China

I saw only elderly people and children when I arrived in Nali village, home to some 200 people of the Tai ethnic group in northern Honghe valley in Yuanyang county, China’s Yunnan province. “Where have the young people gone?” I asked Li Xiaomei, a Tai woman who at 91 was busy making a clay pot in the same way her ancestors have done pottery for generations.

HEKOU, China - Packed in my luggage for a trip across the Vietnamese border to this town in Yunnan province was a scrap of paper with the name of a woman who works there as a welder. There was also a note from a colleague who works for ‘The Labourer’ newspaper in Vietnam: “You must try your best to meet with the mother and her son, and help them fulfill their wish.”

Whether in Bangkok or in Beijing, many people in the Mekong region find avian flu something far removed from their everyday lives. Yet the signs are all around, as the disease, which affects animals and humans, continues to spread in the region.

DUJIANGYAN, China, Jun 25 (IPS) - China's deadly earthquake appears to have shifted more than just tectonic plates here in picturesque Sichuan province in the country’s south-west.

BEIJING, May 23 (IPS) - China is emerging as a new backer of massive
dam projects around the globe, giving rise to fears for pristine
natural resources and the cultural heritage of river peoples.

 

It was more than a century ago, in 1901, that French colonialists began to build a railway from Hai Phong in Vietnam to Kunming, in China’s south-western Yunnan province. By the time the railway construction reached the terminal in Kunming, it was Mar. 31, 1910.

BEIJING - Since the end of 2005, China has ordered the compulsory immunisation of poultry with government-funded vaccines. But for this avian flu prevention to be successful, all concerned parties must work closely together. Unfortunately, the weakest link in China's system for preventing animal epidemics still lies at the grassroots level. 

Six months are neither long nor short. For most people, life is ordinary, with nothing too exciting. Study, work, rest… it’s the same everyday. Time passes by like this. However, for the sixth group of 13 volunteers who went to Laos from Shanghai, the six months from October 2006 to April 2007 were a unique and unforgettable experience, during which curiosity, joy, difficulty, homesickness, exchange and conflicts were interwoven into their medical and health service and in their teaching of English and Chinese. Reporter Wen Junhua paid a visit to Laos in October 2006 and got a full picture of the sweetness and bitterness of the life of the volunteers.