Spare the Rod

Summer is a wonderful season for many school children.But for Sun Zhengwen,a 13-year-old girl in Qingdao,east China's Shandong Province,it was a very dark time.On July 8,just days into the holidays she jumped off a building and killed herself,leaving behind a threepage suicide note accusing her parents of violence and abuse. According to Sun's note,on the evening of July 6,her father found that she did not finish a question in her homework assignment.He slapped her on her left cheek,to which she screamed "I lost my hearing," prompting a harder slap to the right side of the face that sent her to the ground,reeling.She wrote that her parents continued to beat her until she lost consciousness,and she did not wake up until the next morning.     

Hill Dwellers Climb Cultural Mountain——Miao people record their identity and history in eco-museum

Instead of running away, she stood to attention with arms akimbo and gave a serious smile. The giant wooden basket on her back almost made her fall as she tried to straighten her body. When I raised the camera, Yang Jiaxiu was walking along a narrow, muddy mountain path in a virgin fir forest, carrying about 50 kilograms of water. She twisted her body to pour the water into a large tank when she finally arrived at her house. Then the Miao woman put down the     

SENDING A NEW SIGNAL

When Su Yiming and her seven former classmates had a reunion party at the end of 2018,it was Su's phone that became the center of attraction.When she took a photograph,the young women were blown away by the stunning features of the phone camera.Su,an office worker, also told them how her new Huawei phone scores over the latest iPhone model.It allows her to have two accounts on popular social media platform WeChat simultaneously,one for her personal use and one for her office use,a feature unavailable on the iPhone.     

Liu Yujing and Her Organic Store

LIU Yujing is a 35-year-old mother of a four-yearold child.She quit her job as a secretary at a foreign trade company years ago to become a fulltime mother,but during the past half year she launched her own business.Liu's return to the workforce has not taken her far from home however.     

CHILDREN AT RISK

Feelings of shame, parental ignorance and a lack of trained psychiatrists lead to a failure to deal with youngsters' psychological problems at an early stage At a party for her seventh birthday in January, Tao Honghong smashed her birthday cake on the floor after wrangling with her friends. Over the next few months, she threw things at the slightest provocation. Her parents tried to get her to change her habit, but were unsuccessful. More recently, Honghong had trouble sleeping and a poor appetite, and sometimes felt lightheaded. These symptoms gradually caught the attention of her parents. Her father took her to several hospitals and spent a lot of money, but with little effect. A doc-     

Reforms Flowing in China's Dairy Industry

WANG Yan is the mother of a one-year-old girl. With breastfeeding over, she is at her wits’ end trying to choose a brand of baby formula for her child. The powdered formula her friend bought for her from the Netherlands turned out to be not suited to the child’s physique. She used a Japanese brand at local supermarkets before an unfortunate outbreak of foot and mouth disease     

Pilgrims'''' Tibet

Tibetan woman in her late 60s leading a six-year-old boy by the hand enters the Jokhang Monastery in Jiasa. The leaves she brought with her she places in a huge incense burner. Amid the smoke, she closes her eyes, puts her palms together and prays. The young boy follows suit. Anyone who enters Tibet is immedi-     

Ethnic Qiang Culture Survives Earthquake

MA Jihui,41,is bent over a piece of embroidery in front of her tent.In the distance behind her loom the ruins of a village - Luobozhai,home to her and hundreds of other Qiang families before the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.Dense cherry trees encircling the area have come into full bloom.heralding spring and foretelling a fruitful summer.Beyond them is a lotus-shaped,snowcapped mountain veiled in fluffy clouds.     

Overdosing on Antibiotics

<正>New research yields insight into China’s antibiotics abuse and its impact on the environment Du,a Beijing resident in her 60s,believes that an antibiotic is a panacea for the maladies of her now 6-year-old granddaughter Guoguo.Du began to take care of her granddaughter since the child was merely 2 months old,for the girl’s parents were busy.She is comfortable with her caretaker duties except when the girl runs high fevers.Then,the anxious grandma will feed the girl antibiotics or take her to a private     

UNITED WE WIN

Wei Shanshan,who lives in Jianghan District in Wuhan,received a call saying there was a package for her from Kyoto,Japan.It was the 26th day of the sealing off of the city in Hubei Province,central China,which is the epicenter of the novel coronavirus disease(COVID-19)outbreak.On her way to fetch the package at the gate of her community,Wei thought to herself,maybe it is from a friend studying in Japan.But she was not sure because her friend studies in Tokyo,not Kyoto.     

Better Today,Better Tomorrow

LIKE her fellow Tibetans in Yamda Village,Doilungdêqên,Drakse knows first-hand how much local lives have improved.She is now 52,and when a little girl in the 1960s,her family of five toiled on a plot of less than a half-hectare,with the assistance of a horse,goat or donkey.After she spent two years in the classroom her parents sadly couldn’t afford any more education for her,and they needed her help on the farm in any case.At age 16 Drakse joined her father on the road building team,earning RMB 5 a day.They had roasted barley flour for all three daily meals in those years,an unthinkable privation for Tibet’s youth today.     

Studying Abroad

Children from middle-class families are increasingly going abroad for university or even high-school education Cai Meng graduated from a junior middle school in Beijing this year.Unfortunately,her grades in the citywide high school entrance exam were not sufficient enough to gain her entry to her dream school.Lucky for her,her parents have a backup plan:sending her to study at one of the top private high schools in the United States.Cai has spent her whole summer vacation preparing for the move with two intensive education programs:one for improving her English,and another to prepare for the U.S.Secondary     

Silver-Hair Service

Innovative elderly care eases aging population's pressureon nursing homes Every day at 11 a.m.on the dot,Xiao Honglian receives a cheerful visitor.Since Xiao,a senior citizen living in Gulou,a district in Nanjing,Jiangsu Province in east China,broke her leg recently,the visitor,a paramedic from a nearby elderly care center,has been giving her physiotherapy for the broken leg so that she can be back on her feet faster.     

PEOPLE & POINTS

正91-YEAR-OLD GRANDMA HELPS POOR STUDENTS Wu Litian, a retired teacher of pingtan, an old art form that combines singing and storytelling, lost her way in a railway station recently. When the police found the91-year-old and took her home, they found the words "Giving will reap the greatest harvest" pinned on her door and, subsequently, discovered her story.     

Life-saving Water Tanks

HUANG Mei'e goes into her dark kitchen, lights a torch, takes a shoulder-pole and two water pails and leaves her home. In the dis-tance, several torches can be seen heading for the other side of the mountain. Since she married and moved to Xiaodong Village, daily life has revolved around the spring in a limestone cave several kilome-ters away from her home. Huang Mei'e lives in Donglan Countuy, Guangxi Zhuang     

New Home,New Hope

正For six years,every time the neighbors asked Zhang Yi where her son was, Zhang would force a smile and say her son was abroad. But Zhang knows her son will never come back as he died of a heart attack at the age of 23.After his death,Zhang cut all her connections to her co-workers and friends and moved from Beijing's downtown to the sub-     

Meeting Best Friends

It was a tough battle for U.S.playwright Helene Hanff who struggled in the 1940s and 50s to find a producer for her work.But more than two decades after her death, the unfulfilled author has found fulfillment in a country that didn't figure in her life when she was alive China.     

The Chinese Language - a New Craze

MARIE is a tour guid from France's Cote d'Azure. She didn' waste a minute of her 20-day tour ofChina. In addition to the usual sight- seeing and eating out in restaurants, she and her companions also attended an intensive Chinese training course. Marie wants to be a Chinese tour guide in her native land. She reckons that as France attracts more and more Chinese students, knowing the language will get her a better job. The current "Chinese language craze" was not inspired simply by the co…     

A New Road to Rural Prosperity

AT peak tourist season, 32-year-old Li Lianfen sees her husband and son just once a week. She has converted her home in Shicheng (Stone City) Village in Beijing's Miyun County into an inn. City people come here to stay and enjoy the beauty and tran-quility of the mountains around her village. As she has no time to look after her son, he attends a primary school in the county seat 20 kilometers away. His father is a teacher at the middle school nearby. They both stay there in the accommodation provided.     

The Changing World of Social Work

WEARING a ponytail, 29-year-old Wang Qi has an infectious smile and a bright, capable look about her. In spite of her youth, she is director of the Donggaodi Community service station in Beijing’s Fengtai District. In the three years that she has dedicated herself to community-based social work, Wang admits that she has had to learn a lot on the job. The residents in the community highly appreciate her efforts.