Due to open next year, Shanghai’s Line 17 will connect with Line 4 of the Suzhou Metro at the Fenhu Transportation Hub station. Line 17 will act as a western “extension” of Lines 2 and 10, connecting Hongqiao Railway Station with the western suburb of Qingpu. Once complete, Suzhou Metro S1 Line will connect with Huaqiao Station, currently one of the terminus stations of the Shanghai Metro Line 11.

The merging of transportation systems between Shanghai and Suzhou has been a long time coming. When Huaqiao Station was built in 2013 in Kunshan, the Shanghai Metro became the first rapid transit system in China to provide cross-provincial service.

It takes 70 minutes to get from Huaqiao Station to Xujiahui.

Last year, the Shanghai Metro announced a massive expansion that would lay 930 kilometers of new subway track in its downtown core by 2040, and another 930 kilometers in the suburbs. Plans included an unofficial new ring line that would ease traffic on the current ring-shaped Line 4.

Including its Maglev Line, the Shanghai Metro currently has 364 subway stations on 14 subway lines that extend over 588 kilometers throughout the city.

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The traffic accident happened last Friday morning in the City of Lianyungang. One of the vehicles involved had two unidentified foreigners, one of whom was driving the car.

According to Chinese social media, the two foreign men were heard uttering racial slurs including “Chinese dog”; “Chinese people are dogs”, and “fuck you…Chinese dog” in English and Chinese, before the two men started barking like dogs.

The crowd prevented the two men from fleeing the scene, and demanded an apology. Some of the crowd went so far as to damage their car.

The crowd at the scene grew so large that photographs of the incident show police officers linking arms to restrain a mob pointing fingers at the two men as they were escorted away.

Chinese news media like Sohu and iFeng do not reference the alleged racist slur in their reports. Instead, they cite local police reports that blame the incident on the “public’s misunderstanding of the situation”. Police requested that the public not spread false information in regard to the incident.

The post Fender Bender Turns Into Near-Riot appeared first on The Nanfang.

The accident occurred in the Pukou District of Nanjing, Jiangsu. The boy, Zheng Xuanxuan, was playing in front of his family’s business when the van struck him from behind and rolled over him.

Remarkably, Xuanxuan immediately stood up and took two steps before doubling over in pain.

The driver of the van, who failed to remain at the scene, was later apprehended by police. He claimed that he did not see the child, and thought he had just run over a manhole at the time. As seen in the above screenshot, the driver can be seen braking immediately after the collision. Given the ongoing investigation, no charges have yet been laid.

Xuanxuan spent three days in hospital, suffering only minor head wounds, and is said to have completely recovered.

Here’s the video:

The post Watch: Boy Miraculously Walks Away After Van Runs Him Over appeared first on The Nanfang.

To be eligible, passengers must possess valid international travel documents and booked tickets with confirmed dates and destinations.

A 72-hour visa-free policy has been in effect since 2013 for Shanghai and the capitals of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, Hangzhou and Nanjing. Under the new policy however, not only has the duration been extended, but international travelers will now be permitted to enter through ports and railway stations in addition to airports.

The Ministry of Public Security said foreigners can take advantage of the 144-hour visa scheme at Shanghai’s two airports (Pudong and Hongqiao), Hangzhou (Xiaoshan International Airport) and Nanjing (Lukou International Airport). They can stay in the city and the two provinces for six days without a visa, and can also leave the country from any of the aforementioned airports.

There is however one catch: the policy is only offered to 51 countries. They include: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Britain, Ireland, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania.

Earlier this month, China and the UK agreed to allow their citizens to visit each others’ countries under two-year multiple entry visas.

Last November, Changsha and Qingdao both began offering a 72-hour visa-free transit policy for international visitors.

The post Foreigners Can Now Visit Shanghai Visa Free for 6 Days appeared first on The Nanfang.

A truck carrying the cats was stopped by police on the G15W highway in Jiangsu Province. The cats were apparently captured in nearby Suzhou, and were to be delivered some 1,6oo kilometers away to the southern Chinese province of Guangxi, where they are reported to be substituted for rabbit meat or pork.

As reported by CCTV, the news stresses that the animal welfare activists followed the proper legal channels by involving the police. Despite the lack of details on this story, the report emphasized the importance of abiding by the necessary laws and regulations.

In other cases where animal welfare activists have confronted traffickers of dogs and cats, police have acted as mediators between the two sides. If no laws such as quarantine restrictions have been broken, animal welfare activists have rescued captured dogs and cats by paying off the traffickers, buying each of the animals at cost.

There are currently no national laws in China that outlaw animal cruelty. While a national anti-cruelty bill re-introduced last March remains pending, tougher national regulations for protecting animals used in laboratory experiments has recently been proposed.

The post 2,000 Cats Saved From Jiangsu Restaurants appeared first on The Nanfang.

After initially investigating the case back in May, local police finally raided the Suqian plant on November 30. Seven workers were arrested, four of whom were later released.

The beef-like substance was “made” through a process which combines pork, sodium nitrite, and various artificial flavors and seasonings. It is estimated that the plant had sold upwards of 10 million yuan of the meat.

Sodium nitrite is commonly used as a food preservative in processed and cured meats, but excessive amounts can be hazardous to humans. Amines, a class of compounds found in meat, can react with sodium nitrite to form nitrosamines, a cancer-causing agent in humans. The producers were allegedly using such preservatives at levels 30 times higher than safety standards.

In September 2013, Shaanxi police confiscated 20,000 kilograms of fake beef from a meat counterfeiting ring. Throughout the year, a total of 904 suspects were arrested in “meat-related offences” in which some 20,000 tons of illegal products were seized.

Related:

• Markets caught selling fake mutton to street vendors in Shenzhen
• Raid on Illegal Dongguan Abattoir Reveals Tampering with Beef
• China’s Shrink-Wrapped Eating Utensils Are Not As Clean As You Think

The post Where’s the Beef? Not in the Beef at Meat Counterfeiting Plant in China appeared first on The Nanfang.

A trampling incident involving an escalator has injured 16 primary students going to a playground at a mall in Nanjing, Jiangsu.

At around 10 yesterday morning, some 40 to 50 Grade 1 and 2 students from the Yuhuatai Experimental School were going to Happy World at the Rsun Mall as part of their annual autumn outing. As Sina News reports, the kids got onto an escalator to the third floor, but the double glass doors to the playground there were locked. The small platform on the third floor was only three square meters, so with kids coming up the escalator it quickly filled up leading to a pileup and injuries.

Nearly 20 students were on the escalator at the time of the incident. Sixteen were taken to Pukou Hospital, of which five are listed in serious condition and have been transferred to the hospital’s children ward.

Related:

• The Deadly School Stampede: China’s Annual Tragedy
• Shanghai Police Respond to Deadly New Year’s Trampling at Historic Bund Waterfront
• Fainting Passenger Sparks Panicked Stampede on Guangzhou Metro
• One Second a Woman is Riding a Department Store Escalator, The Next Second She’s Dead
• Boy Swallowed Up in Another Deadly Escalator Accident in China

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Having stored some 10,000 human embryos for as long as ten years, the fertility center of the Jiangsu provincial People’s Hospital announced it is destroying approximately 1,000 embryos because donors refuse to pay their fees or cannot be reached.

Similarly, the Shanghai Jiai Genetics and IVF Institute is considering doing the same thing. Of the 71,309 human embryos it currently has in storage, over half of them have been abandoned by their donors.

These two facilities charge between 150 and 180 yuan ($28) per month to store the embryos in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius. According to the signed agreement, the fertility facility is allowed to destroy or use the stored embryos for medical research if its donors do not pay the storage fee for six consecutive months.

According to Chinese law, abandoned embryos cannot be adopted by third parties.

Fertility experts believe that the large number of abandoned embryos suggest that there are other reasons contributing to donors’ reluctance to reclaim their samples. “It seems to be taboo for Chinese couples to claim that their children were born through in vitro fertilization (IVF), therefore they mentally cut themselves off from the hospital afterwards,” said Wang Wei, the Director of the Fertility Center at Jiangsu provincial People’s Hospital.

Sun Xiaoxi, vice president of the Shanghai Jiai Genetics institute, shares a similar opinion. “Maybe they do not want others to know they received IVF treatment,” Sun said.

Sun goes on to say that destroying the embryos is probably a good thing. “Frankly, those stored for over 10 years may not be any good as women are more likely to cross the age to bear children,” Sun said. “Besides, there is not enough scientific evidence that it is safe to use embryos that have been lying frozen for so long.”

Sun also appears to have a sense of humor about the issue. When discussing the massive numbers of abandoned embryos, Sun says “the center did not expect so many people to leave their embryos out in the cold.”

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However, that was back in June. Attention has now waned to the point where the shelter that currently houses the rescued dogs is struggling to stay afloat as volunteers and contributions continue to dry up. Of the 1,381 dogs that were rescued from the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, only 440 have survived, most dying fro illness.

On July 4, the rescued dogs were transported by truck from the southern province of Guangxi to a remote shelter in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, a harrowing journey of 1,800 kilometers that took 35 hours to complete.

But the ordeal was too much for some of the dogs. According to Chang Le, a volunteer at the Hushengyuan shelter that houses the rescued dogs, approximately 200 of them died the first day after arriving.

The rescue did not come cheap. The 1,381 dogs purchased ended up costing around RMB 500,000 ($78,500). But even after the world-wide attention this past summer, donations and volunteers at the Hushengyuan shelter have steadily diminished since then, resulting in less care for the dogs.

“In the first few days after those dogs arrived, we received many donations ranging from medicine to dog food every day, and also many pet lovers across the country came to help us. But now we haven’t seen any pet lovers for some time, and the donations now only come every few days,” Chang said.

Worse, a WeChat campaign to find the rescued dogs new homes has failed to attract attention, resulting in most of the dogs having to remain at the shelter. And while volunteers at the shelter numbered in the dozens when the rescued dogs first arrived, there now are only five left.

Right now, 40 sick dogs are being sequestered in individual kennels while another 400 dogs have been placed into six enclosures. As Chang says, “As there is no vet, many sick dogs died eventually.”

The shelter has an annual rent of over RMB 100,000, and also lacks around RMB 200,000 required to expand. Although China has a growing population of pet owners who are sympathetic to the cause of animal rights, the Yulin rescue operation still faced a lot of opposition online, the biggest criticism being that they won’t be able to take care of the dogs they rescue.

The dog rescuers also have a legal problem in that they transported the dogs over provincial territories without a certificate of quarantine for the dogs, the same violation that animal rights activists were able to pin on dog traffickers transporting dogs to slaughter.

Zhang Zhengzhong, director of the Gaoyou municipal veterinary office, told Modern Express that the dogs should have been returned to Yulin as they lack the legally required documents that prove they have been quarantined.

Zhang said that animal rights activists and animal shelters should seek help from the government, which could send vets from government-backed institutions to treat rescued animals and provide subsidies to support the long-term operation of shelters.

This year’s rescue was much larger in scope than last year’s effort that saved 417 dogs, of which only four died after making the trip to Gaoyou by train. The purchase of last year’s rescued dogs was under RMB 200,000, and they had the proper certification papers for quarantine.

Dogs rescued from the slaughterhouse have faced bleak times before in China. This past March, government workers tasked with removing 89 dogs from an illegal slaughterhouse in Shenzhen inadvertently killed dozens of them because the workers were “too violent” in handling them.

The post Spotlight Gone from Yulin, Rescued Dogs Left to Die as Donations Dry Up appeared first on The Nanfang.

A sinkhole opened up in Xuzhou, Jiangsu, on January 24. It turns out it was created by a basement built illegally by Li Baojun, a representative of China’s National People’s Congress. The sinkhole forced 15 residents to be evacuated from their homes while a four-story house teetered precariously to one side. The hole was so wide it stretched out into the road in front.

Li had previously been penalized for making illegal renovations to his home last July.

Li had not obtained authorizations to build the basement, and many concerned residents had called the local chengguan hotline but their calls were not answered.

Crews have spent three days filling the 1.900-square meter hole with sand and cement. The street has since re-opened, and repairs are underway to fix the teetering home.

Related:

• No Elevator for Your 5th Floor Walkup? Man Builds His Own (Illegal) One
• Guy Builds a Forest on a Guangzhou Apartment Building to Hide Illegal Floors
• Demolition Begins on Hidden Forest House in Guangzhou
• Dongguan “castle in the sky” becomes latest controversial structure
• Police officer busted for having a decked-out illegal gambling den in Shenzhen

Photos: China News Network, iFeng

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