Liu Shinan is China Daily's assistant editor-in-chief. He writes commentaries on social and cultural issues.
Extremely "real looking" fake bank notes have appeared in several provinces and cities across the country causing panic among the public because there were reports that even bill scanners failed to detect them.
A middle school in Jinan, capital of Shandong province, set up an "emotion venting room" recently, placing punching bags that students could hit to vent their feelings of anger, resentment, frustration and depression. On the bags were painted faces of the school's headmaster and other officials.
Last Thursday, China Daily reported a bizarre story about the owner of a cheap automobile who "spent a fortune on a lucky license plate" in Foshan, Guangdong province.
It has become common sense to say that "expanding domestic consumption" is the best way China can take to stave off the impact of the global economic recession. Governments at various levels have all drafted plans to invest money in projects to stimulate consumption. The problem is, what kind of consumption will it be?
An outrageous incident happened last week in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province. A woman driving a luxury car deliberately ran over the feet of a waitress who tried to prevent her from parking in front of the restaurant. When the waitress made the emergency call to the police, the woman yelled: "I am not scared; I have connections in the police bureau."
At the "Sex Culture Festival" recently held in Guangzhou, an official with the city's Family Planning Commission advised parents to include condoms in their 12-15-year-old kids' schoolbag to prevent unwanted pregnancy and other consequences.
Last Saturday morning I was driving on my way to an eastern suburban town of Beijing when I turned on the radio to hear that all roads leading to the Fragrant Hill Park were crowded with cars near the tourist attraction famous for its scenery of flourishing red leaves.
Media reported last weekend that pork prices had continued downwards for 10 days, falling to as low as less than 10 yuan ($1.54) per kg. The news shocked me somewhat, for pork price hike was not a too distant memory for me. I searched online information about the market and found that the prices had remained high for more than a year.
If you asked Chinese people what they are most looking forward to or excited about at the moment, I think most would reply: "The National Day Golden Week."
Every year when universities enroll new students, there are always some who stand apart from the average - the youngest, the oldest, the ones who have acquired some social fame before being enrolled, and so on. As one would expect, they are the most favored objects of media coverage of campus life.
A British customer bought an iPhone set, in which he found a few photos of a woman worker on the assembly line of what obviously was the plant producing the mobile phones.
The Beijing Summer Olympic Games proved to be a near-perfect success, not because the host country harvested the most gold medals and the second largest collection of all medals but because the Games perfectly illustrated the Olympic goals of being "faster, higher and stronger" and the ideals of "peace, friendship and progress".
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