Profiles of Chinese affected by the world financial crisis:

WANG HAO, GEOLOGICAL ASSISTANT, MU COUNTY, TIBET AUTONOMOUS REGION

I work for a copper exploration company, a joint venture run by a British mining firm and a Chinese mining bureau.
I feel the economic pressure in this industry. Metal prices are going down and I am worried that investors in Europe and the US will also reduce their exploration activities in China.
What people think about the metal sector thousands of miles away affects my livelihood here - even though I feel very removed from it.
I work and live in an extremely rural area. The scenery is beautiful, especially in the summertime. It’s getting cold now and the landscape is barren. We are planning to shut down the project temporarily because it is simply too cold….

Wuhan zookeepers give chicken soup to stressed out pandas:

“BEIJING (AP) — Everyone needs some chicken soup for the soul — even pandas.

The Wuhan Zoo in central China has been feeding its two pandas home-cooked chicken soup twice in a month to reduce stress and give them a nutritional boost, a zoo official said Friday.

He Zhihua said 3-year-old Xiwang and Weiwei — literally meaning “Hope” and “Greatness” — were tired and suffering from a little shock since the start Monday of the weeklong National Day holiday, one of the biggest travel seasons of the year.

On Wednesday, up to 30,000 people swarmed the zoo and about 1,000 tourists packed the panda enclosure, shouting to get the animals’ attention, He said. The pandas paced restlessly…”

Don Lee writes about his own life in Shanghai amid food scares:

A friend here who frequently travels to Los Angeles returned to Shanghai last week with a suitcase stuffed with infant formula to give to his Chinese staff members. If you see less formula on your supermarket shelves, you’ll know why.

Though the government has tried to tone down news reports on the crisis, the topic is on everybody’s mind, if not his or her lips. My barber said he was feeding his baby formula from South Korea. My Chinese tutor, father of a 6-month-old boy, said he hoped his wife would breast-feed for as long as possible. If not, they could hire a wet nurse, though they are in high demand now.

Since moving to Shanghai in the summer of 2004, my wife and I (we have three children) have tried to be careful about what we eat and where. We avoid street vendors, red meat and unpeeled fruit. Before ordering at restaurants, we tend to check out the restroom, figuring that if it’s not clean, the kitchen probably isn’t either…

On PRI’s “The World,” Mary Kay Magistad reports that “disabled people in China are drawing inspiration from disabled athletes competing in the Beijing Olympics.”

James Fallows watches a traffic accident unfold in pictures and captions:

“The taxi driver, partly visible, is the man she is looking daggers at, who is also looking at her. And a white van marked Gong An, ‘public security,’ has just rolled up.” …

“I don’t know enough about Chinese traffic-court jurisprudence to be able to say what will happen to whom later on. But this kind minor traffic mishap, with attendant crowd scene — and all parties leaving the vehicles where they are, in the middle of traffic, till the cops arrive — and then eventual inconclusive drifting-away is familiar enough to be worth one specimen example.”

Simon Winchester on a Chinese love affair with the outside world:

“These days there can be no mistake: China is at long last waking from centuries of slumber. And what is our response? We tremble at what we see, or we condemn it. The shoddily built schools. The riots in Tibet. The recalled toys. The fog of pollution. The reports of human-rights abuses.

“China is getting terrible press these days, and understandably so. Yet I have been an admirer of China and the Chinese since I started going there in the cold, gray days of the late 1970s, when Mao was still in power. I have in particular admired the ability of the people to persevere in the face of adversity. Fifteen or so years ago, I met a young woman deep in China’s western desert, and her story distills for me all that is good about the land they still call the Middle Kingdom.”
…

“Good afternoon,” she said, with the faintest of accents. “Do you by any chance speak English?”
I whirled around to see a young Chinese woman—tall, pretty, smartly dressed, smiling. Yes, I said.
She glanced at her watch. “Good,” she said. “This train will be here for 23 more minutes. Do you know anything about Anthony Trollope?”

A BBC documentary on the dollar-a-day half of China.

“According to some experts, nearly half of Beijing’s population are now migrant workers. 19-year-old Jiang Xiaoli is part of what is perhaps the biggest migration that’s ever taken place anywhere. Her home province is one of the poorest in China, and now she’s found a job as a domestic worker in the capital…”
“She get up 6 in morning, to clean up the house, and until the baby sleeps about 10 in the evening, she cannot have a rest…”
…
“Now Jiang Xiaoli sends most of her money home. She’s replaced her parents’ small, old black-and-white tv with a bigger color one, and she’s also paid for her two younger sisters to go to school. The family couldn’t afford it before. But Xiaoli’s paid a price for being away from home, too. As we’ve been chatting, there have been tears streaming down her face…”

A documentary about Chinese Junior National Team member Xiao Sha:

“Xiao Sha… did you eat? Your sister is here right now, just finished a meal. She says Mom’s food is delicious.”
“It’s not fair. I don’t get to eat Mom’s food as often!”
They haven’t seen Xiao Sha in three years. They are in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in the country. She is in Beijing.
“You should take care of yourself, work hard too. Too far away. Dad can’t help you much. You need to rely on yourself. And listen to your coach.”
…
“I miss her the most during the Chinese New Year. Other times, of course I miss her. But that’s the worst time.”
…
“The athletes are raised by the nation. This is accepted by everyone, including myself. When I was little, I also had to leave my family. You can’t harvest without plowing. You have to give up something to achieve something.”

“The man labeled China’s biggest coward is a slight man with thick black glasses. He looks so unassuming, it’s hard to imagine one person could have unleashed such vitriol, such a bitter nationwide debate. Almost everybody agrees on one thing: his downfall was his honesty.”

On NBC’s show America’s Got Talent, Victoria Jacoby, an 11 year old girl adopted from China at 6 months old, shows the talent she discovered on her own:

“Well, my mom says when I was 2 years old, toddling around, that I used to do splits on the floor. And, I guess… it’s really improved.”