Xi Wants People to Waste Less Food

People tucking into their meals, but make sure you can finish everything

Chinese President Xi Jinping wants people to cut down on food waste, describing it as "shocking and distressing".

"Waste is shameful and thriftiness is honourable," he said on Tuesday. The president quoted a poem: "Who knows that of our meal in the dish, every grain comes after hard toil?"

Xi wants people to be more thrifty when it comes to food

The country could be set to introduce legislation to formulate regulations to prevent food waste through various means.

"[We would] advocate a reasonable and healthy dining culture and establish a long-term mechanism to stop food waste," explained Zhang Guilong, an official with the Legislative Affairs Commission, under the National People's Congress Standing Committee.

Zheng Fengtian, a professor of agricultural economics at Remin University in Beijing, said China's food wastage was startling and could only be changed through legislation.

"It would be very hard to curb food wastage through people's consciousness or NGO campaigns," he said. "Awareness and behaviour can be changed by law, just like waste sorting in many cities."

A 2018 investigation by the Institute of Geographic and National Resources Research, and the World Wide Fund for Nature estimated Chinese consumers in four large cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Lhasa) had wasted 17 to 18 million tonnes of food served in 2015 -- enough to feed 30 to 50 million people for a year.

A law could be in place to end food wastage like this

Interesting that Lhasa was lumped in as a major city... is it a hint that Tibetans are wasteful?

"We should always have a sense of crisis over food security, especially amid the fallout of the Covid-19 epidemic, despite China having consecutive bumper harvests in recent years," Xi was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

Earlier this year he called on China's local officials to tighten their belts and live thrifty lives.

But will people be willing to change their habits and order one less dish while dining out? It's the Chinese custom for the host to order more food to show they aren't stingy, so trying to get them to order one less dish may be hard to adopt.

Responses from some internet users were hardly enthusiastic.

Doggy-bagging a lot of food here

"Can you first limit the dining of officials? Don't always take away from the people," one said, referring to formal banquets and lavish meals officials ate at.

"This seems aimed at us bottom class, but we are already thrifty. This means nothing to the rich," moaned another. "I especially hate this kind of political action that means on ordinary people to act."

This commenter took the proverbial cake: "This level of control. Even the number of dishes people order has to be regulated?"

Tearful Reunion

There was intense media coverage of the tearful reunion

Yesterday was an emotional day for three people -- two parents who lost their daughter 24 years ago were amazingly reunited.

Kang Ying, now 27, made an emotional journey to see her father Wang Mingqing and mother Liu Chengying yesterday afternoon with lots of media attention.

Xinhua News filmed the event live as Kang rode a special shuttle bus for over 40 minutes with her husband and two young children, and reporters were constantly interviewing her. She seemed emotionally exhausted, crying periodically that she was finally going to see her birth parents.

Kang Ying (right) hugs her mother Liu Chengying (left)

When she was three years old she went missing in 1994 from her parents' fruit stall in Chengdu, Sichuan. She was later adopted by a single man who lived 20 kilometres away. She was told at a young age that she was adopted and wondered who her real parents were.

Her adopted father drowned when she was 10, but his family raised her and then four years ago she got married and moved with her husband to Panshi in northeastern Jilin province.

Meanwhile father Wang did not give up -- he became a taxi driver in 2015 in the hopes that his daughter might be his customer one day. He also distributed flyers to his customers and asked them to help spread the word of his search for her on social media.

Then from news reports, a police officer who specializes in drawing portraits, read about the story and drew a composite of what he thought the daughter would look like now, based on the parents' facial features as well as a photo of Kang's sister.

Father Wang Mingqing with posters of his daughter

Kang saw the portrait and felt that it could be her.

"It was like I was under a spell during those days," she said. "I kept looking at those reports and the drawing. Like the reports said, I have a scar on my forehead, and I feel nausea when I cry."

She took a DNA test on Sunday and then contacted Wang to say she was his daughter. 

When Kang saw her mother, she cried out, "I'm a child who has a mother. I'm not motherless." Meanwhile mother Liu tearfully said, "It's all my fault", while her husband pushed away the crowd of reporters and onlookers to finally hug his daughter.

What an intense reunion! There was so much media attention that it wasn't fair to the family for something so private to be so public. 

"I really need time to absorb the change. Everything's happened so fast. It's like the people in my dreams have walked into reality and are standing in front of me," Kang said.

Hopefully the family will have some private time to get reacquainted with each other again. But this story really is a miracle. Many children in China who are kidnapped or stolen don't know they are adopted, or have no idea where their parents are because they were too young to know their parents' names or addresses and such. 

There is more attention on these children who were snatched from their parents, and hopefully through more awareness and DNA testing, more of them will find their birth parents.

With so much media attention on Kang's plight, perhaps the government wants to show that it played a crucial role in her finding her parents? Does this fall into Xi Jinping's China Dream? A harmonious society perhaps?

More happy endings please!

Clockenflap 2017: Day One

The 10th edition of Clockenflap kicked off this evening in Central

It's that time again -- Clockenflap, a three-day music festival that kicked off tonight at Central Harbourfront for the second year.

The chilled out DJ Kulu

It was unusually hot today -- 27 degrees and temperatures are expected to plunge to 19 tomorrow and Sunday with some rain patches.

We got to meet a gentle soul this afternoon -- the legendary DJ Kulu -- yep that's his name.

He's from Hong Kong and went to the UK in the 1960s to learn graphic design but ended up in fashion photography instead. He did quite well for himself and grew to have a passion for jazz.

In the 1970s he started DJ-ing. He regularly held parties once a month in his photographic studio and said one time his partner went to India and didn't come back -- so Kulu just started spinning the discs.

He came back to Hong Kong in 1999 and has been seen around town with his trademark looks Chinese robes, straw fedora and Chinese goatee playing at various gigs. He's such a gentleman too, so polite and chilled.

Higher Brothers rapping under the PLA gaze...!

In contrast, Higher Brothers, a hip hop group from Chengdu, Sichuan province was getting the crowd excited as they rapped in Mandarin and a few words in English.

The most ironic thing was them rapping provocative lyrics with the PLA or People's Liberation Army building behind them. I wondered if they could hear what they were rapping...

10 Chinese Cities to Watch

Of all the Chinese cities, Chengdu is considered to have a booming economy

It's interesting to discover Chengdu is considered to have the most successful economy in China, according to a US-based think tank, considering such factors as job growth, foreign investment and high value-added industries.

Shanghai and Tianjin were second and third respectively, while the Chinese capital was 13th in the Milken Institute study.

Shanghai is in second place in the Milken Institute study

Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province was praised for its "human capital, central government support, established industries in high-end aerospace and aircraft design, and a more recently developed electronics manufacturing sector".

The study said mainland cities were developing in two ways: For Shanghai and Tianjin it is about urbanization, industrial clustering and infrastructure investment bolstering larger regional economies.

The other way, due to the slowdown in economic growth, was the focus on technology, private investment and consumption.

This is the first time the institute has ranked mainland cities, assessing 266 at the prefecture level and above, and divided them into two categories -- 34 first and second-tier cities, and the rest as third-tier cities.

Tianjin comes in third with lots of potential for growth

The study didn't just look at economic growth, but also job and wage growth, gross regional production, foreign direct investment and the strength of high value-added industries.

Chengdu may have done well in the study due to having several respected universities and has lower labour costs.

Interestingly Shenzhen just made number 10 on the list, and seven of the top 10 third-tier cities were in Jiangsu province, which has a strong transportation network of airports, highways and high-speed rail links.

The top 10 cities are:

1. Chengdu

2. Shanghai

3. Tianjin

4. Dalian

5. Nanjing

6. Hefei

7. Xiamen

8. Changchun

9. Chongqing

10. Shenzhen

There should be lots of information to be gleaned from this study and potential investors and entrepreneurs should take note.

One Cool Pole Dancing Granny

Dai is very happy to have taken up pole dancing for fun and fitness

We love this story about a 69-year-old grandmother from Chengdu, Sichuan province, who's also a pretty damn good pole dancer.

Dai Dali has made a name for herself, performing on CCTV, and even represented China in Asia's Got Talent, where she made it to the semi-finals. In June she won an award for a pole dancing competition, and since then has had lots of media attention.

Dai attends classes regularly and even has a pole at home

After she retired from working in a bookstore, Dai liked to practice folk dancing in a gym. It was next door to a pole dance studio. She always passed by but never really thought about it. Then one day five years ago, she walked into the studio and asked the instructor if she could learn. The answer? "Of course you can."

She says she didn't know much about pole dancing -- especially its sexual connotations -- she just thought it would be a good way to exercise.

"I'd never danced on a pole before so I wanted to give it a try," Dai says. "When the instructor let me have a go I started to learn. Gradually I learned how to climb the pole and turn around on it. I was very happy to be able to do that."

When asked what her family thinks about her pole dancing, she says they are all supportive. "My husband minds his own business. He likes to play mahjong and we rarely interfere with one another's hobbies," Dai explains. "My 12-year-old grandson is a very loyal fan of mine. I'll show him the new poses I've learned and he always takes pictures of me dancing. My sister used to think it was too dangerous and asked me to stop practicing. But after seeing my performance, she was very excited and also very proud of me."

Check her out in this Asia's Got Talent clip:

Dai has seen a lot of benefits from pole dancing, reporting that the inflammation and swelling in her left wrist has gone down considerably, thus improving her health and fitness level. She loves pole dancing so much that she's even installed a pole in her home to practice every other day for about 10 minutes.

Two to three times a week Dai has pole dancing lessons that are about 90 minutes long. While the vast majority of the students are young women, she doesn't mind, saying: "I don't feel any different from them. I can learn some moves very quickly. I always forget my age."

We love Dai's attitude. She'd rather be dancing -- doing something she enjoys -- than waiting to die, she says. She'll be turning 70 in December, and one thing's for sure, Dai will continue swinging around the pole and having fun.

600 Days Later

Ai Weiwei's selfie with his passport finally in his hand

I follow Ai Weiwei on Instagram and was surprised to see a selfie of him with his passport.

He finally got it!

He wrote: "今天， 我拿到了护照。"

"Today, I received my passport."

Ai has been waiting 600 days for this day to come, when he was detained at Beijing International Airport trying to fly to Hong Kong in 2011.

After that he was taken away and detained for 81 days and prosecuted for tax evasion, a charge that he was convicted of and his studio was fined 2.4 million yuan in penalties and back taxes.

Some may remember that many ordinary people came by his home and folded bank notes into paper planes to fly into his property to help contribute to the fine.

He also later exhibited dioramas, scenes that showed him being detained, and his bare living quarters, how guards would stand close to him while he showered and went to the washroom.

Ai believes the trial for tax evasion was really to punish him for trying to investigate how many children died in the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008. It seems that a disproportionate number of young people were killed because of shoddy construction of schools there.

Today the 57-year-old explained that when the authorities took his passport away, they gave him no indication of when he would get it.

"I only can say why not? They have promised for the past four years to give it back. Now they finally give it to me. They always say it's in the process but I just need to be patient," he told The New York Times.

Being unable to travel severely restricted his ability to organize exhibitions abroad, but his army of staff have been able to help facilitate this. He was not allowed to show his work in China either, up until last month when he had his first solo exhibition in Beijing, a sign that things were looking up.

Ai plans to go to Berlin soon to see his six-year-old son, Ai Lao, who has been living there for the past year with his mother. The artist also plans to get a medical check-up, to follow up on the 2009 emergency brain surgery he had there after he was beaten in the head by the police in Chengdu.

Things are slowly getting back to normal for Ai, which must be a relief for him, but knowing his rebellious character, he will probably continue to criticize the government through his art, though perhaps in a more subtle way. We shall see.

Passengers Behaving Badly -- Again

The emergency door exits were yanked open for some fresh air...

More and more Chinese mainlanders are traveling and it's a booming industry in the country even though there aren't enough pilots to fly them.

However these passengers are quickly gaining a bad rep for their manners on airplanes.

The latest?

Opening up the emergency door exits because the flight was delayed due to snow.

First there was a three-hour delay due to rain from Dhaka, Bangladesh to Kunming. Then passengers got angry when the ongoing flight to Beijing was delayed more than two hours, from 8.45pm to 11pm.

A previous incident where another person opened the door

Some passengers initially refused to re-board the plane, demanding compensation, but finally they were coxed onto the plane by 1.40am. However it took more than an hour to clear snow from the plane, so when the aircraft finally began taxing at 3.17am -- more than seven hours behind schedule, some passengers pulled open three emergency door exits, forcing the pilots to stop the plane and return to the gate.

A person on Weibo reported -- and then the post was later deleted -- that the pilot exchanged angry words with the passengers. The post said the air conditioning was turned off at 3am and some passengers complained it was hard to breathe, and asked to get off the plane for fresh air, but the air crew refused.

The Weibo post then reported that the pilot shouted: "Are you going to die soon? If not, just wait."

Then the plane began moving, catching some passengers off guard, causing them to fall over.

The incident has sparked debate in China, with some blaming the pilot for not handling the situation well, while others believe passengers should not be pulling open emergency doors.

There's another incident of an apparently illiterate farmer who was caught smoking in the washroom of the plane and was fined HK$2,000 and had to give up his travel documents.

How about some kind of explanation of why it's crucial to clear snow off a plane before it takes off?

Some women were caught in a brawl over a crying baby

Another well-known incident from last month was when four passengers made a scene, scalding the flight attendant with hot water from instant noodles and threatening to bomb the plane due to a row over seating arrangements.

Then there was the passenger flying from Hangzhou to Chengdu who yanked open the emergency door just before take off to "get some fresh air".

Oh and don't forget about a cat fight on a flight from Chongqing to Hong Kong about a bawling baby...

How is China going to teach its 1.3 billion people about airline etiquette and safety? It seems like the motherland assumes its children know how to behave on planes without even giving them instructions...

Or perhaps it's because the Chinese are tired of being treated badly by their superiors that now as passengers, they feel entitled to their idea of just treatment?

China, you've got a long way to go, baby

Parting Shots

Gary Locke making one of his final speeches in Beijing as US Ambassador

US Ambassador to China Gary Locke left Beijing today after two-and-a-half years in the post.

Many Chinese citizens were taken with him, from carrying his own bags to using coupons to buy Starbucks coffee.

But during his time in Beijing, his diplomatic skills were put to the test twice.

First was in February 2012 when Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai's former right hand man fled to the US Embassy in Chengdu and may have requested for political asylum but was denied and forced to surrender to security officials.

Then in April that year blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng made a daring escape from house arrest and fled to the US Embassy in the Chinese capital. Locke may have bungled this incident as he left Chen behind in the hospital and wasn't able to get in contact with him again nor promise security.

Nevertheless, in the end Chen and his family were able to fly to the United States, thus defusing a possible conflict with China as then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was visiting China.

In his farewell remarks to a group of young Chinese, Locke encouraged the mainland to accept more criticism within and outside the country.

"China should have the national self-confidence to withstand the media scrutiny that most of the world takes for granted," he said. Locke also stressed the importance of rule of law and human rights.

However, a Chinese state media outlet seemed too pleased to see Locke leave.

China News Service is the second-largest news wire service after Xinhua and it didn't hesitate to call the Chinese-American a "yellow-skinned white hearted banana man".

In addition to using a number of racist descriptions of the ambassador, China News Service said: "Mr Locke not only does not understand the writing of his ancestors, but also failed to understand Chinese law. He particularly likes to gesticulate profusely and criticize indiscriminately Chinese domestic affairs".

"Every time US officials visited China, Mr Locke would send a report and talk up China's so-called human rights and Tibetan issues, suggesting to US officials to use the opportunity to pound China," it said.

"If your ancestors had known about [your professional record], they would have thrown you out of the house."

The news agency even accused Locke of exploiting Beijing's horrible air pollution as a publicity stunt.

And China claims it is using its soft power to influence the world? This commentary is hardly diplomatic -- in fact it gives a schizophrenic view of the mainland as a two-faced country that tries to give a modern and fresh impression, but in fact is vile and black-hearted.

Being racist is somewhat amusing as Locke is ethnically one of them, but the Chinese don't see it that way. If you're American with a Chinese face, you're considered American...

Is this the real face China wants outsiders to see?

Zaijian, Mr Locke

Gary Locke with his family when they first arrived in Beijing

US Ambassador to China Gary Locke has tendered his resignation and will leave the post in January to join his family in Seattle.

He was in the job for two years and it must have been interesting for the third-generation Chinese-American to see his grandparents' homeland.

Locke quickly endeared himself to the ordinary Chinese when he was spotted flying economy class, carrying his own luggage and trying to pay his Starbucks coffee with coupons.

But his tenure quickly escalated into international news -- twice.

He endeared himself to the Chinese for being humble

The first was in November 2011 Locke visited Chongqing where he met the then party chief Bo Xilai. Three months later Bo's right hand man Wang Lijun fled to the US consulate in Chengdu and told of the story of a murder that implicated Bo and evidence of corruption in the hopes of receiving asylum in return.

In the end there wasn't enough justification for the US to take him in and this led to Bo's downfall which we saw a few months ago.

Then last May blind activist Chen Guangcheng managed to escape illegal house arrest in Shandong and fled to Beijing and sought refuge in the US Embassy.

This created a huge diplomatic crisis for the US, as then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was about to arrive for scheduled talks and didn't want this incident to anger the Chinese.

At first the embassy didn't want to confirm Chen was there, but in the end said it accepted him on humanitarian grounds and medical assistance.

He will be forever remembered in helping Chen Guangcheng

Perhaps Locke's misstep was leaving Chen alone in a Beijing hospital to get his foot looked at because he broke it while escaping; as a result Chinese security stepped in, and Chen was unable to contact the embassy, nor were US diplomats able to see him. This made Chen anxious and felt abandoned, even betrayed.

In the end negotiations were made for Chen and his family to go to New York.

Some speculated that Locke is leaving because of the increasingly bad air quality in Beijing, but the consulate denies this. Nevertheless his family has already moved back to Seattle and so it would only be a matter of time before he rejoined them.

So what's next for Locke? Surely he won't be out of the headlines for long.