Driver who hit girl gets lighter term, forgiveness

by Shen Li

THE driver who ran over and crushed a two-year-old girl last year was given a reduced sentence of two years and six months in prison at a court in Foshan, Guangdong Province, yesterday as he agreed to compensation and was forgiven by the girl's family.

The driver, surnamed Hu, was initially sentenced to three years and six months but he appealed the ruling, the local Yangcheng Evening News reported.

Police simulated the accident by placing a toy as big as the toddler at the accident scene and had a man of the same size as the defendant drive the same van through the spot. Police then took measurements to evaluate the driver's state of mind and the extent to which the driver should be held responsible.

After the initial verdict, Hu and other involved parties reached an agreement with the girl's parents and compensated them with 303,000 yuan (US$48,600). The victim family then forgave Hu.

The case stirred a nationwide debate after the toddler, Wang Yue, was shown in a surveillance video on October 13 of 2011 being hit several times on a busy market street in Foshan while 18 people walked by, making no effort to save her.
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Wolf in Sheep’s Skin: Fake and Contaminated Foods in China

When people think of food scandals in China, most people think of the 2008 melamine milk incident, in which six infants died and over 300,000 people fell sick, some with serious kidney complications. Sadly, that was by no means the first time China was host to abominable shortcuts when it came to food. Past incidents include soy sauce made from human hair collected from salons and hospitals (2003), stinky tofu fermented with sewage (2007), marinating duck in goat urine to pass it off as lamb meat (2009), and replacing the blood in pork blood pudding with formaldehyde, salt, food colouring and corn starch (2009).

While certain food scandals get cleaned up and cracked down upon by the government, new ones constantly crop up. So what are the ones that are turning consumers’ stomachs nowadays? Read on for the fake and contaminated food in China that is grabbing today’s headlines.

Wolf in Sheep’s Skin: Fake and Contaminated Foods in China
Photo: vancouversun.com

Fake:

1) Rice
News channels in Hong Kong, Korea and Vietnam went wild when it was revealed that some manufacturers were selling plastic rice for consumption in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, in 2011. The concoction, made with a blend of sweet potatoes, potatoes and plastic industrial resin, has mainly been sold to poor farmers. According to an employee of the Chinese Restaurant Association, three bowls of this fake rice is the equivalent of eating one plastic bag.

2) Baozi buns
Chinese officials have come out saying the multiple reports sprouting from Shanghai in 2010 on fake baozi buns were, well, fake – but most of the Chinese and expat population believe that the government is simply trying to save face. The buns are made from a combination of cardboard soaked to a pulp in caustic soda (a chemical used in paper and soap making), powdered seasoning and fatty pork. This type of shortcut is apparently used all over China, although the original report came out of Beijing.

3) Beef
Since pork is quite a bit cheaper than beef, some restaurants are simply soaking their cuts of pork in sodium borate, a detergent additive that gives it the texture and taste of real beef. The really scary part? Only five grams of this sodium borate is enough to kill a child, while for others it can cause long term poisoning, cancer and deformities. Marinating the cut of pork (or, in some cases, chicken) for only a couple hours can be enough to pass it off to the consumer.

4) Eggs
While eggs seem like a difficult item to fake, the practice has gained momentum this year. And while it is true that quite a process is involved, the cost effectiveness still makes it worthwhile for food scammers. So what exactly is in these fake eggs? That would be sodium alga acid, water, gelatine, baifan, sodium benzoate, lactones, carboxymethyl cellulose, calcium carbide, lysine, food colouring agent, calcium chloride, paraffin wax and gypsum powder, to be exact.

Not Quite What They Seem:

1) Wheat and rice flour
China sure loves its melamine. Mixing it into wheat flour and rice flour artificially increased protein levels in dog food (which was pretty much the same reason they mixed it into baby formula a few years ago) that was shipped overseas in 2007. This resulted in over 4,000 dogs dying after essentially being poisoned to death.

2) Noodles
Sweet potatoe glass noodles, particularly popular in certain Sichuan dishes, are supposed to be made of, well, sweet potatoes (sweet potatoe flour, to be exact). This gives them a transparent but blackish, purplish colour. In 2011, however, a few factories in Guangdong province decided to go a cheaper route and make them out of corn flour instead. And how did they achieve that unique colour? By mixing printing ink, green dye and paraffin wax (normally used to make candles).

3) Baozi buns
Consumers who thought buying baozi from a grocery store was more sanitary than buying it off the street were sadly mistaken when reports surfaced of buns that had passed their expiration dates being given new life by the manufacturer. These stale buns were simply mixed with water, yellow food colouring (which has been declared illegal), flour and so much artificial sweetener that it “exceeded national standards.” As many as 336,000 buns were then sold back to stores as new.

4) Mushrooms
An independent study found that over 81% of fresh mushrooms sold at markets contain levels of fluorescent bleach, which is used to make the mushrooms appear whiter and more recently picked. This study was done in Beijing in 2010 and promptly shot down by the government, but subsequent surveys in the media have found that most Chinese citizens believe the original findings. Luckily, this addition doesn’t seem to apply to dried mushrooms.

Obviously the effects of eating fake and tainted food are numerous. And while it is almost impossible to tell exactly how many people are suffering illnesses or diseases from tainted food in China, current Chinese estimates put the number well over 300 million citizens and cost over 168 billion Yuan a year, according to the Asian Development Bank. Sadly, until food safety is (seriously) moved to the forefront of government priorities, these cases will only multiply.

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Диалог в автобусе. Миниатюра с викториной.

Иностранные туристы (ИТ), иностранка из шанхайских (ИМ), приезжая китаянка, скорее всего – Сюйчжоу (ПК), Кондуктор. Ночной автобус из аэропорта Пудун, кондуктор продаёт билеты по салону. Кондуктор, обращается к иностранным туристам:

Кондуктор, обращается к иностранным туристам: 你们到哪里？(Вам до куда?)
Туристы смотрят на кондуктора.
Приезжая китаянка: She is asking you, where are you going?
Иностранные туристы: Oh, people’s square. (До народной площади)
ПК: 他们不知道去哪里。(Они не знают, куда они едут)
Иностранка из шанхайских: 他们到人民广场。(Они едут до Народной площади).
Внимание, вопрос:
1. Почему китаянка “перевела” фразу иностранцев именно так, как перевела?

По вчерашней викторине

Конечно же, китаянка из вчерашнего вопроса не могла позволить себе потерять лицо. Разумеется, что при этом произойдёт с людьми, которым она пыталась помочь, её волновало мало. Так как мяньцзы – это превыше всего.

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China minibus carrying 66 school children stopped by police

A vehicle designed to carry only a handful of passengers has been caught transporting eight times its legal capacity.

Police in China's Hebei Province were shocked to find dozens of school children packed into a bus that was only licenced to carry eight people.

The bus had been modified to pack in as many children as possible, with four benches replacing the seats.

The children and their teachers were forced to abandon their journey as 12 police vans were dispatched to take the pupils home safely.
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Chinese toddler run over twice after being left on street

A Chinese toddler was run over twice and ignored by nearly 20 passers-by in Guangdong Province in a case that has caused outrage around the world.

By Peter Foster, Beijing

8:27AM BST 17 Oct 2011

It is a story that has deeply unsettled millions in China, posing troubling questions about whether three decades of headlong economic development has left nothing but a moral vacuum in its wake.

It begins last Thursday when a two-year-old girl totters into a narrow lane in a wholesale market in the thriving industrial city of Foshan in Guangdong Province and is hit by a small, white van. The driver pauses, and then pulls away, crushing the child for a second time under his rear wheels.

It is not the accident itself, but what happens next — or rather doesn’t happen – that has left millions of ordinary Chinese wondering where their country is heading.

One by one, no fewer than 18 passers-by are seen on closed circuit television ignoring the girl as she lies, clearly visible in the road, haemorrhaging into the gutter. Not a single one of them stops to help.

The first is a young man in a white T-shirt and trainers. He walks on past the prone form of girl who is by now bleeding profusely, without a second glance.

Next comes a cyclist who wobbles slightly to avoid the dying child and then pedals on, turning his head back momentarily, as if to check he really did see a child dying in the street.

As the pool of blood spreads, a third pedestrian comes by, clearly sees the bleeding girl, but steps out into the small lane to give her a wide berth.

All three could have moved the girl, later named by her parents as 2-year-old Yueyue, but none did, allowing another, larger vehicle following down the lane a few minutes later to run her over for a second time.

The pictures of the incident which happened last Thursday afternoon then show a succession of other cyclists and rickshaw drivers weaving round the girl, including a woman walking with a child who on seeing Yueyue visibly quickens her step, dragging her charge after her.

It is only the nineteenth passer-by, a 58-year-old street cleaner called Chen Xianmei, who drops her bag of rubbish and rushes to the bleeding child, attempting to scoop up her up, but finding her floppy and lifeless.

Mrs Chen, who is only 4ft 7in tall, then calls for the girl’s mother who comes rushing into view, taking up her child in her arms, who is now in intensive care in the military hospital in the city of Guangzhou.

Yueyue remains in a critical condition, a nurse told The Daily Telegraph by phone. Earlier doctors said she had suffered major head injuries and was breathing only with the assistance of a ventilator. The story of Yueyue was the leading item across China’s online news portals as the copies of the CCTV highly distressing footage attracted more than a million viewings in a number of hours.

Many viewers reacted with dismay, citing the incident as further evidence that China had become a “world without morals”.

“Everyone is praising the rubbish-collecting granny for helping, but isn’t it normal to help someone who is wounded or dying?”, asked Johnny Yao on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, “This just shows how abnormal is the moral situation in this society! The sad Chinese, poor China are we even rescuable?”

Others blamed China’s compensation culture for the apparent show of callousness, recalling a famous 2006 judgment when a Good Samaritan who helped a woman get to hospital was wrongly ordered to pay her compensation.

“They didn’t ignore the girl, they just didn’t dare help her,” said one comment among many that said that Chinese law had helped create a fear of intervening.

However many others said there could be no excuse, and that the scenes in the video should “shake the soul of every conscientious person” in China.

“Even if the passers-by couldn’t rescue her, they could dial 120 and 110 [China’s emergency numbers] and help to stop vehicles, then the little Yueyue wouldn’t have been run over by the second car,” said another comment posted by 'Dull Baby’.

“What’s up with people these days? They make so many excuses to turn a blind eye. The society is so indifferent, so heartless.” Yueyue’s father, a man surnamed Wang who was shown weeping with his wife on television news bulletins, said he didn’t want to enter the moral debate, only pray for his child’s survival.

“Yueyue is so lovely, often amuses us. Sometime if I quarrelled with her mother and if her mother cried, she would tell us not to cry, she always tried to amuse us. I don’t have any thoughts now, I just hope my child will wake up and call me Dad again.”
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