Food safety concerns in updated 'Whys' books for kids

BEIJING - What toxicity melamine and clenbuterol could cause will appear in the sixth edition of most popular Chinese science book "One Hundred Thousand Whys", indicating the country's food safety concerns also spook children.

Melamine and clenbuterol are two chemicals illegally used by dairy producers and farmers, respectively, which have infuriated ordinary Chinese who call for enhanced supervision and more severe punishment for those food safety violators.

Various brands of baby formula are seen at a supermarket in Beijing, Aug 7, 2013. Melamine and clenbuterol are two chemicals illegally used by dairy producers and farmers, respectively, which have infuriated ordinary Chinese who call for enhanced supervision and more severe punishment for those food safety violators. [Photo / Xinhua]

Answers to such questions as:"Can we travel back to the Qing Dynasty?" "Why do we sometimes feel so blue?" and "Why are we who we are and not someone else?" will also appear in the new book.

The latest edition of the popular science book series for children will be released on Aug 13 at the Shanghai book fair, 14 years after the fifth edition.

The book includes 4,500 questions, of which 80 percent are new, with the remaining 20 percent given updated explanations.

Since the release of the first edition in the 1960s, more than 100 million copies have been sold throughout China.

Hong Xingfan, deputy chief editor of Shanghai-based Juvenile and Children's Publishing House and publisher of the "Whys" series, said the sixth edition has questions about paleontology, prevention of disasters, aviation, aerospace, weapons and national defense.

The publishing house collected more than 30,000 questions via schools and online platforms, reflecting what children pay attention to today.

Chinese children used to ask questions like "The chicken first or the egg first?" or "Did humans evolve from monkeys?"

Hong said now they ask questions like "Why do people feed animals clenbuterol?" or "Why do I sometimes feel so blue?"

Sun Yunxiao, deputy director of the China Youth and Children Research Center, wrote on weibo.com, the country's leading twitter-like social network, that the new edition is a "paradise" for children to ask "why?"

"Society will be full of hope, only if each family and teacher provides opportunities for children to ask and think," he wrote.

According to Hong, more than 100 science academicians took part in editing the new book, with answers provided by experts and scientists from various fields. China's first ever astronaut Yang Liwei also contributed to the aerospace chapter by telling his own stories about being in a spaceship.

However, the sixth edition will not provide exclusive or definite answers to some questions. "If every question has an answer, science is dead," said Sun Zhengfan, a member of the non-government science group "Scientific Squirrel" and one of the editors of the new book.

Although the previous "Whys" books were a huge success, there are worries that the new edition will be less appealing.

"Choices of science books for children and the increasing use of online search engines, such as Baidu and Google, have posed great challenges to the classic science series," said Ji Shisan, CEO of science website Guokr.com.