long Jinyu, a 52-year-old administrative worker at a vocational school, flew into Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, at 4am on Saturday, then took a taxi out to Dujiangyan city… Police and soldiers were preventing civilians from going any further… They would not let her continue, but when they were distracted, she began to climb the mountain. “I kept scrambling up, sometimes on my feet, sometimes on my hands and knees. I don’t know where my strength came from. I caught up with a team of soldiers heading the same way. I was the only civilian there.” Running over in her mind as she kept travelling on were the words, “Son, hold on, Mum is coming to help you.” When she arrived at the ruins of the town, a firefighter told her a quite stable signal had been found where the Yingdian Hotel had been, indicating there was still one person alive, buried under the pile of tiles and bricks. “I ran up to the ruins, and shouted into them, ‘Erge, Erge!’ - my son’s special pet name from when he was little. “And I heard him answer ‘Mum’. It was like a voice from heaven. I can’t tell you how I felt.

“Mother’s voice saves son”, The Australian, Monday 19th May, 2008

Chongqing Dog (Chongqing quan)

This remarkable looking dog is found only in Chongqing City and eastern Sichuan province. The Chongqing is a distinct and ancient bloodline with no genetic connection to the boxer, despite possessing a strong resemblance to that family of dogs. They were traditionally used by officials and gentry for hunting, to guard property and as status symbols. The breed is even rarer than the panda and little known even inside China. Owners say the Chongqing is a noble, loyal and very intelligent dog.

Formosan Mountain Dog (Taiwan quan)

The Formosan Mountain Dog category contains a variety of indigenous Taiwanese dogs that are defined by great athleticism, triangular features and large, upright ears. They are closely related to other primitive or original Asian dogs and are ideally adapted to living and hunting in Taiwan’s thickly forested mountains. Due to centuries of interbreeding with imported dogs, today very few pure blood Formosan Mountain dogs remain; however, their genetic legacy is evident in street dogs all over the island.

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155 A.D.
Repeated attempts to make pandas fight in the colosseum end in failure.

695 A.D.
Japanese Empress Jitō asks Chinese Empress Wu Zetian to send a panda for her garden. The Japanese are outraged the following year when an exhaustive list of tribute demands arrives written on a sheet of panda skin.

1925
Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. earn the dubious distinction of being the first foreigners to shoot a panda… at the Bronx Zoo. The teenaged Chiang Chingkuo shoots a bison at Beijing Zoo in retaliation.

1964
The transfer of a panda from London zoo to Moscow provokes clashes along the Sino-Soviet border. Hostilities only cease when Chichi is smuggled back into West Berlin in the trunk of a black and white Trabant.

2005
China offers two pandas to Taiwan, but because pandas are called bearcats in China and catbears in Taiwan, customs turns them away on the grounds that the shipment’s contents do not match their description.

* May not correspond to historical reality.

HK Government Should Grasp Opportunity to Control Power Plant CO₂ Emissions
Greenpeace HK press release
20/02/2008

On the occasion of the United Nations Global Climate Change Summit in Bali four Greenpeace representatives riding in two boats approached the CLP Coal Power Plant on Green Mountain (Qingshan), climbed to the top of a 30m high smoke stack and abseiled down, unfurling a 15m by 15m banner which read in giant characters “Climate Murder Ongoing Here”. They demanded that the Hong Kong government directly confront climate change at its source by controlling power station CO₂ emissions.

In Hong Kong residents are experiencing an abnormally cold winter. Actually it is the second severest winter since records began; the first one people still remember as if it were only yesterday. Climate change is already influencing the lives of all people, but power stations, which may be regarded as Hong Kong’s largest emitter of claimte disrupting CO₂ gases, are not subject to any controls. On the 20th of February the government will submit a draft to the Legislative Council preparing to amend the “Air Pollution Control Act” legislation which lays down limits, effective from 2010, on air polluting emissions of power stations. But will the government actually take this opportunity to regulate power station CO₂ emissions?

The Special Regional government has always downplayed the dangers of climate change. Power station emissions account for 70% of Hong Kong’s CO₂ and constitute the territory’s principle source of greenhouse gas. However, till now the government has shown no interest in curbing CO₂ emissions. Only in October last year it issued a report which revealed that it had reached a profit control agreement with electric companies without taking the chance to formulate related policies or provisions.

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