Newest thing — you
Retailers let customers design
their own servings and style
BUSINESS, PAGE 19
FRIDAY-SUNDAY, April 6-8, 2018
UN chief
on trade:
Working
together
works best
By WANG LINYAN and
HONG XIAO
at the United Nations
International cooperation
and dialogue are the way
to solve trade disputes, UN
Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres said on Thursday.
“Trade wars are always bad
for those involved in the trade
war and for the international
economy as a whole. We
need to have international
cooperation,” Guterres said
in an interview with Chinese
media at United Nations
headquarters in New York
before his visit to China.
“Wherever there’s a prob-
lem, there must be dialogue,
there must be a serious dis-
cussion to overcome the
problem,” he said.
Guterres said efforts need
to be made “to preserve what
was acquired by many years
of work of world organiza-
tions” to make sure there is
trade benefit to the interna-
tional economy as a whole.
Guterres
said he is
delighted to
be visiting
China and
participating
in the Boao
Antonio Forum of the
Guterres, Asia Annual
UN Secretary- Conference
General 2018 at the
invitation of
President Xi Jinping. Gut-
teres will meet Xi and other
Chinese officials and then
give a speech at the opening
session of the forum, which
will be held April 8-11 in
Hainan province.
“It will be an enormous
pleasure for me to participate
in this event and to recog-
nize the extremely impor-
tant contribution of China
to multilateralism in today’s
world, where multilateralism
is sometimes under attack,”
said Guterres, whose first vis-
it to China was in the 1980s.
He described the occasion
as a very important moment
in the history of China, with
40 years of reform and open-
ing up leading to an “unpar-
alleled” process of economic
growth and a reduction of
poverty that have contributed
to the improvement of the
global economy.
The UN chief expressed his
belief in China’s commitment
to globalization, free trade
and international coopera-
tion, especially the develop-
ing world.
“The Belt and Road Initia-
tive is a perfect demonstra-
tion of that,” he said.
Describing himself as a
strong believer in multi-
lateralism, Guterres said
global problems cannot be
addressed on a country-by-
country basis.
“Global problems need
to have global answers, and
global answers can only be
implemented through multi-
lateral frameworks,” he said.
See UN, page 3
High-level handshake
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin meets with State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Kremlin in Moscow on Thursday.
Wang is in Russia on a working visit as President Xi Jinping’s special envoy. He met earlier with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO / REUTERS
US companies may miss
opportunities in China
Countermeasures on trade could
leave them out if dispute escalates
By HU YUANYUAN
and JING SHUIYU in Beijing,
CHEN WEIHUA
in Washington
US enterprises may miss
the opportunity to benefit
from China’s ongoing open-
ing-up process if the Sino-US
dispute escalates, experts
from top government think
tanks said on Thursday.
“Some of China’s opportu-
nities may not apply to US
enterprises, based on WTO
rules and China’s Foreign
Trade Law,” said Wei Jianguo,
a former vice-minister of
commerce and current vice-
president of the China Center
for International Economic
Exchanges. “Once the US tar-
iff measures against Chinese
products take effect, China
will immediately adopt coun-
termeasures.”
According to the Office of
the United States Trade Rep-
resentative, the proposed US
list under Section 301 of the
US Trade Act of 1974 will
undergo further review in a
public notice and comment
process, including a public
hearing. After completion of
that process, the trade repre-
sentative office will issue a
final determination on prod-
ucts subject to additional
duties.
Wei said the US review
period to seek public com-
FOR SHORTHAND TYPISTS, AI BRINGS END TO BOOM TIMES
Developments in smart voice-recognition software are drying up demand for stenographers, as Zhang Yue reports.
D
evelopments in
smart voice-recog-
nition software are
drying up demand
for stenographers, as Zhang
Yue reports.
At the start of his career,
Li Zhengjie would scour the
streets, wander university
Talks for Kim-
Moon summit
underway
CHINA, PAGE 5
ment is just a “stalling tactic”
used in the hope that China
will change its mind.
Larry Kudlow, the new
director of the White House
National Economic Council,
told NBC News that it’s possi-
ble that US President Donald
Trump’s tariffs are a negotiat-
ing tactic and won’t actually
take effect. “Yes, it’s possible.
It’s part of the process,” he
said.
Their comments came
hours after China announced
it would slap 25 percent tariffs
on 106 US products worth $50
billion, ranging from soy-
beans and cars to whiskey and
airplanes. That was a response
to the 25 percent tariff on
1,300 Chinese products worth
$50 billion announced by the
US Trade Representative on
Tuesday, following a Section
301 investigation into China’s
intellectual property policies
and practices.
Amid speculation that a
major tariff war may not mate-
rialize, the Dow Jones industrial
average fluctuated wildly on
Wednesday, plunging 501
points after the opening bell but
closing the day up 230 points at
24,263. The S&P 500 closed the
day up 1.16 percent.
“The essence of the Sino-
US trade war is high-tech,
and the US government’s
pledge to address the trade
deficit is just an excuse to
campuses and even climb
skyscrapers to drum up busi-
ness. He quickly realized that
being a freelance stenogra-
pher is hard work — even
before you’ve landed a client.
Twelve years on, the job
is still hard, but at least his
income has increased.
The prodigy’s back
After a stunning debut in China, Swedish
superstar violinist returns LIFE, PAGE 16
The US govern-
ment’s pledge
to address the
trade deficit is
just an excuse
to curb the
development of
China’s high-
end manufac-
turing sector.”
Ye Fujing, director of the
Institute for International
Economic Research
curb the development of Chi-
na’s high-end manufacturing
sector,” said Ye Fujing, direct-
or of the Institute for Interna-
tional Economic Research, a
think tank under the Nation-
al Development and Reform
Commission, the country’s
top economic regulator.
“Many categories that the
US included in the list are
important for China’s indus-
trial upgrades, but the scale of
their export to the US is not
big at all,” Ye said.
At a news conference on
Wednesday, Vice-Minister of
Commerce Wang Shouwen
160 yuan
fee for Li Zhengjie’s first job
Li’s first client was a pro-
fessor who paid him 160
responded to a Twitter mes-
sage by Trump. Wang said it is
“absolutely unacceptable” to
ask China alone to cut the
country’s surplus with the US
by $100 billion each year.
Trade is carried out by com-
panies and consumers from
both countries on a voluntary
basis, Wang said, adding that
trade imbalances cannot be
forced by government but are
determined by the economic
structures and industrial
competitiveness of the coun-
tries involved.
For Chen Wenling, chief
economist at the economic
exchanges center, the recent
US trade moves involving
China reflect a shift in strate-
gic priorities.
“China and Russia are now
on top of the US government’s
strategic concerns, replacing
terrorism,” Chen said. “This
reflects the growing worry in
the US over China’s recent
achievements in industry
upgrades and its moves
toward modernization.”
Chen said the Sino-US
trade dispute is just the
beginning of what will be an
increasingly intense strategic
competition between the two
countries in the years ahead.
“We should be prepared for
a trade war that could last
years, and take more prevent-
ive measures in other fields,”
Chen said.
Contact the writers at
huyuanyuan@
chinadaily.com.cn
X
yuan ($25) in March 2006
to record and transcribe dis-
cussions during a two-hour
seminar in Beijing. Li and
his wife, also a stenographer,
made about 1,800 yuan a
month that year, but today
they can earn up to 30,000
yuan a month.
chinadailyusa.com
Trump doubles
down with $100b
in new tariffs
By CHEN WEIHUA
in Washington
chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
US President Donald Trump
escalated tensions on Thursday
over a possible trade war with
China by ordering the US trade
representative to consider $100
billion in additional tariffs on
China.
“In light of China’s unfair
retaliation, I have instructed
the USTR to consider whether
$100 billion of additional tar-
iffs would be appropriate under
Section 301 and, if so, to inden-
tify the products upon which
to impose such tariffs,” Trump
said in a statement issued by the
White House.
His words came hours after
his White House advisers tried
to ease the concerns over a trade
war by saying the two countries
will resort to negotiations to
solve their trade issues.
The US announced on Tues-
day it would impose 25 percent
tariffs on 1,300 Chinese prod-
ucts worth $50 billion under the
Section 301 of US Trade Act of
1974 following an investigation
into China’s intellectual prop-
erty policies and practices.
China responded by slapping
25 percent tariffs on 106 US
products, also worth $50 bil-
lion, including soybeans, corn,
cars and airplanes.
Many US lawmakers, espe-
cially from Midwest farm states,
have voiced deep concern about
how a trade war with China will
impact their local economies
and the midterm election later
this year. Eight out of the top 10
soybean-producing and export-
ing states in the US voted for
Trump in 2016.
Senator Chuck Grassley, a
Republican from Iowa, a major
soybean exporter to China, said
farmers and ranchers should
not bear the brunt of any trade
war.
“The Administration knew
that if it imposed tariffs on Chi-
nese goods, China would retali-
ate against US agriculture,” he
said in a statement.
Senator Deb Fischer, a
Culture for the holiday
Foreigners attend the opening ceremony of a willow culture festival
in Beijing’s Liuyin (Willow) Park, on Thursday. The three-day event
features a series of cultural activities to attract visitors during the
Tomb Sweeping Day holiday. LUO XIAOGUANG / XINHUA
“I could barely imag-
ine such an income when
I was starting out,” said Li,
36, who now leads a team
of 12 stenographers cov-
ering events across the
Chinese capital.
However, some in the busi-
ness fear breakthroughs in
$1
Republican from Nebraska,
tweeted on Wednesday that the
proposed retaliation from China
will have a negative impact on
the state of Nebraska.
“@POTUS must negotiate
with the Chinese in a construc-
tive way to get good trade results
for our farmers and ranchers,”
she said.
That may be Mr.
Trump’s intention,
to meet political
and economic
objectives that
are a bit out of
alignment with
each other.”
Douglas Paal, vice-president
for studies at the Carnegie
Endowment for International
Peace
Chinese Ambassador to the
US Cui Tiankai said in a meet-
ing with US Acting Secretary of
State John Sullivan on Wednes-
day that China is always ready
to continue and intensify its
dialogue and communication
with the US side on any possible
economic or trade issues. “But,
we need reciprocity. Our good-
will has to be met by the same
degree of goodwill,” he said.
Cui warned that if anybody
tries to hurt the interests of the
Chinese people, China will cer-
tainly fight back.
China also retaliated early
this week against the US Sec-
tion 232 tariffs on steel and
aluminum imports imposed on
March 23 in the name of nation-
al security. The tariffs Chinese
imposed include 128 US prod-
ucts from pork, nuts to seamless
steel pipes.
See Trump, page 2
artificial intelligence and
smart voice-recording soft-
ware is threatening their
industry.
“I’m kind of worried wheth-
er this job will still exist in the
years ahead,” said Pan Li, who
See Typing, page 4
 Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I N A DA I LY USA

2 ACROSS AMERICA
COMMENTARY

Negotiation, Auto companies facing tariff risk

not useless By PAUL WELITZKIN
in New York
Daimler plants in South Carolina and
Alabama, respectively.
percent tariff on imported trucks from
World Trade Organization members
be significant,” he said.
The tit-for-tat auto trade dispute
tariff threat, paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com

BMW, Daimler, the maker of

is the way
forward
By CHEN WEIHUA
in Washington
chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
US President Donald Trump
and Commerce Secretary Wil-
bur Ross both tried to calm the
panic about a possible trade war
on Wednesday, just hours after
China slapped a 25 percent tariff
on $50 billion of imports from
the US, including soybeans,
whiskey, cars and airplanes.
Trump tweeted early on
Wednesday morning that “we
are not in a trade war with
China”, while Ross told CNBC
that he expects the situation
will likely lead to a negotiated
deal. Larry Kudlow, director of
the White House National Eco-
nomic Council, suggested that
it’s possible Trump’s tariffs are
a negotiating tactic and won’t
actually take effect.
If that is the case, then Trump
has already proved himself
wrong. China has demonstrated
that it cannot be coerced and
that it is fully determined to
reciprocate. Wielding a big tar-
iff stick won’t give the US more
leverage at the negotiating table.
By threatening protection-
ist tariffs, Trump has caused a
major disruption in the global
trading system and also put
Americans in harm’s way. US
consumers — farmers and blue-
collar workers, many of whom
voted for Trump — have been
hurt already as a result of the
tariff war triggered by the steel
and aluminum tariffs under US
law. The damages will be much
greater if the tit-for-tat tariffs
sparked by another part of the
law take effect.
China has long called for
negotiations to resolve bilateral
trade and investment issues. So
if the Trump administration is
open to negotiation, as it has
indicated, it should immedi-
ately cease using the tariff stick
and get on with the negotiating
process.
Negotiations, through any
established platform, is a much
better way to address each oth-
er’s concerns than threatening a
tariff war.
Negotiations may not be a
smooth process and will not
solve all the problems or solve
them in a short time. That is just
the nature of many complicated
issues in big countries.
Gun violence, for example, has
haunted Americans for decades,
but it remains a serious issue
regardless of the massive public
demonstrations like the recent
March for Our Lives.
China has long called on the
US to loosen and lift its restric-
tions on US high-tech exports
Mercedes-Benz, and Tesla are the
automakers most vulnerable if China
raises tariffs on imported vehicles
made in the US, analysts said.
“China exports comprise 38 percent
of total Daimler exports from the Unit-
ed States, 31 percent for BMW, and 24
percent for Tesla,” Kristin Dziczek of
the Center for Automotive Research
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, wrote in an
email Thursday.
If the tariffs go into effect, it could
mean production cuts at BMW and
An apple-packing facility of Gilbert Orchards, a family-owned enterprise in Yakima, Washington. In addition to sending cherries to
China, the company also ships Gala and Red Delicious apples to Guangzhou and Shanghai. PHOTOS BY LINDA DENG / CHINA DAILY
Cherry, apple growers: tariffs the pits
By LINDA DENG in Seattle
lindadeng@chinadailyusa.com
Chinese tariffs on cherries
and apples are leaving north-
west growers disappointed.
“We see China with tremen-
dous growth potential and
China is already the biggest
export market we have for cher-
ries,” said Sean Gilbert, general
manager at Gilbert Orchards
in Yakima, Washington. “We
export 10 percent of our cher-
ries to China.
“The recent tariffs with Chi-
na are very disappointing. We
hope that they will be resolved.
But if they are not, they’ll result
in lower returns for our grow-
ers and farms. There was a lot
of hard work we have put in
already developing that market,
and it is going to be hurt by the
tariffs.”
The Pacific Northwest
is home to family-owned
orchards that provide approxi-
mately 66 percent of the apples,
74 percent of the pears, and 78
percent of the sweet cherries
grown in the United States.
Together, these crops are
Only believe half of what you read, or less
“Ford has some issues because the
Explorer comes from Chicago and
most if not all Lincolns come from
and with the proposed tariffs on China
these rates would go to 27.5 percent
and 50 percent said Dziczek.
may also affect plans by Ford to move
production of models, notably the
Focus, to China for export to the US.
the US. These are some of the most
profitable vehicles it sells, so higher
Elon Musk’s Tesla faces a major Chi-
nese tariff risk because China is its
Whiston said it’s too early for Ford
to reverse course on the Focus “but if
prices hurt a lot, especially relative to second-largest market by revenue last they think the US were to have a large
the Germans, GM and VW with facto-
ries in China more than Ford,” David
year, and it makes all its vehicles for
China in the US, noted Whiston.
tariff in place for a long time then I
don’t see how you can keep exporting
Whiston, auto analyst for Morningstar In a research note, Brian Johnson A Ford F-150 pickup truck is seen at from China to the US and be competi-
Inc said in an email. of Barclays said a base Tesla Model S an auto dealership in Shanghai on tive against other compacts made in
American vehicle exports to China 100D in the US costs $94,000 while April 5. ALY SONG / REUTERS the States such as the Chevy Cruze,
face a 25 percent tariff. China has sug- the same vehicle in China today costs Toyota Corolla, and Honda Civic.”
gested it would add another 25 per- about 931,000 yuan or $148,000 before Ford was planning to bring in the
cent to counter proposed US tariffs on the added tariff. “While these steep add to the prestige factor for luxury Mondeo and MKZ from China; total-
Chinese exports. The US imposes a 2.5 import tariffs are part of the upper-end cars), for lower-luxury vehicles than the ing about 300,000 units a year, by
percent tariff on imported cars and 25 luxury market (and in some respects Model 3 a 50 percent premium would 2022.
US senator calls
for trade win-win
By ZHANG RUINAN important
in Philadelphia to our
ruinanzhang@chinadailyusa. economy;
com and we’re
the home
US Senator Thomas Carper, of DuPont,
Democrat of Delaware, called and many
for a win-win solution to settle US Senator other man-
the trade issues between the Thomas Carper ufacturing
world’s two largest economies, companies,
speaking with China Daily on pharmaceutical companies,
Thursday. financial institutions, lots of
Stronger communication is them have a presence in the
the key to develop a trusting trading relationship with
relationship between China China.”
and the US, he said. Carper also stressed the
“The current administration importance of communica-
has indicated the America-first tion between the people of the
vision, which is understand-
able,” said Carper. “What I
look for is a win-win situation,
two nations during this special
time.
“Joe Biden, our former
Northwest crop last year. to predict the impact of the where America wins and other vice-president and the former
Last summer, China Eastern tariffs, but it will make the US nations win as well, and the senator from Delaware, has
Airlines’ Cherry Express cargo cherry less competitive. Data hope out of this rather diffi- long said that all politics is per-
plane sent fresh cherries from from China Customs indicate cult chapter, a better outcome sonal; so is diplomacy,” said
Seattle to Shanghai 55 times in that China imported 102,000 in which not only the United Carper.
eight weeks. tons of cherries valued at $770 States wins, but China wins “That’s the reason why my
The Cherry Express is a million in 2017. too.” wife and I accepted the invita-
unique partnership between In 2017, cherries from eight “I’ve long been a believer in tion to go to China two years
online sales giant Alibaba, countries were imported into free trade, which is truly free ago — because I believe it’s
China Eastern Air Group and China. and fair, and we’re all better off important to get to know peo-
Northwest Cherry Growers. “Last year, we shipped just when that’s the case,” he said. ple in their personal lives and
In 2017, about 2.9 million over 3 million 20-pound boxes “Delaware has the third- to develop a trusting personal
20-pound boxes of cherries, of cherries in June, July and largest county in the US – Sus- relationship.
Sean Gilbert, general valued at $127 million, grown August, to China and the value sex County; I’m told the county “The relationship between
manager at Gilbert Orchards, and packed in Washington and the past year is right in a $130 raises more chickens than any China and our country is enor-
said China is a very important Oregon, were exported to Chi- million range. My growers are county in America and we mously important, especially
growth market for apples. na, according to the Northwest at a point what they need every raised more soybeans, I’m told the economic relationship;
Horticultural Council. single market they can get and than any county in America,” and we need to keep that in
“We started to develop the having a market as great as Carper said. mind, we need to work out our
valued at an average of $3 bil- Chinese market about 11 years China slowed down by tariffs is “So, we are selling various differences by talking to each
lion annually, and create tens ago, from zero to over 33,000 concerning, ” Northwest Cherry agriculture products from other,” Carper said.
of thousands of jobs in rural tons last year,” said Keith Hu, Growers president B.J. Thurlby southern Delaware to lots of “I hope cooler heads will
communities. international program direc- said. other countries, including prevail, and we will end up
Exports are vital to the indus- tor for the Northwest Cherry “I have worked for 11 years China, and it is extremely in establishing a win-win
try, with approximately one- Growers. “We continue to see in the Chinese market to build
third of the apples, pears and the growth especially in the the consumers’ trust behind
cherries grown in the region
going to other countries.
Super-large fresh cherries
second-tier cities. We have
established the first-tier cities
pretty well. We’re looking for 10
our products, and I think we’ve
done that. The frustrating part
is that I feel the consumers in
Trump: Team expects
are expensive in China, but it’s
now one of the top export mar-
kets for the Northwest. They
second-tier key cities in inner
China for growth. The Chinese
China will be the ones who have
to pay prices as well. I also care to negotiate on trade
market is important.” about my friends in China,”
took about 13 percent of the Hu thought it was too early Thurlby said. From page 1 “That may be Mr. Trump’s
intention, to meet political
Both the Section 232 and and economic objectives that
Section 301 tariffs are regard-
ed as a violation of the World
Trade Organization rules.
are a bit out of alignment with
each other. But it may reflect
different objectives from dif-
On Thursday morning, ferent wings of the White

to China. The US has not only
failed to address this but moved
in the opposite direction with
more discriminatory policies
against China, both in trade and
investment.
And it’s impossible for the
US to demand that China, the
world’s largest developing coun-
try, solve its problems overnight.
What is important is that
China is moving in the right
direction. It has been steadily
improving its protection of intel-
lectual property rights, a key ele-
ment for creating an innovation
-driven society.
Chinese leaders have pledged
further reform and opening-up.
President Xi Jinping is expected
to roll out new measures at the
Boao Forum for Asia next week.
After all, this year marks the
40th anniversary of China’s
reform and opening-up drive,
which has brought phenome-
nal progress to the country and
benefited the world, including
the US. It’s in China’s interest to
continue on that path.
So it’s really time for Trump to
give up the useless tariff weapon
and come to the negotiating
table.
The author is deputy editor of
China Daily USA.
A
bright spot
appeared
among the
gathering
clouds of trade wars last
Chris week from, of all places,
Davis Kankakee County,
New York Illinois, a patch of flat
Journal farmland about 50
miles south of Chicago.
And this spot prom-
ised to be so bright it would be visible
from outer space.
The Kankahee Daily Journal reported
that China-based solar and wind power
company Fields of Opportunity & Orna-
mental Land Structures had proposed
a massive $4.01 billion, 777-acre solar
farm to straddle unincorporated county
townships.
The story, under the headline: “Chi-
nese solar farm to hit region”, ran a
picture of a distant complex of buildings
floating above a sea of solar panels.
The caption read: “Like this village in
China, eastern Kankakee County will be
covered in solar panels when construc-
tion of the $4.01 billion solar farm is
completed.”
Fields of Opportunity & Ornamental
Land Structures reportedly did surveys
worldwide to find regions with optimal
sun and wind exposure. It had farms
pumping out renewable energy in Swit-
zerland, Germany and China, with devel-
opments pending in Russia and Iceland.
“We have obviously been around the
world analyzing and testing sun patterns.
We believe this location will be optimal
in terms of sun collection,” company
spokesman Dexter Chong III.
Then Chong added, “When our com-
pany thinks of collecting solar rays, we
think of eastern Kankakee County. Most
locals don’t realize how much sunshine
you have here.”
And that’s when something about the
story started to not seem right. Rural Illi-
nois is known for big storms, corn, harsh
winters, corn, endless highways that
never bend, and corn. But sunshine?
Chong then told the Daily Journal’s
Lee Provost that construction on the
project could begin in two and a half
weeks, and farmers would be notified to
prevent them from buying seeds.
A few reasonable sounding details fol-
lowed. The array could have as many as
123 6-by-3-foot panels per acre, meaning
as many as 95,500 panels covering form
farm fields.
With government regs requiring that
one worker cannot monitor more than
117.25 solar panels in any given 24-hour
period, they would need at least 800
workers, who would also be housed.
The fuzzy math seemed to stack up.
“The development will be so large,
astronauts orbiting Earth in the Interna-
tional Space Station will be able to clearly
see the reflection,” Provost wrote. We
checked. That’s 254 miles up.
“Talk about putting Kankakee on the
map,” country board chairman Andy
Wheeler gushed with obvious enthusi-
asm. “This will not just give us world-
wide exposure but through the universe
as well.”
The piling on continued with Wheeler
adding: “This is monumental for eastern
Kankakee County. For us to land a proj-
ect of this scale is fabulous. We’ve been
looking for a project to put us on the
map, and I truly believe this is the one.”
Wheeler said they were looking for a
name for the project and may name it
after the company’s acronym — F.O.O.L.S.
A solar panel expert from Sunny Skies
Tech, Ekoj Rof Sredaer, said the county
would become the national leader for
energy derived from gas.
Talk about gas.
“To say the area has hit a home run
is understating the importance of this
development,” Sredaer said. “I can’t even
put it into words.”
Allow me.
The first clue was the price of the proj-
ect: $4.01 billion, as in $April 1st billion.
The second clue was the acronym for
the company Fields of Opportunity &
Ornamental Land Structures: FOOLS.
And finally, spell solar panel expert
Ekoj Rof Sredaer’s names backwards and
you get: Jokes For Readers.
Congrats to the Daily Journal for the
bright spot of a little humor. Happy April
Fools Day.
Contact the writer at chrisdavis@
chinadailyusa.com.
Trump’s White House trade
adviser Peter Navarro and
National Economic Council
Director Larry Kudlow both
indicated that a solution will
be found through negotiation.
Navarro said that there
will be discussions between
US Trade Representative Bob
Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin and Chinese
officials.
He told CNBC that the
meeting is “to try to get some
place, where China stops doing
what it is doing in terms of
its aggressive attack on our
economy”.
“We are in conversation.
It’s all part of the discussion.
Let’s not jump to the worst-
case conclusion,” Kudlow told
the media Thursday morning
when asked about a negative
impact on US farmers and
workers in a trade war.
“We don’t have a tariff
enacted yet,” he said, adding
that the end game is economic
growth by tearing down barri-
ers and playing by rules.
Douglas Paal, vice-president
for studies at the Carnegie
Endowment for International
Peace, said White House offi-
cials are sending confusing
signals.
House,” he said.
Paal believes it would be
good for President Xi to reit-
erate at the Boao Forum for
Asia on April 8-11 what Pre-
mier Li Keqiang said at the
recent National People’s Con-
gress: that China will not allow
forced technology transfer, will
protect intellectual property
and cut tariffs.
“This would undercut a sub-
stantial portion of the justifi-
cation for Section 301 tariffs,”
Paal said.
Marcus Noland, executive
vice-president and director
for studies at the Peterson
Institute for International
Economics, said the Trump
administration has not really
articulated its goal, the mech-
anism or the timeline.
“They seem to be going
off on a trajectory where
they are going to act tough,”
Noland said. “They’re not
going to have clear goals.
They’re not going to have a
clear mechanism for resolv-
ing the issues, and they really
seem to be heading in a direc-
tion of imposition of mea-
sures that are supposed to
address some kind of issue
and end up just being a per-
manent feature.”
 Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 3

CHINA CHINA DAILY USA » CHINADAILYUSA.COM

Call for cooler heads

Boeing, GM urge calm approach
US companies prefer negotiations,
long-term policy to confrontation
By ZHONG NAN
and ZHU WENQIAN
A number of large commer-
cial entities from the United
States including Boeing, Gen-
eral Motors and the American
Soybean Association, have
urged the US government to
resolve the simmering trade
dispute with China through
constructive dialogue, and to
seek sustainable trade policies.
Their response came after
China announced plans to
impose 25 percent supple-
mental tariffs on 106 US prod-
ucts including automobiles,
commercial aircraft, chemi-
cals and soybeans on Wednes-
day as a response to tariff
proposals from the Trump
Administration.
Items on the latest list from
Beijing include planes with an
operating empty weight
between 15,000 kilograms and
45,000 kg, which covers a
series of Boeing 737 planes.
Some single-aisle Boeing
aircraft, including the B737-
700, B737-800, B737-900 and
B737 MAX 7, are among the
major plane models that Boe-
ing exported to China over the
past few years, and are among
the products likely to see high-
er tariffs.
As a possible trade war will
affect businesses from both
countries, Boeing said that
while both governments have
“outlined positions that could
do harm to the global aero-
space industry, neither has yet
imposed these drastic meas-
ures”, the group said in a state-
ment.
“We will continue in our
own efforts to proactively
engage both governments and
build on the recent assurances
by US and Chinese leaders
that productive talks are ongo-
ing. A strong and vibrant aero-
space industry is important to
the economic prosperity and
national security of both coun-
tries,” the US aircraft manu-
facturer said.
From 2018 to 2020, Air Chi-
na, China Eastern Airlines and
China Southern Airlines plan
to purchase more than 300
aircraft from the B737 series,
according to their earnings
reports.
China is now the world’s
largest aircraft market by sales
volume. The country imported
60 billion yuan ($9.52 billion)
of Boeing’s products and
accounted for 26 percent of
Boeing’s global production,
said Lin Zhijie, an aviation
industry analyst and colum-
nist at Carnoc — China’s larg-
est civil aviation web portal.
“There is no significant dif-
ference in performance
between Airbus SE’s aircraft
and Boeing’s, and the product
certainly can be replaced with
a strong alternative,” he said.
The homegrown C919
large passenger jet, and the
A320 series made by Europe-
an aircraft manufacturer Air-
bus — the archrival of Boeing
— are competing models of
the narrow-body B737.
Meanwhile, Boeing is build-
ing a B737 MAX completion
and delivery center in Zhous-
han, Zhejiang province, and it
is expected to go into opera-
tion in May. By the end of this
year, Boeing plans to deliver
the first B737 MAX plane
directly from Zhoushan to a
domestic airline.
General Motors also said in
a statement released on
Wednesday that the company
supports a positive trade rela-
tionship between the US and
China, and hopes they value a
vibrant auto industry and
understand the interdepen-
dence between the world’s two
largest automotive markets.
Contact the writers at
zhongnan@
chinadaily.com.cn
in Sino-US dispute
By ZHONG FEITENG
On Wednesday, the United
States published a proposed
list of imports from China
worth around $50 billion in
annual trade it has targeted
for additional tariffs. Nine
hours later, China announced
a list of US goods totaling the
same value that will be sub-
ject to equivalent tariff hikes,
fulfilling its promise of “retal-
iatory measures of the same
strength and the same scope”.
The proposed US list is
something worthy of our
attention. First, it covers
approximately 1,300 prod-
ucts imported from China,
including industries such as
aerospace, information and
communications technolo-
gy, robotics and machinery.
Media outlets in both China
and the US describe it as
“aiming at technology” and
in the future and China must
be prepared for that.
Third, the proposed tariff
rate on the listed Chinese
products is 25 percent,
which is in accordance with
US domestic laws, but not
international treaties. In
other words, for the US, its
own domestic laws come
before the international
treaties that it has signed
and ratified. Actually, the US
has been adopting such a
principle since the 1970s by
negotiating with the econo-
mies that export to it.
That principle has been
increasingly more evident
since Donald Trump took
office, which in turn deals a
heavy blow to the liberal
global trade order. China is
not the only victim of this
strategy. Many alliances that
the US enjoys with Europe-
an countries and other part-

Soybeans:
UN: Too After a snowfall mainly targeting the coun-
try’s grand “Made in China
2025” plan. The list also
ners have suffered.
Last but not least, the US
officials that drafted the pro-
Escalation shows a desire to “contain” posed list claim to be “mini-

many
would hurt
China’s high-tech industries.
Of course, China’s high-
tech industries are not the
mizing” its negative effects
upon US consumers by seek-
ing substitutes of products
primary cause of the US exported from China.
people
From page 1
trade deficit with China, so
the containment measures
won’t help the US narrow
The problem is, it is hardly
possible to find substitutes
for all the Chinese products

are left
export volume to China
was too big,” China’s Vice-
Minister of Finance Zhu
the deficit.
Second, it should also be
noted that the list, even if
exported to the US, and US
consumers are likely to suffer
from their government’s
Guangyao said on Wednes- eventually implemented, is newly proposed tariffs. In a

behind
day in Beijing.
“Chinese farmers have
petitioned industry associ-
far from triggering a total
“trade war” as fierce as that
seen between the US and
word, the US move hurts
both the Chinese and US pop-
ulations, and we hope Wash-
From
ations,pagesaying 1 that US gov- Japan in the 1980s — a bitter ington can reconsider the
ernment subsidies hurt conflict in which the US measures before it is too late.
Chinese
“And sosoybean growers,
the international required Japan to limit its
and China must
framework thatrespect
governs its exports to the US. However, if The author is a researcher at
farmers’
global demands.”
trade is of course of trade frictions between China National Institute of Inter-
Jon Taylor,
extreme importance.professor” of and the US continue, there national Strategy, Chinese
political
As a truesciencebeliever at the
in free might be more uncertainties Academy of Social Sciences.
University
trade as a key ofcontributor
St. Thomas to
in Houston,
global said the
prosperity, Guterrestrade
dispute
said
brought
could still get ugly
globalization
betweenenormous China and benefithe
US. it also has losers and vic-
but
has
ts,
The Jiankou section of the Great Wall in Beijing’s Huairou district is blanketed in snow on Thursday due to the strong cold front sweeping
Canadians pay
He For
tims. warned of theincome
example, politi-
tribute in Nanjing
through many parts of the country since Wednesday. WANG JING / CHINA DAILY
cal repercussions
inequality has increased,of escala-and
tion. For
many example,
people have beenthe tariffleft
would hurt Iowa, a key in
behind.
presidential
“The answer
“If we go
problem
tainedisperiod
ism,
elections.
is into
to this
a long, sus-
not protection-
of low prices,
not isolationism,
Hainan cultivating high-tech agriculture By CANG WEI in Nanjing
cangwei@chinadaily.com.cn
call on the Canadian govern-
ment to proclaim Dec 13 as
Nanjing Massacre Com-
it will
but impact
the answer some farmers’
is interna- Shortly before Tomb memorative Day, and the
abilitycooperation,
tional to stay on the and farm,”
the TIDES OF another 960 tons of fresh vege- graduating from a university of winter white chrysanthe- Sweeping Day, which fell on motion passed by the Toron-
Kirk Leeds,
Agenda 2030 can CEObe of the
a very tables were sold to Hong Kong, in Nanjing, and then returned mums accounts for over half of Thursday, many overseas to City Council in December
CHANGE
Iowa Soybean
important Association,
instrument for according to official statistics. to Changtang, his home vil- the country’s total and is grow- Chinese and foreigners visit- 2016 — which was intro-
told ”the
that, Des Moines Regis-
he said.
IN HAINAN Xu Yun, director of the Hain- lage, in 2007. At the time he ing at 20 percent a year. ed the Memorial Hall for the duced by Councilor Jim
ter.The
IowaUNis2030the top Agendaproduc- for an provincial department of convinced his fellow villagers The 733-hectare Lingshui Victims of the Nanjing Mas- Karygiannis — to recognize
er of soybeans
Sustainable in the US. is
Development By MA ZHIPING agriculture, said the province to try cultivating sweet pota- modern agriculture demon- sacre by Japanese Invaders the Nanjing Massacre as a
Taylor said
a blueprint managing
for eradicating and LIU XIAOLI in Haikou is restructuring its agricultural toes instead of the traditional stration zone on the east coast, in Nanjing, Jiangsu prov- historical event.
China-USworldwide
poverty trade relations by the is sector by reducing low-effi- lower-profit rice. launched in 2015, has played ince, to remember the dead “We were interfered with
a major
year 2030. challenge facing Hainan province is increas- ciency industries and products Sweet potato fields have an active role in showcasing and call for peace. by the government when we
theGuterres
Trumpsaid administration,
“it’s extreme- ingly working to hasten agri- such as sugar cane and euca- expanded to 1,800 hectares in the importance of technology During a visit organized held exhibits about the Nan-
which
ly important “wouldfor us to bebe well able cultural supply side structural lyptus. Instead, it is expanding Qiaotou, a town of 22,000 resi- in farming. A vertical farming by Canada’s Nanjing Fellow jing Massacre in Toronto
served
to haveby changing
a fair its pro-
globalization reforms, speed up the develop- higher quality produce varie- dents, and a research institute system introduced from Sing- Association, about 100 years ago,” Wang said. “It
tectionist
for approach”.
the Agenda 2030 to be ment of the sector’s moderni- ties such as winter vegetables developing virus-free seed- apore can now produce 27.5 Canadians of Chinese origin said that Canada is a peace-
William Zarit,
implemented, leavingchairman
no one zation and strengthen tropical and melons, sweet potatoes, lings there is helping promote tons of vegetables per mu wore violet cress-shaped ful country and cannot have
of the American
behind Chamber
for global injustices agriculture. pineapples, grapefruits and better farming practices. Out- (0.066 hectare) a year versus badges as symbols of peace such ‘bloody’ exhibitions.
of Commerce
to be corrected, in and
China, forsaidthe Before it was upgraded to a cherry tomatoes. put value from sweet potato output from traditional farm- while paying tribute to the But now the government has
he hopes Washington
possibility of establishing and province in 1988, about 80 per- Chengmai, about 60 kilome- harvesting reached 360 mil- ing of just 4 tons. victims. Wang Haicheng, invited us to hold exhibits.”
aBeijing
community will of nota sharedfollow cent of its grain and animal ters from the provincial capi- lion yuan ($57 million) last Xu, the agricultural official, president of the association, The Nanjing Massacre, in
through onintheir
prosperity “threats”.
the world as husbandry products was sup- tal of Haikou, is one of the year. About 310,000 tourists said Hainan will accelerate presented three original which more than 300,000
Instead, they
President shouldusually
Xi Jinping work plied from outside. But it is regions that has reaped bene- visited Qiaotou in 2017 to agricultural standardization documents to the memorial Chinese were killed in a six-
toward a . “serious negotia-
mentions” now becoming the country’s fits from restructuring local enjoy digging up sweet pota- to realize comprehensive high hall, including the motion week rampage starting on
tion”, TheChina
He said Associated
has been Press
an biggest fruit and vegetable farming. “Our Qiaotou brand toes for themselves last year. efficiency production. It will introduced by Huang Sumei Dec 13, 1937, took place
reported
active on Wednesday.
builder of multilateral- producer in the winter, con- sweet potatoes sell well in Bei- The Qiaotou model of intro- cultivate 30 leading sectors in — the first Chinese-Canadi- when Japanese troops cap-
ism Soybean
and involved futuresin allfellforms as tributing 4.8 million metric jing and Shanghai, as well as ducing high-efficiency farm- planting, aquaculture and an woman elected to the tured Nanjing.
much
of globalas 5 percent on
governance. tons of vegetables to the markets in Japan and Cana- ing is being copied across the processing while developing Ontario regional parliament Wang, also curator of the
Wednesday,
“We welcome theirthat biggest
fact domestic market last year. da,” said Wang Wenke, head of island. 30 key products to upgrade — to designate Nanjing Mas- World War II Asian Memorial
intraday
as a positive losscontribution
since July A total of 430 tons of litchee, Changtang village in Qiaotou Dongfang, on Hainan’s the competitiveness of quality sacre Commemorative Day Museum of Canada, said that
2016,the
for andworld,”
went onheto said. close longan, mango, paw paw and town, Chengmai — an area southwest coast, now has Hainan farm produce. to remember the victims. the museum has collected
down by 4 percent. green oranges were exported known for its rich soil and the large fields of red flesh dragon The other two were a more than 1,000 relics and
Contact the writers at wan- from Hainan to Canada, the longevity of its locals. fruit and white chrysanthe- Contact the writers at statement by Jenny Kwan, pictures related to the massa-
Paul Welitzkin in New York
glinyan@chinadailyusa. United Kingdom and the Unit- The 40-year-old village head mums after converting waste- mazhiping@ Member of Parliament of the cre to let more people know
contributed to this story.
com ed States last year, while made a living in cities after land into farmland. Its export chinadaily.com.cn New Democratic Party, to about the historical event.

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4 CH INA
Typing: Insiders are confident
their skills will remain relevant
From page 1
has been in the business for 12 years.
She works with her friend Ma Ruiju-
an from a home office in Handan,
Hebei province, about 400 kilometers
from Beijing. They handle interviews,
academic speeches, court hearings,
phone surveys and celebrity appear-
ances, charging 80 yuan an hour.
Pan, Ma and Li were all inspired to
become stenographers around 2006
after spotting advertisements in
local newspapers that suggested
demand for such skills would soar
over the following decade.
The prediction was correct, and
all three have so far enjoyed decent
careers. Yet as demand begins to
drop due to new technologies, so are
incomes.
Li mostly now works conferences,
seminars and forums, but in 2006 he
was receiving a lot of business from
journalists who wanted quick tran-
LI MIN / CHINA DAILY
scriptions of their interviews.
“They’d give me their recordings
and I’d usually charge them 70 or 80
yuan an hour,” he said. But since 2015,
that kind of work has all but disap-
peared. “Few are still coming to me
today because they can simply use
smart software and apps to produce
their own transcripts,” Li added.
‘Exciting experiences’
After graduating with an advertis-
ing degree from college in his native
Shenyang, Liaoning province, Li
worked for several months for a
local ad agency. But he was not hap-
py with the salary.
“Then I saw a newspaper ad for a
stenography training school that
said the industry would be one of the
most promising for the next 10 years
and promised high salaries,” he
recalled. “At that time, none of my
friends and relatives had ever heard
of such a job.”
Li and his wife signed up for class-
es, paying about 10,000 yuan for tui-
tion, and over the next six months
dedicated themselves to learning
how to use a stenotype, a machine
that enables users to record speech
in shorthand.
“The hardest part is improving
your speed. To go from typing 60
words a minute to 120 words required
us to practice by typing millions and
millions of words,” he said.
Due to the limited demand in his
hometown, Li decided to move to
Beijing shortly after completing his
training. Stenographers typically
start by transcribing audio files and
then progress to conferences, which
are high pressure but pay about 300
yuan an hour. Li started working
conferences in 2008.
Ma from Hebei relocated to the
capital in 2006 for the same reason
as Li. “Most of my clients were intro-
duced by friends in the same indus-
try, and I was usually hired to do
transcripts of media interviews,” the
32-year-old said.
Before long, she was regularly
working in the studios of China Cen-
tral Television, the State broadcast-
er, and Beijing TV, and by 2010, she
had helped produce transcripts of a
number of high-profile shows,
including CCTV’s Legal Report.
“Those were the most exciting
experiences of my 20s,” she said,
laughing. “I didn’t know what a TV
interview was like until I stepped
into a TV studio.”
Ma eventually moved back to her
hometown with her husband and
children, but she continues to work
on interviews by receiving and send-
ing files through the internet.
“I’m the main breadwinner in my
family because this job allows me to
earn more money than my hus-
band,” she said. “What’s more, it
keeps me connected with the out-
side world.”
Coexisting with AI
Courts are a major source of work
for stenographers, who record pro-
ceedings for the public record. How-
ever, tech tycoon Liu Qingfeng is
hoping to change that.
Liu’s company, iFlytek — which is
headquartered in Hefei, Anhui prov-
ince, and makes language
input software and voice-
recognition programs —
unveiled an AI system
Li Zhengjie works as a stenographer at an acdemic seminar at Beijing’s
Tsinghua University in March. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
I’m the main bread-
winner in my family
because this job allows
me to earn more mon-
ey than my husband.
What’s more, it keeps
me connected with the
outside
world.”
Ma Ruijuan,
stenographer in
Hebei province
last month that will not only record
court hearings, but also aid judges in
reviewing criminal cases.
“We’re now able to use AI to help
judges review four types of cases,
namely homicide, theft, telecom
fraud and illegal fundraising,” he said
at a news conference on March 5. As
he spoke, his words appeared on a
screen beside him almost instantly,
demonstrating the speed and accura-
cy of the company’s technology.
Stenographer Li Zhengjie said the
rapid developments seen in AI in
recent years have raised concerns
about the future of his profession.
“I’ve been thinking about this
Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I N A DA I LY USA
problem since 2010, and I used to
worry my job may one day no longer
exist,” he said, adding that voice-rec-
ognition software like that produced
by iFlytek is the No 1 reason why
demand from journalists for tran-
scription services is drying up.
“When the conversation takes
place in a very quiet environment
and all the speakers are talking loud-
ly and clearly, such apps work better
and more efficiently than us
humans,” he conceded.
Yet he said he feels confident that
such technology will not replace
conference stenographers, at least
not in the short term.
“I’ve never doubted the necessity
for a human stenographer because
only we can recognize who is speak-
ing when, so we can record the cor-
rect order of speakers,” Li said. “Plus,
the environments at forums and
conferences are usually too noisy for
voice translation apps to work effi-
ciently.”
Ma agrees, and added that most
interview recordings she works on
are also conducted in noisy environ-
ments such as on streets or in res-
taurants.
Li said he ultimately believes his
job can coexist with AI systems.
“It’s like radio versus television,”
he explained. “When TV arrived and
became popular in every household,
many people were saying radio was
a dying industry. Yet both are run-
ning well today and simply have
adjusted to cater to varying custom-
er demand.
“Such coexistence will also be
seen between stenography and AI,”
he added.
Contact the writer at
zhangyue@chinadaily.com.cn
‘Exciting
world’ of
quiet but
essential
observers
Zhang
Yue
Reporter’s
Log
S
tenographers are
among the people I
have met most regu-
larly during my seven
years working as a reporter.
On many occasions while
covering seminars and
forums, I have relied on them
for when I can’t split myself
in two to hear speeches being
given at the same time at dif-
ferent venues.
Sometimes I have observed
the look of concentration on
the faces of the stenogra-
phers sitting in front of me or
nearby, their fast-moving fin-
gers a blur as they type on
their shorthand machines.
Based on my experience,
they seldom talk to anyone,
no matter how bustling a
forum or conference might
be. But I approached a stenog-
rapher during a break at one
event because I was curious to
know how fast they can type
and the rate of accuracy.
It was then that I learned
about the structure and prin-
ciple involved in using their
shorthand machines.
A stenotype has only 24
keys. The basic principle is
almost the same as typing
with a standard qwerty key-
board, as the input language
is pinyin. The difference is
that multiple keys can be
used simultaneously to spell
out entire words or phrases,
saving a lot of time.
Stenographers are argua-
bly little noticed, but they
have an impact on many
industries, including those
that affect our daily lives.
My interview with Ma Rui-
juan, a stenographer based in
Handan, Hebei province, took
some time to complete for this
story due to her heavy work-
load. Not only do many of her
freelance assignments come
with tight deadlines, but she
also has two children and is
occupied much of the time
with housework.
Yet the 32-year-old told me
that, spiritually, she gains a
lot from the recordings she is
paid to transcribe. She has
spent hours listening to law-
yers, professors, reporters,
TV hosts and sometimes
celebrities. She told me
repeatedly that “this is some-
thing that truly attracts me to
the job”.
“If I didn’t choose to learn
this skill, probably I would
never have gone to Beijing. I
would not be able to meet
and hear from so many inter-
esting people on so many
exciting topics. I would not
have had the chance to step
onto a China Central TV stu-
dio set or even get to see how
a TV program is produced,”
she said. “All these are mil-
lions of miles away from my
native village.”
She barely thinks about
what effect the developments
in artificial intelligence
might have on her profes-
sion, she said, adding, “I’ll
continue to do this as long as
there is a demand.”
Her words reminded me of
my interview with Li Zheng-
jie, a stenographer in Beijing
with 12 years of experience. I
asked him whether he is con-
cerned about his profession
in the long run.
“I don’t think stenography
will be the only type of job
affected by the development
of AI. Many jobs will be
affected in the process of
transformation,” he said.
“Yet what’s important is
that the job has helped me
open a much more exciting
world, and I have moved my
life to a city such as Beijing.
I’m grateful for the change
and ready to face any poten-
tial changes in my career
with confidence and an open
mind.”
 C H I N A DA I LY USA Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I NA 5

Russia makes UN move after spy plan is rebuffed

Moscow offer of joint investigation
voted down at watchdog meeting
THE HAGUE, Netherlands
— Russia has called for urgent
UN Security Council talks on
the spiraling diplomatic crisis
sparked by the spy poisoning
scandal as a group of expelled
US diplomats left their embassy
in Moscow early on Thursday.
Britain blames Russia for
the March 4 poisoning on
UK soil of former double
agent Sergei Skripal with
what it says was a military-
grade nerve agent developed
by the Soviet Union.
More than 150 Russian dip-
lomats were ordered out of the
United States, European
Union members, NATO coun-
tries and other nations in the
wake of the attack, a move that
was met in kind by Russia,
which denies any involvement
in the incident.
Moscow proposed a joint
Russia-Britain investigation
into the poisoning, leading the
Executive Council of the Orga-
nization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons watchdog
to hold an extraordinary ses-
sion behind closed doors on
Wednesday.
Both Russian and British
experts and officials attended
the session.
Out of the 41-member
OPCW Executive Council, a
total of 23 countries either
voted in favor of the proposal
or abstained.
“Unfortunately we have not
been able to have two-thirds of
the votes in support of that
decision,” said Alexander
Shulgin, the permanent repre-
sentative of the Russian Feder-
ation at the OPCW.
After the vote, the British
delegation tweeted that “the
international community has
again stood up and said ‘No’ to
Russian attempts to confuse
and frustrate this process”.
John Foggo, who is acting as
British permanent representa-
tive to the OPCW, told the ses-
sion that Russia’s call for a
joint inquiry with Britain was
“perverse” and “a diversionary
act”.
Russian foreign intelligence
chief Sergei Naryshkin
warned on Wednesday in a
speech in Moscow that both
sides must avoid tensions
escalating to the dangerous
levels of the Cold War.
Accusations of Moscow
engineering the attack were a
“grotesque provocation ...
crudely concocted by the Brit-
ish and American security ser-
vices”, he said.
For Washington, “fighting
the nonexistent so-called Rus-
sian threat has become a real
fixation”, Naryshkin added.
“It has reached such propor-
tions and developed such ludi-
crous characteristics, that it’s
time to talk about the return of
the grim times of the Cold War.”
London believes that a mili-
tary-grade nerve substance
named Novichok that was
developed in Soviet times was
used in the poisoning of Sergei
Skripal and his daughter on
March 4 in the southern
English city of Salisbury, an
allegation Moscow denies.
The OPCW experts have
visited the locations and col-
lected environmental sam-
ples. The samples were
brought to the OPCW labora-
tory on March 23.
“The results of the sample
analyses are expected to be
received by early next week,”
said the OPCW in a statement.
But in a move hailed as a
vindication by Moscow, the
British defense laboratory at
Porton Down analyzing the
nerve agent revealed on Tues-
day that it could not say
whether the substance came
from Russia.
Early on Thursday morning
the first of around 60 US diplo-
mats ordered out of Russia left
their embassy compound in
Moscow on their way to the
airport.
XINHUA—AFP

Briefly Court rejects Lula delay bid

REPUBLIC OF KOREA
Pilots presumed
dead in jet crash
Two pilots were presumed
dead after an F-15K fighter
jet crashed on Thursday in
the country’s rural south,
the Republic of Korea’s air
force said. It wasn’t imme-
diately clear what caused
the crash or whether any of
the pilots attempted to
eject. An airforce spokes-
man said bodies had been
found and their ID was
being checked “but both
pilots are feared dead”.
JAPAN
Headache for Abe
over troop logs
Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe’s government
faced criticism on Thurs-
day, after his defense minis-
ter said the army last year
found activity logs from a
controversial 2004 to 2006
deployment to Iraq, but had
failed to report them to his
predecessor. Defense Minis-
ter Itsunori Onodera said
the Ground Self-Defense
Force, as Japan’s army is
known, had located the logs
in March 2017 but failed to
report them to his prede-
cessor, Tomomi Inada.
Sumo chief sorry
over women row
TOKYO — The head of
Japan’s sumo association has
apologized after women
attempting to perform CPR
during a medical emergency
on Wednesday were repeated-
ly asked to leave a sumo ring.
At least two women
rushed into the ring in
Maizuru, northwest of Kyo-
to, after a local mayor col-
lapsed while giving a speech.
But as the women attempt-
ed to help the mayor, multiple
announcements were made
over loudspeakers asking
them to leave the ring, city
official Noriko Miwa said.
The rings where sumo is
practiced are seen as sacred
places in the Shinto faith.
Women, who are consid-
ered to be “ritually unclean”,
are barred from stepping
into them.
According to witnesses
cited by local media, sumo
Demonstrators against Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva celebrate outside the National Congress in Brasilia on officials threw large quanti-
Wednesday as the Supreme Court rejected his bid to delay a 12-year prison sentence for corruption. ERALDO PERES / ASSOCIATED PRESS ties of salt into the ring after
the women had entered, in
an apparent bid to “repurify”
the sacred ground.
Talks begin to set up Kim-Moon summit In a statement, the sumo
association’s chief, who goes
by the name Hakkaku,
described the announce-
ments as “inappropriate”
under the circumstances.
“The announcement was
made by a referee who was
upset, but it was an inappro-
priate act in a situation that
involves one’s life. We deeply
apologize,” Hakkaku said.
Miwa said the mayor had
been hospitalized and was
now in a stable condition.
This is not the first time
there has been a sumo battle
of the sexes. A row erupted in
1990 when then-chief cabi-
net secretary Mayumi Mori-
yama wanted to present the
Prime Minister’s Cup to a
sumo champion in the ring.
She eventually lost that bat-
tle in the face of sumo bosses.
A decade later, Osaka may-
or Fusae Ota was also
banned from presenting the
champion’s trophy in a tour-
nament in the city.
Sumo is still recovering
from a scandal last year
when former grand champi-
on Harumafuji was charged
over an assault on a rival
wrestler while out drinking.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

PHILIPPINES
Tourist island
ordered closed
President Rodrigo Duterte
has approved the closure of
the tourist island of Bora-
cay for up to six months aft-
er saying the waters off its
famed white-sand beaches
had become a “cesspool”
due to overcrowding and
development. Tourism
undersecretary Frederick
Algre said the shutdown
will start on April 26.
AP—REUTERS—AFP
SEOUL — The Republic of
Korea and the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea on
Thursday started talks to dis-
cuss security and protocol
issues for the inter-Korean
summit later this month, the
ROK’s presidential office said.
The five-member ROK dele-
gation was led by Kim Sang-
gyun, a senior director of the
National Intelligence Service.
Four other Blue House offi-
cials attending the meeting are
Cho Han-ki, protocol secretary
to the president, Shin Yong-
wook, a deputy chief for presi-
dential security service, Kwun
Hyuk-ki, director of the presi-
dential press center, and Yun
Kun-young, director for the
government situation room.
The DPRK delegation was
led by Kim Chang-son, an offi-
cial from the State Affairs
Commission.
The working-level dialogue
came ahead of the first sum-
mit between ROK President
Moon Jae-in and top DPRK
leader Kim Jong-un scheduled
for April 27 at Peace House, a
Panmunjom building con-
trolled by the ROK.
Kim would become the first
DPRK leader to step onto ROK
soil since the 1950-1953 Kore-
an War ended in armistice.
The meeting was aimed at
ironing out the protocols,
security measures and media
coverage of the summit, the
ROK’s presidential office said.
“We had sincere talks for
four hours straight,” said
Kwun.
He declined to give details,
saying the two sides will meet
again for further discussions
on a date yet to be fixed.
The countries will need to
decide how Kim will arrive at
the venue, including whether
he would cross the military
demarcation line by foot in a
symbolic gesture. The coun-
tries also need to determine
how many times he and Moon
would meet on that day and
also whether parts of their King remembered
meeting would be broadcast
on live television.
The two sides have agreed to
hold a working-level dialogue
on Saturday on communica-
tions between Moon and Kim.
The leaders of the countries
agreed to set up a direct hotline
and have their first phone con-
versation before the meeting.
A summit between Kim and
United States President
Donald Trump is also antici-
pated by the end of May. People take part in a silent rally on the National Mall to mark the
50th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin
XINHUA—AP—AFP Luther King Jr. in Washington, on Wednesday. REUTERS

2022 Games venues on Regional leaders vow to secure Syria’s future

schedule and ‘sustainable’
The preparations for the
Beijing 2022 Olympic Win-
ter Games are progressing
well on all fronts, with con-
struction on schedule and
venues being built with
sustainability in mind.
Beijing 2022 will use 26
competition and non-com-
petition venues in three
zones — Beijing, Yanqing
and Zhangjiakou.
International Olym-
pic Committee president
Thomas Bach believes that
Beijing 2022 will set a new
standard for sustainability.
“Beijing 2022 can set a
new benchmark for a sus-
tainable Olympic Games,
on one hand benefiting
from the legacy of Beijing
2008, and on the other
developing a new win-
ter sports destination in
a sustainable way,” Bach
told Xinhua at Febru-
ary’s Pyeongchang Winter
Games.
With less than two years
before the test events, the
construction of major com-
petition venues has to be
finished before the end of
2019. Some work cannot
be carried out in winter,
especially in the mountain-
ous Yanqing Zone, making
hitting that deadline more
difficult.
The Beijing Zone will
be home to curling, ice
hockey, skating and the
newly established Big Air
across 13 venues, including
eight from the Beijing 2008
Summer Games, four new
builds and one temporary.
26
number of venues that will
be used at Beijing Games
The Yanqing Zone, locat-
ed 74 kilometers northwest
of downtown Beijing, and
with a total of five ven-
ues, will host three sports
(alpine skiing, bobsleigh/
skeleton and luge).
The city of Zhangjiakou,
about 180 km from Beijing
in Hebei province, will have
eight venues in total and will
host skiing and biathlon.
The transport infrastruc-
ture is also taking shape.
Construction has begun
on the Beijing-Zhangjiak-
ou Intercity Railway, which
will reduce train-travel
time between the two cit-
ies by around 40 minutes.
Of the venues from the
2008 Games to be used, the
Bird’s Nest Stadium will
stage the opening and clos-
ing ceremonies, while the
National Aquatics Center,
aka the Water Cube, will
host curling.
Close by in the Olympic
Forest Park, the Nation-
al Speed Skating Oval,
dubbed the Ice Ribbon, is
under construction and is
expected to be completed
by the end of 2019.
Twenty-two separate
light strands (or ribbons)
flow up and around the
oval in homage to the sport
it will host, creating a stun-
ning spectacle by night.
Other venues will also
feature high-tech enhance-
ments. The National
Aquatics Center will be
repurposed from Water
Cube to Ice Cube thanks
to the installation of a
transferable rink, while
the National Skeleton and
Luge Center will feature a
special roof to protect the
track from the rays of the
sun in order to save energy.
XINHUA
ANKARA — The presidents
of Russia, Turkey and Iran
vowed to secure the territorial
integrity of Syria during a tri-
lateral summit in Ankara on
Wednesday.
The trio also called for
“a lasting ceasefire between
the conflicting parties” in the
talks on the crisis, according
to a joint statement released
following the summit.
The three countries also
stressed their joint determina-
tion to speed up efforts to
“ensure calm on the ground
and protect civilians” after
talks on the future of the
country.
The leaders went on to urge
the international communi-
ty, particularly the United
Nations and its humanitarian
agencies, to send additional
aid, restore basic infrastruc-
ture and help preserve the
country’s heritage.
The summit brought
together two powers that have
been Syrian President Bashar
alAssad’s most forceful sup-
porters, Iran and Russia, and
one of his strongest oppo-
nents, Turkey.
Cooperation between the
rival camps raised hopes of
stabilizing Syria after seven
years of conflict, in which
500,000 people have been
killed and half the population
displaced.
Russian President Vladimir
Putin told reporters during
the joint news conference aft-
er the summit that the Islamic
State extremist group “retains
its destructive potential to
attack in different regions
across the globe” despite its
defeat in Syria.
Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan insisted that
the Ankaraled military opera-
tion in northern Syria aims to
fight the Kurdish militia as it
poses a threat to Turkey.
500,000
number killed in Syria’s civil war
“Turkey will not stop until
all regions under the control
of the People’s Protection
Units (also known as the
YPG), including Manbij, are
secured,” he said.
Erdogan also expressed
Ankara’s readiness to take
action in the northern Syrian
city of Tal Rifaat along with
Russia and Iran to build a
peaceful environment.
Fo r h i s p a r t , Ir a n i a n
Presi dent Hassan Rouhani
accused the United States of
trying to use the jihadists of
the alNusra Front and IS as
tools in the region, saying the
Syrian conflict has no military
resolution.
On Wednesday, the White
withdrawal from the country.
White House Press Secre-
tary Sarah Sanders said
House said there was no fixed that Trump was “not going
departure date for US troops to put an arbitrary time-
in Syria, after President line” on pulling out troops.
Donald Trump expressed
eagerness for a quick military XINHUA
QINGDAO
THROUGH TH
HE LE
ENS
As the host city of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
summit in June, Qingdao will use the opportunity to promote
reform and opening-up to a new level, said mayor Meng Fanli.
A world leader in the manufacture of high-speed trains,
home appliances and marine engineering equipment, and
home to many famous brands such as Tsingtao Beer, Haier
and Hisense, Qingdao has carried out a number of opening-
up policies to promote reform and development in recent years
and to create an open economy.
It will also use the Belt and Road Initiative to optimize its next
step in plans for opening-up, increasing its ability to influence
surrounding regions and integrating resources. To date, 134
overseas Fortune Global 500 companies have opened offices
in Qingdao, along with about 2,100 other foreign-funded com-
panies and organizations.

6 XINJIANG
From left: Zhang Hongying gives a herdsman a checkup; Yelxat slips and falls on a icy slope; Zhang Hongying asks a pregnant woman how she feels lately.
MEDICINE
IN THE
MOUNTAINS
A health center in the Bozader pastoral district
set up in 1978 is still going strong
The four doctors from the health center in the Bozader pastoral district in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region: Ashat, Zhang Hongying, Yelxat and Seysen (from left).
Photos by JIANG WENYAO
Xinhua
T
he Bozader Winter Pasture in Tekes
county, Ili Kazak autonomous prefec-
ture, in the Xinjiang Uygur autono-
mous region is renowned for its
pasture, but it is also notorious for its hazard-
ous paths. So, if you are not familiar with the
terrain, you can easily get confused by the
hoofprints on the snow slopes.
Steep mountains separate the pasture from
the rest of the world.
However, a health center in the Bozader pas-
toral district set up in 1978 has been kept going
for the past 30 years.
The average altitude in the region is more than
2,500 meters. And there are mountains and val-
leys between one household and the next. So, in
order to send medicines to every household, the
clinic team need to constantly unlock new “dark
alleys”.
Seysen delivers medicine to herdsmen.
The clinic team crosses over somewhere deep in the Tianshan Mountains, which is 4,000 meters above sea level.
Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I N A DA I LY USA
To do this, they set out from the foot of the
mountain, hunchbacked, moving slowly with
reins of the horse in one hand.
Then, after reaching a certain height, they
press their bodies against the cliffs and move
forward, because the edge of the abyss is too
close for comfort.
One often feels dwarfed by the sheer scale of
the place. And it is essential for the doctors to
watch out for each other.
Yelxat takes the lead, with Zhang Hongy-
ing in the middle, followed by Ashat and
Seysen.
The four doctors in the clinic are all dressed
in coats and hats. And, with bronze horse
whips in hand, they look like herdsmen. Only
the red cross on the saddle bags identifies
them as medical personnel.
This team has men and women, young and
old, Kazakh and Han.
- ZHANG LEI
 C H I N A DA I LY USA Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018
By XU JUNQIAN in Shanghai
xujunqian@chinadaily.com.cn
L
ocated in Roussillon, a
Catalan region in southern
France that borders Spain,
the famous Domaine de
Rombeau winery is surrounded by
rolling mountains and the Mediter-
ranean Sea.
Averaging 2,500 hours of sun-
shine and no more than 600 mil-
limeters of rainfall every year, the
region’s terroir allows the vine-
yard, which dates back to the early
18th century, to produce a variety
of grapes with a remarkably high
level of sweetness. The result is an
exquisite wine that tastes similar
to sherry and is well-received by
consumers. Philippe Raspaud, the
sixth-generation owner of the his-
toric winery, calls this le gout du
soleil, which means “the taste of
the sun”.
The wines produced in Roussil-
lon account for 80 percent of the
total in France, but Raspaud wants
a larger share of the global market.
China, he said, is key to achieving
that goal.
“ We want to sell to China
because, in today’s world, you
simply cannot be absent from this
market if you want to be qualified
as a global brand,” said the 35-year-
old, who was in Shanghai before
he participated in the 98th China
Food and Drink Fair in Chengdu,
Sichuan province.
“We see a huge gap between
cheap supermarket offerings mostly
dominated by domestic wine pro-
ducers and super expensive offer-
ings from regions such as Bordeaux,
which even we French do not drink
very often. No one has filled this gap
for a decade,” he added.
As the country’s largest and old-
est exhibition in the food and bev-
erage industry, the trade fair has
attracted upwards of 3,000 exhibi-
tors and 150,000 professional visi-
tors this year. It is expected to con-
solidate 20 billion yuan ($3.18 bil-
lion) in transactions this year, half
of which would be from the alcohol
segment that includes wine, beer,
liquor and Chinese baijiu.
Young consumers drive growth
China is presently the third larg-
est wine market in the world by
value. According to a joint report
released in February by Vinexpo,
one of the largest exhibitions for
wine and spirits in the world, and
UK-based International Wine and
Spirit Research, the growth rate of
the Chinese wine market is fore-
casted to exceed 30 percent over five
years starting from 2017. By 2021,
China would become the second
largest wine market in the world
with a value of $23 billion, behind
only the United States.
While the sales and export num-
bers of premium wines suffered
after the Chinese central govern-
ment rolled out a sweeping anti-
corruption campaign in 2013, this
incident had at the same time
resulted in a boom in the mass
segment as more importers and
dealers flooded the market with
bottles that cost below $20.
Attracted by the affordable pric-
es, young consumers have since
poured into the market. Guillaume
Deglise, CEO of Vinexpo, said that
these consumers have become one
of the key growth engines for the
Chinese wine market.
“There used to be a weird phe-
nomenon in China’s wine circle
where people who buy don’t drink,
Winning over the crowds with a no-frills approach
By XU JUNQIAN in Shanghai
Instead of the conventional plat-
ter of cold cuts, cheese and crack-
ers, the patrons at Vinism, a cozy
bar in a quiet residential neighbor-
hood in Shanghai, passed around
pickled offals and Chinese dump-
lings while quaffing their wines.
Established just two years ago,
Vinism is among a new breed of
wine bars in Shanghai that has
moved away from the conventional
approach of branding wine drink-
ing as an activity reserved for the
sophisticated. Rather, its focus is
on affordability, experimentation
China's wine market is expected
to be worth $23 billion by 2021.
PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
A GLASS HALF FULL
China’s wine market is set to become the world’s second largest in 2021
and experts say that the key to seizing a share of the sector is appealing to
the adventurous young consumers who are driving this phenomenal growth
Left: The historic winery Domaine de Rombeau in France is eyeing a larger share in the global market, especially in China. Right: Philippe Raspaud (left), the sixth-
generation owner of Domaine de Rombeau, and the senior winemaker of the winery. PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
and those who drink don’t pay. Today
we are very happy to see a rise of ‘real
drinkers’ who shop based on their
We want to sell to China own preferences. This is definitely a
good sign for any market looking for
because, in today’s organic growth,” said Deglise.
A consumer sur vey by UK
world, you simply consultancy Mintel showed that a
wine’s origin is the most decisive
cannot be absent from factor for Chinese consumers when
picking a bottle, and France, which
this market if you want is the largest wine exporter to Chi-
na, is the most popular choice.
to be qualified as a The 2017 survey, which polled
about 2,500 young wine buyers,
global brand.” also found that wine standards or
Philippe Raspaud, winery owner preferences have not emerged on
and cultural The bar stocks between 60 and 70
relevance. types of wine and regularly chang-
T h e b a r ’s es its selection every month. Each
interior decor glass of wine costs only between
reflects as 50 and 65 yuan ($8-10). Apart from
much. Here, Chinese favorites like dumplings
the atmosphere and pickled offals, the bar also
is unmistak- offers more creative dishes such as
Shen Sibei, owner ably casual. pig ear terrine.
of Vinism bar in Customers are Wine bars were a rarity in the
Shanghai seated on rudi- city a few years ago. A quick search
mentary wood- on Dianping.com, China’s largest
en chairs. The walls are decorated listing site for restaurants and bars,
with colorful motifs, photo frames shows that there are now more than
and chalk boards. There is no som- 20 wine bars in Shanghai. Among
melier dressed in a suit waiting to them is XO Bar, the brick and mor-
give recommendations. tar outpost of online wine delivery
a national basis, and that Chinese
consumers have yet to develop a
loyalty to brands. This means a level
playing field for new entrants to the
Chinese wine market like Raspaud.
“I am told that Chinese consum-
ers want to be different and indi-
vidualistic, be it in their choice of
wine or fashion,” said Raspaud,
who hopes to brand his wines as
such.
Comparing high-end wine brand
Lafite to luxury label Louis Vuit-
ton, the Frenchman said that his
winery would be the equivalent of
an independent designer whose
products are coveted by a small but
platform Bottles XO. Then there
is II Vino, a wine bar opened by
an Italian wine dealer that exclu-
sively promotes the produce of his
country. Wine drinkers with bigger
wallets could be found at Roosevelt
Wine Cellar, a swanky establish-
ment on the Bund which stocks
about 4,000 vintages.
“Cocktails are cheesy. Beer is for
fathers. Whisky is too expensive and
strong,” joked Shen Sibei, the owner
of Vinism, about the reasons behind
the rising popularity of wine bars.
The 31-year-old native of Zhe-
jiang province has spent most of
his professional career in the wine
Focus | SHANGHAI 7
passionate following.
He also pointed out that factors
such as packaging and market-
ing matter more in China than in
traditional markets like France or
other European countries. As such,
he has undertaken measures to
redesign his wine labels exclusive-
ly for Chinese market. Last year,
Domaine de Rombeau exported
60,000 bottles of wine to China.
Raspaud is hoping to double the
amount this year.
A localized approach
Wang Shenghan, an e-commerce
wine retailer based in Beijing, has
business. He made his first bucket
of gold by establishing and run-
ning one of the country’s first wine
education institution chains, I-WAY.
By the time he sold his shares to his
partners in 2015, the company had
13 outlets across China.
“In the later years of my teaching
career, the most common question
I got from students was where they
could drink good wine, instead of
what defines a good wine. And that
was when I knew it was time for
me to try my hand at something
else,” said Shen, who studied wine
in a college in Burgundy, France.
Though the bar is only two
an equally ambitious plan.
The 30-year-old’s company,
Lady Penguin, was one of the top
performers on Taobao.com last
year, raking in 50 million yuan in
sales. She is confident of hitting
100 million yuan by the end of
this year. In fact, she even said
that “it would be an easy goal to
accomplish”.
The Beijing native, who grad-
uated from Brown University in
the US, developed an interest in
wine while moonlighting at a
three-star Michelin restaurant
in New York. Her interest led
her to spend one year learning
about wine in France.
Wang later rose to fame in the
virtual world after producing
short videos about wine appre-
ciation that were accompanied
by hilarious narrations. In her
videos, she would candidly com-
pare the tastes of different wines
to “an international hooker from
Las Vegas” or “the hope of a devel-
oping country”. Her videos, which
are uploaded to her Sina Weibo
account, have an average viewer-
ship of 600,000. She currently
runs a team of 70 people that have
produced 200 videos.
“I think people like watching
my videos because I’m not tech-
nical or pretentious. I speak in
terms people would understand,”
said Wang.
“Young people in China, espe-
cially those who have just started
drinking wine, are tired of hear-
ing wine terminology like terroir
or tannin. That’s definitely not
the way to get people drinking.”
Among those who took notice
of her was Xu Xiaoping, wide-
ly considered the godfather of
venture capital investment in
China. With Xu’s 1-million-yuan
investment, Wang and two other
partners established Penguin
Guide, a food and drink educa-
tion platform, in 2015. The next
year, Wang started her own busi-
ness, Lady Penguin, that focuses
exclusively on wine.
According to her, most of
Lady Penguin’s customers are
aged between 25 and 35 and
come from first-tier cities like
Shanghai and Guangzhou in
Guangdong province.
“My customers don’t have a
strong preference for wines.
Most of them just come with a
certain budget, usually no more
than 300 yuan, and let our cus-
tomer service team select the
wines for them,” she said.
“From my perspective, wine
drinking among young Chinese
today is very much like restau-
rant hopping. They have a few
favorites that they would keep
returning to, but they’re gener-
ally more eager to explore other
options,” she added.
Looking ahead, Wang is plan-
ning to develop a wine education
system that is suited to Chinese
drinkers. Currently, most of the
wine schools in China adopt the
system created by The Wine and
Spirit Education Trust in Britain
in 1969. One of the key differ-
ences between these two systems
is that the former would feature
more wine pairings with Chinese
cuisine.
“The dinner table is still the
most important social occasion
for the Chinese. And that’s also
where most of the wine will be
consumed. So there should be a
different approach to popular-
izing it,” said Wang.
years old, Shen is already planning
to open a chain of Vinism bars
across major Chinese cities. After
all, business has been brisk —the
bar currently rakes in an average
of 400,000 yuan every month, an
impressive amount considering
the size of the establishment.
Women are the key contributors to
Vinism’s financial success. Shen said
that about 90 percent of his regular
customers are women. He noted that
this ratio was similar to the one he
witnessed back at his wine school.
“Women find wine especially
appealing because it’s unlikely that
they would get drunk on it,” he said.
8 SHANGHAI | The Bund
Shanghai-based artist Shi Yihong will
perform a repertoire by each of the Four
Great Dan at the Shanghai Grand Theatre
in May. PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
THE PEKING OPERA RENEGADE
There has long been a rule that disciples of each of China’s four opera masters stick to their respective
styles of performance, but Shanghai-based Shi Yihong has little interest in sticking with convention
By ZHANG KUN in Shanghai
zhangkun@chinadaily.com.cn
I
n the world of Chinese opera,
Shi Yihong could be considered
a rebel.
Come May 1, the Shanghai-based
artist will once again go against conven-
tion and perform a repertoire by each
of the Four Great Dan — it refers to
the legendary opera singers Mei Lan-
fang, Shang Xiaoyun, Xun Huisheng and
Cheng Yanqiu — in a concert marathon
at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.
For decades, there has been an unspo-
ken rule among the disciples of each
of these four masters that they would
stick to their respective styles of per-
formance. But Shi has little interest in
politics.
“There was no distinction of schools
in opera before the advent of the Four
Great Dan. Everyone learned from one
another freely and that’s how they
became the great masters that they
were,” she said.
She will kick off her performances
at 1:30 pm on May 1 with The Story of
Su San by Mei Lanfang, the “school”
that she is under. She will then perform
Wang Zhaojun by Shang Xiaoyun, fol-
lowed by Jin Yunu by Xun Huisheng
and A Young Woman’s Dream by Cheng
Yanqiu.
Each play will last about 50 minutes,
following which Shi will take a 20-min-
ute break.
“It is going to be physically challeng-
ing, but with the proper training I am
sure I can manage,” said the 46-year-old.
Her feat might seem impressive to
those unfamiliar with Peking Opera. But
to those within the opera circle, her con-
cert marathon will likely come across as
a transgression.
“A person capable of multiple lan-
guages or different skills is likely to win
recognition and respect in most instanc-
es,” wrote Niu Chunmei, a theater critic
for Beijing Daily.
“But it is only in the folk opera scene,
especially the Peking Opera circle,
where such a person is viewed with
disapproval.”
Lin Kai, a veteran theater producer
who has worked with Shi on multiple
occasions, also pointed out that it is
not just performers but audiences as
well that would be offended with her
undertaking.
“Opera singers and audiences are
often very passionate about the artist
and the school they follow. The Peking
Opera community is strict when it
comes to respecting boundaries. If a
play is recognized as one of Cheng Yan-
qiu’s, disciples of Mei Lanfang would
usually not perform it in public,” he
Being a Peking Opera
singer is a life sentence.
You’ll need to practice
your skills every day if
you still want a career
on the stage.”
Shi Yihong, Peking Opera singer
explained.
Born in 1972, Shi began her Peking
Opera training as a wu dan, or a female
martial arts-based performer, at the
Shanghai Folk Opera School. She was
only 9 years old.
When she turned 15, Shi majored in
qing yi, which refers to young or mid-
dle-aged women characters that exude
refinement and grace, and became a
disciple of the Mei Lanfang school.
She later joined the Peking Opera
Troupe of Shanghai where she per-
formed a series of plays from the Mei
Lanfang discipline and became known
as an excellent singer as well as a mar-
tial actor.
In 1996, she became one of the first
Peking Opera actors to study a post
graduate program hosted by the Minis-
try of Culture.
One of her most notable career
achievements was collaborating with
Academy Award-winning composer Tan
Dun in a concert, as well as presenting
a Chinese adaptation of Victor Hugo’s
classic novel Notre Dame.
In 2011, she did what is considered
taboo in Peking Opera circles when she
presented Suolin Purse, a repertoire
from the Cheng Yanqiu school.
“I study the performances of other
schools not because I want to imitate
but because I want to learn from their
strengths and improve my level of art-
istry,” she explained then.
The next year, she made a bold deci-
sion to take part in a new Kunqu Opera
production of Peony Pavilion. While
Kunqu and Peking operas share many
commonalities, they are essentially two
different theater forms. Her crossover
drew criticism from the academic and
theatrical community, with some saying
that Shi “twisted” the essence of Kunqu
with her rendition.
Again, the artist was defiant, issuing a
rebuke: “Why would I stage a play that
garners no dispute? There have been
many calls for people to rejuvenate Chi-
nese opera…there is no point in us opera
people entertaining ourselves. Chinese
opera is in decline and we need more
people to see it and talk about it.”
The experience of performing Peony
Pavilion, she said, helped to deepen her
understanding of Peking Opera.
“I learned how to control my breath-
ing better while singing and was able to
find inner peace on the stage. This gave
me more confidence and I was able to
immerse myself into the character,” she
said.
In 2016, Shi established her own pro-
duction company, affording her more
freedom in creating new plays and
productions.
Lin said that it is a rarity for an artist
of Shi’s experience to be expanding her
repertoire. But for Shi, who has never
performed two of the upcoming four
plays, this constant need to learn does
not stem from a desire to outdo oth-
ers, but from a determination to stay
relevant.
“Being a Peking Opera singer is a life
sentence,” she said.
“You’ll need to practice your skills
every day if you still want a career on
the stage.”
Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I N A DA I LY USA
The stories behind
the four great actors
By ZHANG KUN in Shanghai
The early 1900s is widely considered the
golden age of Peking Opera in China. Then,
competition was fierce as opera troupes led
by renowned stars toured all over China.
Meanwhile, critics were ever ready to fire
off their assessments of the quality of each
troupe’s performance.
In 1927, Shuntian Times, a newspaper in
Beijing, hosted a contest for performers of
Peking Opera who played female roles in
their plays. Such an actor is known as dan.
The top prize was won by Mei Lanfang,
followed by Cheng Yanqiu, Shang Xiaoyun
and Xun Huisheng. Since that historic con-
test, the four artists have been widely known
as the Four Great Dan of Peking Opera, and
each went on to develop their own disciplines
which have been studied and followed by
generations of opera singers.
In the past, Peking Opera was an all-male
affair. In the 1960s, however, the cultural
administration of China discouraged cross-
gender performances in folk opera and the
majority of the disciples under the Four
Great Dan have since been women.
Wang Yaoqing (1881-1954), a Peking
Opera artist and critic, summarized each of
the four artists’ styles using a single Chinese
character, and these characters have since
become the most widely recognized defini-
tion of the Four Great Dan.
Mei Lanfang’s (1894-1961) style was
called “yang”. When translated literally,
“yang” means “look and style” as the art-
ist excelled in his portrayals of women of
refinement and grace. Mei, arguably the
most celebrated Peking Opera artist of all
time, first became famous in the 1910s. He
boasted a mellow voice and impeccable
movement on stage.
From left to right: Cheng Yanqiu, Shang Xiaoyun, Mei Lanfang and Xun Huisheng are recognized as
the four great Peking Opera actors in China. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
Mei was renowned for his efforts in mod-
ernizing Peking Opera in terms of plays,
stage design, lighting, makeup and cos-
tume design. Mei was also the first Peking
Opera artist to gain international recogni-
tion when he performed in the US in 1930.
During wartime, Mei kept a moustache
as a reply to the Japanese who requested
him to perform. This bold act of patriotism
earned him great respect and bolstered his
fame as an artist.
Cheng Yanqiu’s (1904-1958) style was
called “chang”, which refers to his distinc-
tive singing style. As a student, Cheng stud-
ied under Mei but he later developed his
own unique style, which was defined by
whimpering-like vocalization that was later
widely recognized by the opera world as
“soft and pleasing, firm but gentle”.
Cheng paid great attention to emotional
expressions during his performances and
became widely known for his portrayal of
women in tragic stories.
Shang Xiaoyun’s (1900-1976) style was
known as “bang”, the Chinese term for
“bravo”. Shang started his opera journey
as a martial arts character and his perfor-
mance style was powerful. He was particu-
larly adept at portraying brave and heroic
women characters.
Xun Huisheng’s (1900-1968) style was
called “lang”, which is an adjective for
coquettish or seductive. Xun started his
training not in Peking Opera, but Hebei
Bangzi, a coarser form of folk opera theater.
He made the switch to Peking Opera when
he was 19 but kept elements of Bangzi in
his repertoire.
Xun, who was famous for his sweet voice,
was particularly good at presenting seduc-
tive or sassy women characters such as
prostitutes.
 C H I N A DA I LY USA Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018
By DAVID BLAIR
davidblair@chinadaily.com.cn
C
hina’s use of natural gas
surged by 19 percent in
2017, as areas across north-
ern China switched to this
relatively clean fossil fuel and away
from highly polluting coal in resi-
dential heating and industrial uses,
according to data from the Ministry
of Environmental Protection.
This enabled Beijingers and those
in surrounding areas to enjoy many
clear, blue-sky days this past winter,
in sharp contrast with the heavy air
pollution seen just a year ago.
Increased use of natural gas is
an important component of plans
to reach the national priority goals
of creating an ecological civilization
and higher-quality growth. These
goals were stressed at the recent two
sessions meetings of the National
People’s Congress and the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Confer-
ence in Beijing.
Air pollution in northern China
is usually worse in the winter, but
this past winter saw unprecedented
improvement. Largely due to the
policy decision to shift to natural gas
for heating and many industrial uses,
the average concentration in Beijing
of the most hazardous small particu-
late matter, PM 2.5, fell in January by
70 percent year-on-year to 34 micro-
grams per cubic meter, the then
Beijing Environmental Protection
Bureau said in a statement. It was
the first time the figure was under
the national standard safe level of
35, the bureau said. However, this
month has seen many days of high
air pollution, although coming weeks
are forecast to be clear.
From October to January, all 28
cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei
region, also known as Jing-Jin-Ji, and
surrounding areas saw their winter
air quality improve. For example, Shi-
jiazhuang, the capital of Hebei prov-
ince, saw a decrease of 52.4 percent.
Jining in neighboring Shandong
province saw the smallest decrease,
8.4 percent.
“The dramatic improvement in
air quality mainly resulted from
effective and extra-strict controls
on emissions and advantageous
weather to disperse pollutants,”
says Li Xiang, director of air qual-
ity management at the capital’s
environmental protection bureau.
Restrictions covered many sources,
such as factories, vehicles and the
burning of coal, she says, adding
that more than 11,000 polluting
companies were closed or moved.
In 2013, Premier Li Keqiang
announced goals to reduce pollution
throughout the country. This was
a fundamental change of direction
from the previous emphasis solely on
rapid GDP growth. Since then, poli-
cies to shift toward cleaner industry
and energy brought down the aver-
age concentration of PM2.5 by almost
40 percent from 2013 in the Jing-Jin-
Ji region. In Beijing, the average con-
centration of PM2.5 went down from
89.5 micrograms per cubic meter in
2013 to 58 mcg per cu m for the entire
year of 2017 — below the target of
60 set out when the campaign was
launched and 36 percent below the
2013 level of 90. Throughout China,
338 cities saw an average reduction
of 6.5 percent from 2016 levels.
Recent research by the Energy
Policy Institute of Chicago estimates
that the reductions in air pollution
since 2013 add 3.3 years to life expec-
tancy in Beijing and, in Hebei prov-
ince, 4.5 years in Baoding and 5.3
years in Shijiazhuang.
Winter shortages
This year’s rapid shift from coal
to natural gas has led to shortages.
According to the then ministry of
environmental protection, around
100,000 families and some schools
temporarily lacked heat in December.
The government stepped in with a
combination of measures, including
allowing some additional use of coal
and moving natural gas from indus-
trial uses to residential and from
southern China to the north. The
National Development and Reform
Commission also ordered Beijing to
The Qiniandian of the Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing is seen in the smog in 2016. JIN LIANGKUAI / CHINA DAILY
CHANGE IN THE AIR
‘Dramatic improvement' as use of more natural gas, and less coal, brings more blue skies during winter
The National Centre for the Performing Arts and the Great Hall of the People under a blue sky in 2017.
Natural gas consumption in China
Unit: billion cubic meters
73.0 84.1 92.6
2007 2008 2009
Growth rate of natural gas consumption in China
Unit: y-o-y percent
15.0
10.1
2007 2008 2009
* Estimate extrapolated from January to November data.
Source: Ministry of Environmental Protection
Average annual PM 2.5 in Beijing
Unit: micrograms / cubic meter
89.5
85.9
2013 2014
Source: Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau
restart a coal-fired power plant that
had been shut down in March last
year.
Natural gas prices soared in
December. The price of liquefied
natural gas in China jumped from
4,000 yuan ($605) per metric ton to
more than 10,000 yuan per ton. How-
ever, the price was brought down to
5,613.6 yuan per ton by mid-January,
according to data from the National
Bureau of Statistics.
Han Xiaoping, chief information
officer of China Energy Net Con-
sulting, said the current natural
gas shortage is due to insufficient
domestic gas resources and the lack
of distributed gas storage infrastruc-
ture, especially underground storage
tanks.
In addition to building more natu-
ral gas infrastructure, the strategy for
alleviating future shortages is to con-
ANALYSIS 9
ENVIRONMENT
the end of 2017, the switch from coal
to natural gas and electricity in the
Beijing area was successful in nearly
eliminating the sulfur dioxide pollu-
tion from coal, but little progress had
been made against nitrogen oxides.
Chen Songxi, a professor at Guan-
ghua, described the conclusions of a
forthcoming publication: “The move
from coal to natural gas is reflected
in the dramatic, roughly 50 percent,
falls in sulfur dioxide levels through-
out the region since 2013. This was
true in highly industrialized towns
as well as in Beijing. Beijing’s level
already reached single digits in 2016,
in the summer and spring, which is
very close to European cities.”
Liu Baoxian, deputy director of the
Beijing Environmental Monitoring
Center, says, “The average annual
concentration of sulfur dioxide saw
a historical low of only 8 micrograms
per cubic meter” — far below the
national standard of 60.
On the other hand, Chen says, “The
other component of PM2.5 is nitro-
gen oxides, mostly from car emis-
sions. We have seen little change in it.
The other thing we see in the region
is that the ozone level has been going
up significantly. The number of cars
in Beijing has pretty much leveled off
but is not being decreased.”
Supply sources
The winter of 2017 was a perfect
storm for natural gas. For example,
JIN LIANGKUAI / XINHUA gas shipments from Turkmenistan
fell by 32 percent from September to
November, which could not be made
policy of upgrading industrial trans- up by volume from Uzbekistan and
formation. Kazakhstan, according to China’s
“If you think about where China is customs authority. In addition, a
at right now, there is a need to scale large Sinopec liquefied natural gas
down construction and the reliance terminal in Tianjin did not become
on infrastructure projects and real ready for commercial shipments
estate to drive growth. At this point, until this month.
training some of the people in the Domestic production of natural
construction sector to do retrofits gas increased by 10.5 percent, while
111.2 137.1 150.7 171.9 188.4 194.6 210.3 250.0 would make an enormous amount imports made up the difference,
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017* of sense,” Myllyvirta says. growing by 28.9 percent. As of 2016,
China’s gas came from 60 percent
Fewer accidents, too domestic production and 40 percent
The most direct beneficiaries of imports, but the central government
the switch from coal to natural gas expects imports to grow to 50 per-
20.0 19.0 for rural heating and industry are the cent by 2020.
villagers and workers who no longer Imports consist of liquid natural
23.3 have to work with coal or breathe its gas, imported by ship, and pipelines,
10.0 emissions. currently mostly from Central Asian
9.6 Michal Meidan, vice-president countries. A new pipeline from Rus-
13.9 for research at Energy Aspects, a sia is expected to bring natural gas to
3.4 London-based energy consulting Northeast China and to Shanghai by
8.0 company, says: “Natural gas is a big 2020. However, LNG is abundantly
improvement over coal in terms of available and can provide flexible
pollution but also in terms of worker supply — especially once receiving
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017*
safety. Worker accidents and mining terminals and underground storage
accidents all have been rampant and capacity are completed.
LI YI / CHINA DAILY
a source of concern for many years. In 2017, LNG took a bigger share
By switching to natural gas, you get of the imports. China imported 68
fewer accidents in the industrial million metric tons in 2017 — of
workplace. You don’t need the big which 38 million tons was LNG and
piles of coal you did to fuel furnaces.” 30 million tons was from pipelines.
Myllyvirta, of Greenpeace, says: “In The previous year, the total was 54
the winter, we know that heating is million tons, of which 26 million tons
80.6
Natural gas is a big an important source of outdoor pol- was LNG and 27 million tons from
lution affecting cities and so on. But pipelines, according to Meidan, of
73.0 improvement over coal the biggest health impact of heating Energy Aspects.
with coal is the indoor pollution of China’s LNG imports surpassed
58.0 in terms of pollution people living in houses where coal those of South Korea to become the
but also in terms of is used for heating and cooking. Bei- world’s second-largest after Japan.
jing’s average PM2.5 is now around According to Marc Howson, director
worker safety.” 60 (micrograms per cubic meter). If of the LNG market at S&P Global
you heat with coal, you easily have Platts, a further increase to 50 million
Michal Meidan, vice-president for
research at Energy Aspects several hundreds or even more than metric tons is expected in 2018. Aus-
2015 2016 2017 1,000 inside your house.” tralia is the major supplier, followed
According to the World Health by Qatar, Malaysia, Indonesia and
LI YI / CHINA DAILY
Organization, local smog in general Papua New Guinea.
That is the sector where natural gas — which leads to increased risk of The US Energy Information Agen-
centrate natural gas use in residential makes most sense in China. If you stroke, heart disease, asthma, and cy estimates that China has huge sup-
and industrial uses, where it makes look at what happened in the last lung cancer — consists of sulfur diox- plies of unconventional shale gas,
the most difference in reducing pollu- winter, the local policies were very ide, nitrogen oxides, dust and other about equal to those of the US and
tion. The modern ultra-supercritical focused on gas. In the next years, particles. Also, carbon dioxide emis- Canada combined. However, extrac-
coal-fired electrical power plants that the policy is more balanced between sions lead to global warming, though tion of that gas is still in the early
China is building are not as clean as geothermal, biomass, electric heat- they are not locally harmful. stages.
natural gas turbines, but they are far ing and gas. I definitely think that Sulfur dioxide is created mostly “Sinopec is developing shale with
cleaner than the very small burners, broader mix, including emissions- by burning coal. Nitrogen oxides, quite good results in Chongqing,
so it is seen as making sense to con- free sources as well, will be better and and the ground-level ozone that producing 5 billion to 7 billion cubic
centrate coal mostly in electrical might avoid some of the problems is created when they interact with meters of gas, quite a good accom-
power generation, as is now done we saw this winter.” sunlight, come mostly from motor plishment,” says Meidan. “However,
in developed countries. He also says that the govern- vehicles. Dust and other particles are the geology is still unclear, and there-
Lauri Myllyvirta, a coal and ment’s 2021 heating plan, made airborne largely by construc- fore the technological needs and the
air pollution expert at which stiffens building tion, truck traffic or wind from desert pricing environment are all open
Greenpeace in Bei- insulation standards, areas. questions.”
jing, says: “Shifting will require retrofit- Natural gas is much cleaner than Natural gas use is expected to grow
small boilers or house- ting the insulation of coal, both globally and locally. Local- to 10 percent of China’s total energy
hold heating rural houses, so ly, it produces almost no sulfur diox- mix, up from around 7 percent now.
from coal to gas demand ide and less nitrogen oxides than is Combined with an even stronger
gas definitely from heating created by gasoline or diesel engines. emphasis on anti-pollution enforce-
leads to big will decline. This Recent analysis by a team at ment, it will be a key component
air qual- ties in with Peking University’s Guanghua School of a cleaner mix of energy use and
ity gains. the broader of Management concluded that, by upgraded industry.
10 P E O P LE
ENVIRONMENT
Green route is the only way forward
Expert acknowledges
China’s efforts toward
environmental
conservation
By LUCIE MORANGI
lucymorangi@chinadaily.com.cn
T
argeted conservation-
related policies and reg-
ulations, together with
consistent funding for
research, have set China on the
path toward reining in pollution.
Africa can learn from this, help-
ing it meet sustainable goals and
reduce pollution-related deaths,
says Liu Jian, the chief scientist of
the United Nations Environment
Programme.
Pollution has become the world’s
No 1 killer, jumping to the top of
the priority list, says Liu. Accord-
ing to a World Health Organiza-
tion report, at least 12.6 million
people died in 2012 of environmen-
tally related deaths. Air pollution
accounted for half of these deaths.
Nevertheless, China’s strong
leadership and commitment are
reversing the trend, while promot-
ing investment in the green econ-
omy. During the third UN Envi-
ronment Assembly Forum, held in
December, Chinese environmental
projects and one individual won the
UN’s top environmental awards.
The winners were Saihanba Affor-
estation Community, Mobike and
Wang Weibao, chairman of Elion
Resources Group, who won the
Lifetime Achievement award.
“Private business has a key role
to play in cutting pollution,” Liu
says. In its efforts to transform the
country into “Beautiful China”, the
government has worked closely
with scientists and corporate enter-
prises.
Such cooperation within the
UNEA is long overdue, says Liu.
During the previous session, the
private sector was left out, and Liu
was determined to change this.
Only a year into his job, it fell upon
him to organize a forum that would
discuss achievable ways of cutting
emissions.
“I wondered whether the policy-
makers and scientists were enough
to meet our green solution goals,”
he says.
Liu was aware of the Emissions
Gap Report, produced by the UNEP
and released in 2017. It said joint
efforts between the government
and the scientific community can
only meet one-third of the com-
mitments made in the Paris Cli-
mate Agreement. Partnership with
the business sector was therefore
urgently needed. “Unless business-
es change their water utilization,
energy production using coal, and
soil management, pollution will
persist. No one is to be left out in
this campaign,” says Liu.
Since 2006, Achim Steiner, the
former executive director of the
UNEP, has promoted the green
economy concept, says Liu, adding
that the idea started to catch on.
"This concept is a paradigm shift,
since it forces all players to address
pollution from the source and not
the end. Air pollution can only be
curbed by solutions designed from
the source.
“This is revolutionary and has
ART
Sherlock star part of Chinese comedy
By BO LEUNG in London
boleung@mail.chinadailyuk.com
The British actor Rupert Graves,
who shot to fame playing Detective
Inspector Lestrade in the BBC tele-
vision series Sherlock, is shooting
a romantic comedy aimed at Asian
audiences.
Graves and a Chinese film crew
have been seen in Belfast, Northern
Ireland, where they are filming a
movie called Special Couple.
In June 2016, the China-UK Film
Fund signed a strategic partner-
ship with China’s SMG Pictures to
shoot the comedy. Special Couple
is fully financed by SMG Pictures,
Liu Jian says air pollution can only be curbed by solutions designed from the source. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
triggered several green investment
opportunities,” he says.
Therefore, the dynamics of the
UN Global Science-Policy-Business
Forum on the Environment on Dec
2 and 3 had changed. “We creat-
ed an opportunity for the private
sector to engage with the policy-
makers and scientists in seeking
to enable policies and attractive
incentives that will increase green
investments for new businesses,”
says Liu.
Enthusiasm was high in the busi-
ness community. Only 400 people
were expected to take part, but
Liu’s team received around 1,900
application. Only 800 participants
were allowed, with an emphasis on
the private sector. The forum was
self-financed.
“The private sector are decent
and smart and it is time to tap into
their knowledge and resources to
which is the film production arm
of media and entertainment giant
Shanghai Media Group.
The movie is believed to be one
of the first feature films to be pro-
duced as part of a China-UK co-
production treaty signed in April
2014 between the UK government
and Beijing.
While filming has been going on
in various locations in Belfast, it’s
thought that the Northern Irish
capital city is being used as a stand-
in for London.
According to The Irish News the
movie is being directed by Huang
Lei and produced by Huang Jianx-
in and Chris Curling, but little is
reach sustainability goals. Most of
them are surprisingly on our side
and have proved to be farsighted
and visionary. Look at the solu-
tions they are implementing in
developing countries, and most of
them agree that green is the avenue
toward sustainability.
“They say that if you are not
turning green then your business
is facing a dead end, with no hope.
That is why I believe the popularity
of the forum will increase, especial-
ly among the business community.
We are learning from the World
Economic Forum but not limiting
ourselves,” he says.
During UNEA 3, participants
agreed that, for the world to have
cleaner air, $18.6 billion of invest-
ment is needed. Liu says that, for
this to happen, there is a need for
stronger political, intellectual and
entrepreneurial leadership.
known about the script.
Deirdre McCanny, who owns Co
Couture, an artisan chocolate shop
in the city’s Chichester Street, where
some of the filming took place, told
The Irish News she was delighted
her store was chosen as a location.
“The Chinese film crew came in
back in January to scout for loca-
tions and they really liked the under-
ground open space of Co Couture,”
she said. “The director wanted the
main character to live in a basement
apartment, something that’s rather
hard to come by in Belfast, but Co
Couture fitted the bill perfectly.”
It’s thought a replica of the base-
ment property has been built in
First, environmental conserva-
tion needs to be prioritized in glob-
al business forums, he says. “Dur-
ing the recent World Economic
Forum in Davos, only two heads of
state — India’s Prime Minister Nar-
endra Modi and French President
Emmanuel Macron — addressed
environmental issues. The environ-
ment is important, since it dictates
sustainable development,” he says.
Second, scientists need to proac-
tively identify sources of pollution
and solutions in terms of innova-
tion and technology, linking with
entrepreneurs for implementation.
“Only when you put these three
groups together will results be
seen,” says Liu.
He says that his office is work-
ing with the governments of the
United States, China, Europe and
India to reach out to the business
community. Multinational compa-
China, and most of the interior
shots will be filmed there.
McCanny said it was a shock to
see the Sherlock star. She and her
staff had not known he was going
to be in the film.
“It’s super-exciting to be part of
and, hopefully, as there is a massive
Chinese market here, we will get to
see the movie when it’s released,”
she said.
According to the fromer State
administration of press, publica-
tion, radio, film and television, Chi-
na’s box office revenue rose 13.45
percent in 2017, to more than 55.9
billion yuan ($8.6 billion) for the
year.
Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I N A DA I LY USA
nies such as IBM and Philips are
highly receptive, he says.
“We are keen to expand this con-
versation to nonstate actors, and
hence the need for a new name.
We are still consulting but we are
thinking of naming it the World
Environmental Forum, to give a
voice to everyone and also promote
leadership in innovation.”
On Africa, he says the continent
is in the pole position to be the
launchpad of a green revolution.
“Africa is the land of hope. It has
more potential than China and
India, and even the US and Europe.
Comparisons can be made on per
capita net resources, and Africa
ranks first in water, for example,
followed by China, then India. Afri-
ca is rich when it comes to renew-
able energy potential. Research
shows that a solar farm covering
a third of the Sahara desert could
Actor Rupert Graves is shooting a movie in Belfast aimed at Chinese audiences.
RICHARD SHOTWELL / AP
The private sector are
decent and smart and
it is time to tap into
their knowledge and
resources to reach
sustainability goals.”
Liu Jian, chief scientist of the United
Nations Environment Programme
power the world six times over.”
Africa is yet to exploit its hydro
power potential on its two biggest
rivers, the Congo and the Nile, he
says. It has huge bio-mass potential
in addition to a young, educated
and cheaper workforce as the rest
of the world enters the aging phase.
“This is the land of hope,” he
says. “There is no reason Africa
cannot do better in green economy.
There is already a blueprint, and
some countries, such as Kenya, are
already setting the pace. Other-
wise, the continent will replicate
previous mistakes.”
Efforts should be made in con-
trolling car emissions by setting
standards on car exhausts, and
China is already doing it, Liu says,
adding that such moves need
courage. This should start from
increasing investment in research,
he adds.
Previously in China, there were
discrepancies between investment
in science and technology and eco-
nomic growth. In 1987, a nation-
al program called the National
Knowledge Innovation Program
was launched, thus increasing
investment in science and technol-
ogy to about 10 times that of the
previous 20 years.
“China is now knocking on the
door as an innovative country. Its
longterm investments are show-
ing benefits in the economy. It has
a competent team that meets the
needs of the economy,” says Liu.
Africa, and particularly Kenya, is
in the best position to build such a
team, he says. “Not necessarily to
cover every aspect, but to support
the essential part of the economy
that holds a comparative advan-
tage, similar to what Denmark
and the Netherlands have done.
Investing in science is costly but
rewarding.”
Among the most discussed top-
ics during the UNEA 3 forum was
the Belt and Road Initiative and
the effect the huge infrastructure
project will have on the environ-
ment. Liu says countries will have
to implement different approaches
and policies to increase the success
rate of the initiative.
“Strategies around conserved
sites such as national parks and
water bodies will be different from
those for bare land and will thus
need site-specific designs. The one-
model-suits-all approach will not
work. Plans will have to adjust to
the socioeconomic needs of host
countries, too.”
 C H I N A DA I LY USA Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 NE WS CA P SULE 11

News in review
Monday, April 2 to Friday, April 6

1 2 3 4 5

Monday April 2 Wednesday April 4 Thursday April 5

Beijing home market fast nearing stable phase
The residential property mar-
ket in Beijing will reach a rela-
tively stable level amid downside
risks this year, according to an
industry expert from Savills, an
international real estate consult-
ing company.
In 2017, both supply and
demand in the residential prop-
erty market in Beijing were
restrained because of tighten-
ing regulatory policies, resulting
in a yearlong decline in market
Alibaba, Tencent rivalry moves to online food delivery
The duel between China’s
business conglomerates Alibaba
and Tencent is moving to online
food ordering services.
On Monday, Alibaba and its
financial arm, Ant Financial,
signed an agreement with
online food ordering platform
Ele.me to buy out and take full
supply and transaction volume
compared with previous years.
“The government wants to sta-
bilize home prices, especially in
Beijing,” said Anthony McQuade,
managing director of Savills for
the Northern China market.
“There might be some tweaking
at the edges, but they will not
stimulate the market too much.”
“Fundamentally, there is
still a strong demand,” he said.
(Photo 1)
control of the platform for $9.5
billion. Previously, Alibaba and
Ant Financial had invested
$2.25 billion to acquire about
30 percent of Ele.me.
Alibaba will integrate Ele.me’s
businesses to compete with Mei-
tuan, a Tencent-backed online
lifestyle platform.
Meituan acquires Mobike for $2.7 billion
China’s online-to-offline cater-
ing company Meituan-Dianping
acquired bike-sharing firm
Mobike, Meituan CEO Wang
Xing said in an internal letter,
according to a report by tech.
sina.com.cn.
A source close to the deal said
the price of the acquisition is $2.7
billion, 65 percent of which will
be paid in cash while 35 percent
will be paid by Meituan’s stake,
the report said. In addition, $320
million of the $2.7 billion will be
used as a future liquidity supple-
ment for Mobike.
“Mobike will continue to
operate independently as an
China looks to lead large int’l science projects
China aims to organize and
launch a series of large inter-
national science projects in the
coming years to solve impor-
tant problems in science.
China will organize and
independent brand. The man-
agement team will remain
unchanged, with Wang Xiaofeng,
Hu Weiwei and Xia Yiping con-
tinuing to serve as the company’s
CEO, president and CTO respec-
tively,” Wang, who will be chair-
man of Mobike, said in the letter.
The acquisition was approved
by a vote at Mobike’s sharehold-
er meeting held Tuesday night,
according to a report by tech.
ifeng.com.
According to a report by Lan-
jinger, the valuation of Mobike
after its previous round of fund-
raising was $3.45 billion.
(Photo 3)
influence in the science and
technology field, the Ministry
of Science and Technology said.
According to a plan by the
ministry, China will develop
more large science projects to
Manufacturing activity sped up in March
Manufacturing activity of
Chinese enterprises gathered
speed in March, indicating
that the nation’s economy con-
tinued to maintain momen-
tum in the first quarter of this
year, latest data said.
The Caixin China manufac-
turing PMI for March showed
that the index dropped by 0.6
percentage point from the
previous month to 51, but was
still well above the 50-point
mark that separates growth
from contraction on a month-
ly basis. However, the reading
HIV self-test kits on sale at Shanghai universities
Three universities in Shanghai
started offering HIV self-test kits
in vending machines on Tuesday
to promote HIV testing on cam-
pus while protecting privacy.
Students at Shanghai Lixin
University of Accounting and
Finance, Shanghai Universi-
was the lowest during the past
four months.
Despite the slightly weak-
ening demand, manufactur-
ers still remained upbeat on
business prospects for the rest
of the year, with the indus-
trywide confidence hitting
the highest point in a year.
Expectations are rife that the
expansion of production will
be facilitated by stepped-up
investment, improvement
in market expectations and
the launch of new products.
(Photo 4)
drawer in the machine.
The student can view the
results online by entering a spe-
cific code number. The whole
process is anonymous.
It is part of a program jointly
launched by the Chinese Asso-
ciation of STD and AIDS Preven-

Tuesday
BoC provides $4.8 billion for winter sports
Bank of China, the first offi-
cial partner of the 2022 Olympic
and Paralympic Winter Games,
announced its Winter Olympics
action plan by providing $4.8
billion for China’s winter sports
and industry from now to 2024.
With the theme of “Taking part
in winter sports together”, BoC’s
action plan aims to encourage 30
million Chinese families and 100
million Chinese people to take
part in winter sports and give a
boost to the sports industry.
Beijing will be the only city to
World’s first cloned cashmere goat gives birth in China
April 3
launch one or two large inter-
national science projects and
foster three to five projects by
improve its abilities in scien-
tific and technological inno-
vation and play an important
ty and Tongji University can
buy a kit for around $4.80,
take a urine sample, and
tion and Control and the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation
to address HIV transmission on
2020. An additional six to 10 role in international science return the kit to a deposit campus.
large projects will be cultivat- and technology by the middle
ed by 2035 to increase China’s of the century.
host Summer and Winter edi-
tions of the Olympic Games. BoC
is the only bank in China to have
Friday April 6
served both the 2008 and 2022
Olympics. More tax reductions for businesses
Since its launch in February
2017, Beijing 2022’s marketing China will issue additional construction, basic telecommuni-
program has received consider- policies to further cut $63.8 bil- cations services and farm produce
able attention and interest from lion of tax this year for manu- from 11 percent to 10 percent.
different sectors. Beijing 2022 facturing enterprises, following “This round of tax reform will
has signed five official partners the announcement of value- focus on supporting the manufac-
so far, including Bank of China, added tax reform, the Ministry of turing industry, as it is an impor-
Air China, Yili Group (dairy Finance said. tant part of the real economy and
products), Anta (sports apparel), According to the plan, the tax also the foundation of overall
and China Unicom. rate for manufacturing will be economic development,” said Xu
lowered from 17 percent to 16 Hongcai, assistant minister of
percent, and for transportation, finance.

The world’s first cloned cash-
mere goat has sired two kids
in North China’s Inner Mongo-
lia autonomous region, it was
announced.
The two kids, born last week
after a natural reproduction pro-
cess, are strong and in good con-
dition, according to researchers.
“The successful breeding will
accelerate the application of clone
technology in cashmere goat hus-
bandry,” said a researcher at the
animal breeding base where the
kids were born.
The father, the world’s first
cloned cashmere goat, was born
in December 2016. To test its
breeding capabilities, research-
ers let it mate with more than
20 female goats and most were
impregnated.
The superfine cashmere fiber
from the goat is less than 13.8
micrometers thick, much finer
than the average of 15.8 microme-
ters on the famous Erlang Moun-
tain goats in Inner Mongolia.
The successful breeding of
the cloned billy goat with natu-
rally born females could vastly
improve the quality of cashmere
in the wool industry, with huge
implications for producers,
according to the breeding firm
Zhongke Zhengbiao Biotech
Company.
The billy goat was genetically
engineered to produce finer and
softer wool. (Photo 2)
Online travel agency granted license for car-hailing service
Ctrip, China’s largest online
travel agency, has become the
latest entrant to the nation’s
booming car-hailing market.
Ctrip, which provides ser-
vices for booking online
flights, hotels and tailored
trips, announced that it had
been granted a license by the
transport authority in Tianjin
to operate ride-hailing services
nationwide, after preparing to
launch such services for three
China on Tuesday released 47 rare milu deer into the wild in the years.
wetlands around Poyang Lake to improve biodiversity and protect the In late March, Meituan-
ecosystem of the country’s largest freshwater lake. This was the first Dianping, China’s largest
release of milu deer into the wild in the region in East China’s Jiangxi online platform for ordering
province where the species disappeared around 1,000 years ago. food and booking restaurants,
launched car-hailing services in
Shanghai. In January, Chinese
automaker Geely announced
its ride-hailing brand Cao Cao
had completed its first round of
funding, raising $159 million.
“The revenue of the opera-
tors in the domestic car-hailing
market is considerable, and the
threshold to enter the market
is low, and that has attracted
new entrants to the sector,”
said Cheng Shidong, director
of the Urban Traffic Office at
the Institute of Comprehensive
Transportation of the Nation-
al Development and Reform
Commission.

NUMBERS Quote:

718,270
The number of people in China with
HIV/AIDS as of June 2017, according We have the
to official data
confidence and
50 percent
The percentage of funerals in China
capability to
respond to any
set by the Ministry of Civil Affairs that
would be “green” by 2020 (Photo 5)
US protectionist
measures.”
2.2 million
The number of shared bicycles in
Lu Kang, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs spokesman

Beijing

137 million
The number of primary and
secondary school students in China
who attended after-school training
institutions in 2016

About 4.8 million creeping phlox blossoms bloom in Tianwang township in Zhenjiang, East China’s Jiangsu province. The pink, carpetlike
flowers draw thousands of visitors. The flowers will not fade away until early May. PHOTOS BY DAI XIANING AND WAN LINGYUN / CHINA DAILY

12 SECOND THOUGHTS
Looking ahead when many don’t
O
ne of the most striking
aspects about China,
particularly to outsiders,
is the level and quality of
debate that takes place here.
This was
particularly
the case at the
China Develop-
ment Forum,
which recently
concluded in
Andrew Beijing.
Moody “There is no
equivalent to
this forum in
the world,” said Apple CEO Tim
Cook at the conclusion of his
address to the final session.
And it has to be said there are
not many events that one attends
where every second person you
meet seems to have won a Nobel
Prize or is head of Google, BP,
Total, Baidu or any other house-
hold-name corporations you care
to mention.
The arrival of proper spring
weather in the sumptuous sur-
roundings of the Diaoyutai State
Guesthouse, with temperatures
over 20 C at last, gave this year’s
On the prowl for an attitude adjustment
So what’s the deal with Chi-
na’s love/hate attitude toward
cats?
Two of the best friends I’ve
made since moving to Beijing
in 2013 are Rocky and Callie,
who were abused kittens when
they were rescued off the street
nearly five years ago. Both
required expensive medical care
— one for cracked ribs that the
vet determined were likely the
result of being hurled against
a wall, and the other for a paw
that was deliberately crushed
by a stomp.
Chinese guests in my home
either love or hate the cats —
there seems to be no middle
ground — and those in the lat-
ter camp often show palpable
fear of my four-legged pals. Go
figure.
On the other hand (paw?),
a recent story by China Daily
forum an immediate lift.
It was the event’s 19th
installment.
It is always the first State-level
international conference held
after the two sessions.
Many who attend are veterans
of the forum. Stephen Roach, the
well-known China expert and
a senior fellow at the Jackson
Institute for Global Affairs at
Yale University, was attending his
18th forum.
It is the one time in the year
that many of the experts truly
engage with China, and they sit
like the College of Cardinals as
Chinese ministers and other key-
note speakers deliver speeches
and presentations.
One of the speeches that
attracted a lot of interest was by
Yi Gang, the newly appointed
governor of the People’s Bank
of China, who spoke about the
country’s further opening its
financial sector.
The theme of this year’s forum
was “China in the New Era”,
which provided an opportunity
for intellectuals to engage —
some for the first time — with
reporter Ren
Xiaojin intro-
duced readers
to Soo-bin, the
snowy white,
blue-eyed star
of Cat’s Kitch-
Murray
en, an online
Greig cooking show
produced by
Shanghai Can-
box Media Co.
Soobin — whose name means
“crispy cookie” in English — has
4.19 million obsessive followers
on Sina Weibo, and his charis-
matic presence has swelled the
show’s Weibo account to 11.4
million followers.
And last month there was
an uplifting feature in the bei-
jinger magazine entitled ‘Help-
ing out our furry friends.’ It
profiled volunteer groups like
Girls4Paws, A Voice for Animals
many of the ideas underpinning
China’s new direction.
What makes the discussions
interesting are the very big con-
cepts and ideas that tend to get
ignored in the routine daily news.
Nicholas Stern, a British econ-
omist and climate change spe-
cialist from the London School
of Economics, said the next 20
years are vital for human civiliza-
tion if we didn’t want to see cata-
strophic environmental damage,
which would result in London
being next into the sea or snow
vanishing from the Himalayas.
During this time the world
economy is set to double, with an
average global GDP increase of
3 percent. Infrastructure invest-
ment is also expected to double.
Stern said that everything
might depend on China’s Belt
and Road Initiative deploying
the latest green technology in
building new infrastructure.
What China will be in 2050
as it passes the centenary of the
founding of the People’s Republic
in 1949, including becoming a
modern socialist country in all
respects, was also discussed.
and Cat-Kind — all of which
are dedicated to rescuing strays
and finding homes for them.
Still, there are too many
disturbing reports like that of
a man in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu
province, who was recently
arrested for trapping more than
500 felines that he planned to
sell to restaurants.
According to Chinese news
site 163.com, the man lured the
cats into traps by using spar-
rows as bait, and they were
then crammed into two tiny
huts to await their fate. The
man told police his custom-
ers would pay around 30 yuan
($4.50) per animal.
In some regions of China,
cats are preferred pets because
they’re thought to be imbued
with the power to “see the
unseen”, so owning one
will help ward off ghosts or
Ian Goldin, former economics
adviser to Nelson Mandela when
he was South Africa’s president,
is now a professor of globaliza-
tion and development at Oxford
University.
He first came to China in 1982
and predicted that the country
would have an annual per capita
income of $35,000 at today’s
prices, putting it firmly among
the world’s high-income nations.
Not all jobs will have been
replaced by robots, and Chinese
people will be working in their
70s and 80s.
The world economy will also
be very different, with 80 percent
of it made up by emerging mar-
ket nations — China being chief
among them.
What makes the forum attrac-
tive to many of those who attend
is that there is a sense that China
in its new era feels like a place
that is looking forward in a
world that too often now seems
to be looking backward.
Contact the writer at
andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.
cn
wandering spirits. Likewise,
the idea of zhao cai mao (cats
that bring fortune) is embodied
by the ubiquitous statues that
adorn the front desk of many
restaurants and shops.
So why do these fascinat-
ing creatures, whose ancestors
migrated to Asia after the Egyp-
tians exported them to Greece
more than 3,000 years ago, elicit
such polarized reactions here?
Perhaps there’s no way to
explain the Jekyll and Hyde
attitude, but China — and the
world — would be a better
place if more people heeded
the words of Mahatma Gandhi:
“The greatness of a nation can
be judged by the way its ani-
mals are treated.”
Contact the writer at
murraygreig@chinadaily.com.
cn
Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I N A DA I LY USA
Xu Guiyuan, a prospect with the Baltimore Orioles, is shown at a Major League
Baseball development center in July 2015. CAO JIANJIE / XINHUA
China looks to hit a
home run in baseball
P
eople colors and ethnicities — with the
often ask, notable exception of women and
“What mainland players of Chinese descent
is the — are in the majors.
meaning of life”? Two notable pioneers from China
Jokingly, my were both of American heritage.
Keith response almost One, Henry Lees “Harry” King-
Kohn always is, “Choco- man, played for the New York
late mousse”. Yankees in 1914. But he was born to
It is delicious, missionaries in 1892. Another, Austin
rich, can take a bit of time to devour Brice, born in Hong Kong 100 years
because it is so sweet, and then when later, in 1992, pitched for the Miami
it’s gone, you miss it. Marlins and now is with the Cincin-
However, author Douglas Adams, nati Reds. Other Chinese players are
in his comedic sci-fi novel The Hitch- making their presence felt.
hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, felt Major League Baseball has its eyes
differently. As his readers know, the on China. In December, it signed a
answer to the question of the mean- 10-year deal to expand its training
ing of life, actually, “The ultimate and recruitment centers in China.
question of life, the universe and The deal also includes more than
everything”, is the number 42. 20 MLB-branded baseball facilities.
Adams, who died in 2001, later It already signed “Itchy” Xu
wrote of this definition, “The answer Guiyan to play with the Baltimore
to this is very simple. It was a joke. Orioles organization. The Baltimore
It had to be a number, an ordinary, Sun reported Xu was the first player
smallish number, and I chose that of Chinese birth and ancestry to be
one. … I sat on my desk, stared into signed through the MLB’s develop-
the garden and thought 42 will do. I ment centers in China.
typed it out. End of story.” The 2018 baseball season began
But is it really? just a few days ago.
You see, 42 also is the number on Sooner or later, “America’s Pas-
the back of the uniform of baseball time” will be played in China.
great Jackie Robinson, who was the And who knows, back in the
first black man to play baseball in the states Itchy may be the Jackie Rob-
major leagues in the United States. inson of a new era — with Chinese
He played for the Brooklyn Dodgers characteristics.
starting on April 15, 1947. It was a
groundbreaking day, for sure. Contact the writer at keithkohn@
Today people of all shapes, sizes, chinadaily.com.cn
CONTACT US:
Call us at 212-537-8888
Email: readers@chinadailyusa.com

LIFE CHINA DAILY USA » CHINADAILYUSA.COM
Some of Inner Mongolia’s pastoral herders,
whose ancestors led nomadic lives, are raising
livestock in modern ways
By SATARUPA BHATTACHARJYA
in Ordos, Inner Mongolia
satarupa@chinadaily.com.cn
V
ast stretches along Expressway 216, which connects urban
Ordos to its rural Otog Front Banner, lie uninhabited. More
animals than people can be found in this part of the Inner
Mongolia autonomous region where trucks carrying coal are
often the only sighted vehicles on the highway.
Other than its coal reserves, which are among the world’s largest, the
region produces mutton, milk and wool. It has iron ore and rare earth, and
among more modern industries, wind and solar power. Lately, it has gotten
into data mining.
China Daily’s recent interviews with local pastoral herders and officials
in two villages of the Otog Front Banner suggest that the modernization of
livestock production and management is underway. Alongside, traditional
lifestyles of the once nomadic people are changing.
The prefecture-level city of Ordos, located in the region’s south, has an
area of more than 85,000 square kilometers but a population size of just
2 million or so. With a dominant Han population, and around 11 percent
Mongolian, the ethnic mix includes Manchu and Hui groups.
Ethnic Mongolians comprise 30 percent of the banner’s population of
78,000, with the majority estimated to be involved in raising livestock and
agricultural activities. The banner, which was established in 1980, has 68
villages and four towns.
More than 2 million domestic animals, mostly sheep, are raised each year,
according to local government officials.
The outside world has long associated Inner Mongolia with images of
wild horses running through the grasslands. But horse racing, the popular
recreational sport in the region, appears to be more relevant to the tourism
industry today than to society.
The banner had 2,913 horses in 2016. In 1975, there were more than 2
million horses in the region.
The annual Naadam festival has kept Inner Mongolia’s equestrian tradi-
tion alive though.
A similar story is that of yurts, or the tent dwellings, which used to be
IN
STEP
WITH THE
STEPPE
Traditional methods of raising sheep
have disappeared (in his village). ...
The use of technology has helped
reduce both labor and time.”
Wangchuge, resident of the Otog Front Banner
made from a woolen fabric and wood. Many years ago, nomadic groups in
the region would dismantle them and carry along the parts from place to
place as they explored the steppe.
The present-day yurts in the banner, for instance, have concrete bases and
serve as hotels in summer where visitors can experience Mongolian culture.
Sheep on screen
It is late afternoon in Tabantaolegai village when Wangchuge decides to
survey the grounds on which his sheep are grazing. But instead of walking
through sandy fields to gather the animals from different corners, he moni-
tors them on a TV screen from inside a modern yurt.
The herder, who runs a family business of raising sheep for meat and
wool, says he sells an average of 300 sheep a year.
A video camera he has placed on the roof of his house provides him with
real-time feed of animal movements on his plot of land, which is large.
“Traditional methods of raising sheep have disappeared (in his village),”
Wangchuge, 41, says as he slices salted mutton, a Mongolian delicacy.
“The use of technology has helped reduce both labor and time.”
He owns six cows as well, but mainly for milk.
This village in the Otog Front Banner has 175 permanent resident families,
many of whom keep sheep and grow corn and a variety of rice.
Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 13
Wangchuge says somewhere on his farm he has set up tanks with drink-
ing water for his sheep that automatically adjust temperatures.
He is keen to develop an earmark but doesn’t specify if it would be digital.
“After a sheep is born and earmarked, we will be able to keep daily logs
on its intake of grass and water. This will make consumers feel safe about
buying the meat,” he says.
The banner is among 33 such administrative subdivisions in Inner Mon-
golia where livestock production is a major economic activity.
“We are trying to develop modern animal husbandry and agriculture that
are both eco-friendly and profitable,” a senior local official says, adding that
the industries generated 2.2 billion yuan ($348 million) in 2016.
He didn’t want to be identified by name as he was speaking on behalf
of his team.
An ecological concern has been the degradation of the grasslands, partly
owing to overgrazing.
In 2013, the region launched some protection measures and since has
tried to restrict active grazing to nine months in a year.
Matching up
Bixiriletu, a 40-year-old resident of Angsu, another village in the Otog
Front Banner, grew up watching his parents herd their sheep to grasslands
far from home. In the past few years, he had to wake up nightly to check
on his animals.
Now, he has the tools — a camera and a smartphone.
Bixiriletu worked at a coal mine in the banner for much of his adult life.
In 2012, he watched a TV program on artificial insemination in sheep. The
show, he says gave him the idea of visiting a breeding facility in Ulanqab,
which is also located in the region’s south.
US tech giant Apple Inc is reportedly looking to set up a cloud hub in the
city, its second in China after the southwestern province of Guizhou.
“The donors (sperm) are foreign,” he says of the meat-producing Dorper,
the South African hybrid sheep that was developed for arid conditions
similar to Ordos.
The mixing of foreign and local breeds, Bixiriletu says, has meant shorter
waiting periods.
Lin Hong contributed to this story.
14 DINING
A WHERE
n emperor and his
favorite consort
used to admire a
delicately carved
ornament made of jade that
was probably part of her dow-
ry. It is a miniature head of
humble cabbage, with a crisp
white base and translucent
frilled green leaves with two
tiny insects resting on the veg-
etable.
The emperor was Guangxu
of the Qing Dynasty (1644-
1911), and this famous piece of
jade is called the Jade Cab-
bage, currently one of the
main exhibits of the Palace
Museum in Taipei. It was tak-
en from Yonghe Palace in the
Forbidden City, the imperial
quarters of the consort Jinfei.
This exquisite and valuable
piece of art lauds one of the
most common vegetables in
China, while representing
wishes for good harvests and
fertility.
The Chinese cabbage is
planted all over China, in all
seasons, but it is in the cold
northeastern provinces that it
grows large and sweet and
tender, and plays a starring
role in the cuisine.
Whole cabbages are bought
and stored for the long winter
months, piled outside in
courtyards and on balconies.
Together with the huge
Shandong leeks, it is one of the
vegetables that will fill the
winter larder.
Huge truckloads of white
cabbages roll into Beijing
around October and Novem-
ber, plentiful and cheap. So
cheap, in fact, that “as afforda-
ble as white cabbages” has
become a popular term for a
great bargain.
Wise housewives load their
shopping trolleys full of huge
cabbages, often topped with a
super huge bunch of leeks.
The vegetables are carted
home and neatly arranged on
the balcony, or in a sheltered
part of the garden. Sometimes
an old blanket is thrown over
the pile to deter open thievery
by either the two-legged or
four-legged.
This has been a winter ritual
for a very long time, from
when times were hard and
logistics were limited.
Sometimes, cabbages are
pickled.
They are soaked in brine and
fermented in huge vats as
suancai, the “sour vegetables”
that Dongbei (Northeast) cui-
sine revolves around. This is
especially common in Liaoning
and Heilongjiang provinces.
The yingcai or “hard dishes”
of the Northeast are hearty
offerings such as thick slices of
fatty pork belly stewed with
roughly shredded pickled cab-
bage, or huge pots of sweet
potato noodles cooked with
more fermented cabbage.
In our Beijing household,
traditions die hard, and the
pile of cabbages in the yard is
slowly reduced by daily soups
and stir-fries. I have succeeded
in sneaking in carrots and
tomatoes to add some color to
the winter diet.
The dabaicai cabbage is
CABBAGE
IS KING
Traditional and fusion cooking styles, regional
and international ingredients and a new awareness
of healthy eating are all factors contributing to an
exciting time for Chinese cuisine.
Pauline D Loh writes.
Stir-fried cabbage with vinegar and dried pepper.
amazingly versatile.
It can be finely sliced and
tossed with vinegar, sesame oil
and a pinch of sugar for a crisp
and refreshing salad. A bunch
of blanched mung-bean noo-
dles provide the tactile con-
trast. This is especially
appreciated deep in winter,
when fresh salads are hard to
come by.
Cut into chunks and cooked
with carrots in a bone-marrow
stock, it turns into a tender
vegetable stew to please the
toothless old lady in the house,
and is enjoyed just as much by
those with a full set of teeth.
Stewed cabbage retains its
sweetness and is one of the
few leafy vegetables that can
withstand long cooking with-
out losing color and taste.
The spouse’s favorite is to
have a pile of blanched cab-
bage with his zhajiangmian,
dry-tossed noodles with hot
bean sauce. The blanched veg-
etables lighten the heavy,
PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
stock and shredded dried scal-
lops. That touch of cream gives
the dish a velvety smoothness
that takes it to another level.
I also like making Russian-
inspired cabbage rolls with
Chinese cabbage instead of
round cabbages. For one
Braised cabbage rolls. thing, the leaves are larger and
more pliable, and they do not
melt into nothingness.
savory noodles and make the Chinese cabbage is also
dish a healthier option. known as Napa cabbage in the
Sometimes, I remember my West, after migrant Asian
southern Chinese roots and farmers introduced this vege-
cook a vegetarian special with a table to the San Francisco
base of braised cabbage, with farmers’ markets from their
mushrooms, ginkgo nuts, lotus farms in Napa Valley across
seeds, peas and carrots on top. the Bay.
Another dish is tender All very well, but I do think
braised cabbage hearts in thick it’s about time we reclaim the
chicken stock and top of milk name, in recognition of Chi-
or cream. This is straight from nese cabbage’s unique contri-
the imperial kitchens, and only bution to the Middle
the sweetest, most tender Kingdom’s cuisines all these
hearts of the cabbage are used. thousands of years.
It is sweet on sweet, with the
natural flavor of the cabbage Contact the writer at
accentuated by the chicken paulined@chinadaily.com.cn
Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I N A DA I LY USA
When it comes to
Recipe
Vegetarian cabbage
wraps wine, we should
1 large head of cabbage
200 g dried shiitake mush-
rooms, soaked and sliced
1 carrot, peeled and
shredded
adapt, not adopt
1 can bamboo shoots,
shredded By LI DEMEI sales of their wine and an
1 can or eight freshly peeled awareness of its wine culture.
water chestnuts, minced During the explosion of Similar to tea and coffee,
1 tablespoon yellow fer- trade between Britain and wine is not a necessity, and it is
mented bean sauce, huang- East Asian countries in the not unreasonable for consum-
doujiang 17th century, tea was intro- ers to still regard it as a luxury,
1 teaspoon sesame oil duced to the country and especially when the influence
Salt and a bit of sugar to rapidly superseded coffee as of traditional Chinese culture
taste the national drink, albeit is taken into account.
1 liter mushroom stock with the novel addition of a Originally, the most popu-
Blanch the whole cabbage dash of milk and some sugar. lar drink in China was rice
and carefully remove the
large outer leaves. Take out
And just as Britain adopt-
ed, then adapted, tea to suit
wine, which was later
replaced by a trend for drink-
the short tender heart of cab-
bage and finely chop it up.
local tastes to make it the
country’s most popular bev-
ing baijiu. What’s more, the
tradition of emptying a glass
Heat vegetable oil in a erage, China is witnessing a in one as a sign of respect to
large frying pan and add the similar revolution in its rela- your companion dictates that
yellow fermented bean tionship with wine. spirit glasses are usually
sauce. Fry until fragrant, then Although wine production small. Wineglasses are by
add sliced mushrooms, has a long history in China, it comparison much larger, and
minced water chestnuts, has never been the country’s less suitable for this tradition.
shredded bamboo shoots tipple of choice — even to the Other than this, Chinese
and carrot. When the mix- present day. The increasing food has an enduring impact
ture is well seasoned, add consumption of wine in Chi- on wine consumption.
the chopped cabbage. Sea- na may be largely due to the Instead of eating dishes one
son with sesame oil, salt and country’s opening-up, where by one, as in the European
sugar to taste. improving standards of living tradition, Chinese dishes are
Fry the ingredients until have gradually brought wine always served together — so
the mixture is relatively dry into Chinese people’s lives. how can European wine
and the vegetable juices are Locally produced wine as match with this tradition?
reabsorbed. Cool. well as the imported prod- When tea was imported
Spread out each large cab- ucts from Sino-foreign joint into Britain, British people
bage leaf and place a gener- ventures made up the vast developed their own way of
ous spoon of fried ingredients majority of sales during the drinking it, and tea-produc-
on the stem end. Roll up like initial stages of the country’s ing countries embraced the
an envelope and place the roll wine development, where it trend. When wine is import-
at the bottom of a shallow was regarded as an alterna- ed into China, why can’t Chi-
nonstick pot. Continue to tive form of alcohol to domes- nese people invent their own
pack the rolls into the pot tic baijiu (white spirits). way of enjoying it according
until the cabbage leaves and In the late 20th century, as to their personal habits?
ingredients are used up. imports of wine increased
Pour the liter of mushroom and large amounts of luxury The author is an associate
stock into the pot and slowly wine flooded the market, professor of Wine Tasting
let it simmer for an hour. wine was regarded as more of and Enology in Beijing
an extravagance. Wine pro- University of Agriculture
Braised Chinese ducers like France used a vari- and invited teacher at ESA
cabbage with ety of methods to promote Angers, France.
Chinese ham
1/2 a head of Chinese
cabbage, about 1 kg
100 g Jinhua ham, shredded
100 g fresh shiitake mush-
rooms, thinly sliced
2-3 thin slices ginger, slivered
1 liter chicken stock
Cut the Chinese cabbage
into 5-cm chunks, rinse and
drain.
Heat up two tablespoons of
oil in a wok and add the ginger
julienne. Fry until fragrant,
then add the shredded ham.
Add the sliced mushrooms.
Add the cabbage chunk and
give them a good toss so the
ingredients are evenly mixed.
Pour in the chicken stock
and bring to a boil. Allow to
rapidly boil, then reduce the
heat and cover the pan.
When the sauce is
reduced and the vegetables
are tender, check the sea-
soning and adjust to taste.
This is a great dish to
serve the same day, but the
flavors will mature and bloom
even better the next day.
PAULINE D LOH Trade professionals explore wines that can pair best with
Chinese dishes. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
 C H I N A DA I LY USA Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 TRAV E L 15

ISLAND PARADISE
From the ruins in Sigiriya and the temple in Kandy, to an elephant orphanage,
Xu Lin offers visitors a mixed experience in Sri Lanka

I
t’s almost dusk. And I can just
about see the bats hanging
upside down on trees far away.
Gradually, the trees seem more
white as flocks of egrets arrive to roost.
The bats then fill the sky, signifying a
change of shift. The bats and the egrets
seem to take turns to rest on the trees.
The site is close to Yala National Park,
Sri Lanka. And I am amazed by the beau-
ty of the wildlife even before my safari
tour in the park.
The next day, I wake up at 5:30 am and
carry my breakfast to a vehicle.
Our tour guide has sharp eyes, so it’s
easily to spot wild boar, crocodiles, pea-
cocks, lizards, elephants and deer.
It’s better to carry a pair of binoculars
to see different species of birds.
The park has one of the highest leop-
ard densities in the world.
But seeing one really depends on your
luck, as a large cat can appear and vanish
in an instant.
On the trip, my friend suddenly spots a
black leopard descending from a tree. We
then try to track it down for about half an
hour, but never see it again.
More Chinese tourists are traveling to
Sri Lanka for encounters with animals,
the sea and its cultural heritage.
The prices also make a difference.
For example, it’s much cheaper to do a
wild safari in Sri Lanka than in Africa.
For most travelers, their first stop in Sri
Lanka is Negombo, home to Bandara-
naike International Airport.
At Negombo’s fish markets, fishermen
unload their catch and vendors hawk
seafood.
Also, fish are arranged in an orderly
manner on straw mats along the beach to
be dried.
For those who love elephants, a visit to
the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage is a
must. The orphanage, established in 1975
by the Sri Lanka Wildlife department, is
If you go
It’s convenient to charter a vehicle for
the whole trip and the driver will take
you wherever you like. Please bargain
when you hop into a tuk-tuk, or an auto
rickshaw. Wear a mask to avoid dust
during the safari tour. Carry sunblock
and mosquito repellent.
home to injured and maimed elephants
and abandoned baby elephants.
It is noon when we get there. And a
herd of elephants are crossing a road aft-
er taking a shower in the lake, while a
policeman directs traffic.
Besides watching elephants shower
and feeding them, tourists can also buy
notebooks and postcards made from ele-
phant dung.
About two hours’ drive from there is
Sigiriya, or lion rock, one of the finest
examples of ancient urban planning.
It was listed as a UNESCO World Heri-
tage Site in 1982.
The fortress complex, built by King
Kashyapa during the 5th century,
includes the ruins of an ancient palace on
the flat-topped summit of an enormous
rock about 200 meters high.
After the king’s death, the site was used
as a Buddhist monastery until the 14th
century.
There, I am fascinated by the gardens
and ponds and their symmetry.
It’s breathtaking to climb the spiral
stairs attached to sheer walls that lead to
the colorful frescoes.
Then, I come to a small plateau and see
a pair of gigantic lion’s paws carved into
the bedrock.
It was an entrance originally built in
the form of a lion but its upper parts have
been destroyed.
Starting from there, a series of vertigi-
nous staircases on a large rock take me to
the upper palace — the best place to enjoy
a beautiful sunset.
It’s not uncommon to bump into mon-
keys or stray dogs during the climb.
From Sigiriya, we head to the city of
Kandy which is famous for the Sri Dalada
Maligawa temple where the Sacred Tooth
Relic of Lord Buddha is kept.
The temple’s grand festival, Kandy Esa-
la Perahera, is held in July and August
annually.
The Royal Botanical Gardens, Peradeni-
ya, in Kandy boasts exotic species of plants
such as orchids, spices and palm trees.
From Kandy to Nuwara Eliya, I take a
train to enjoy views of the tea plantations
and forests on both sides.
My next stop is the old town of Galle
and its fortifications, which in 1988 was
designated as a UNESCO World Heritage
Site.
A sea port for trade during the 14th
century, Galle has now become a popular
destination for tourists from home and
abroad.
Its architecture is typically European
due to its colonial history, when it was
controlled by Portugal, the Netherlands
and Great Britain.
Galle now has churches, old hotels and
stores that sell jewelry, spices and tea.
And local children practice cricket on
the playgrounds.
It’s pleasant to walk along the well-pre-
served Galle Fort and enjoy the breeze
from the Indian Ocean.
Finally, on a train from Galle to Colom-
bo, the country’s commercial capital, I
am excited to see the Indian Ocean just
beyond the windows.
That train journey also marks the end
of my satisfying trip to Sri Lanka. From top: At Negombo’s fish markets,fish are arranged in an orderly manner on straw mats
along the beach to be dried; a monkey at Sigiriya, or lion rock, a fortress complex built by
Contact the writer at King Kashyapa during the 5th century; elephants play with each other at the Pinnawela Ele-
xulin@chinadaily.com.cn phant Orphanage.

From left: Meera Mosque in Galle Fort; a railway station in Sri Lanka; local residents at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Peradeniya; Damro Tea Plantation. PHOTOS BY XU LIN / CHINA DAILY

Tourists pick their own grapes at Chile wine harvest fest

VALLE DE COLCHAGUA, Chile — Doz-
ens of tourists armed with sharp scissors
and donning dusty gloves and aprons
walk through rows of green vines, hand-
picking dark purple grapes that will be
turned into Chilean wines enjoyed
around the world.
It’s hard work under a scorching sun
and the professional pickers watching
them from a distance grin knowingly. But
the tourists have paid for the hands-on
experience at Chile’s harvest, which
draws thousands of visitors each year, so
they carefully cut the precious grapes in
bunches and deposit them into wooden
crates at the Viu Manent winery.
“The truth is that you always drink the
wine, but you don’t really know the proc-
ess behind it,” said Gina Cuesta, a visitor
from Colombia.
Chile is the world’s No 9 wine producer,
with an output of about 800 million liters
last year. It was the world’s fourth-largest
exporter by volume, and the leader
among “New World” producers.
The South American country has been
making wine since the mid-1500s, when
Spanish settlers brought the first vines,
and has become known for producing
reliable and affordable wines.
Visitors pay up to $90 for the tour of
Viu Manent, which includes riding on
horse-drawn carriages or bikes in the pas-
tures of the Colchagua Valley, one of
Chile’s best-known wine regions.
And they get the grape-picking experi-
ence.
While the tourists don’t get to keep the
grapes, they top off their work with grilled
steak, fermented grape juice and a glass of
malbec at the vineyard’s visitor center,
which this year was named best in the
800 million
liters of wine produced by Chile in
2017, which makes the country the
world’s No 9 wine producer
world by the British magazine Drinks
International. Founded in 1935, Viu
Manent was also awarded Winery of the
Year in 2017 by the Wines of Chile associa-
tion.
“There are some vineyards that offer
similar initiatives, but none is as com-
plete and focused on the integral experi-
ence of wine producing and enology as
ours,” said Freddy Grez, who is in charge
of Viu Manent’s tourist activities.
Each year, about 37,000 visitors — most
of them from Brazil and the United States
— visit the winery about 90 miles (140
kilometers) south of the Chilean capital.
The two-hour drive from Santiago along
the country’s “Wine Trail” gives tourists
the chance to wine-hop at guesthouses
and restaurants that offer carmenere,
cabernet sauvignon and other varieties
for which Chile is known.
Chile’s natural barriers have a lot to do
with the successful growth of its wine
industry. It is shielded by the Pacific Ocean
on the west, the Andes mountains on the
east, Antarctica to the south and the
world’s driest desert to the north. This has
helped protect Chile from plagues, allow-
ing winemakers to grow vines ungrafted,
using ancient cultivation techniques.
In recent years, Chilean winemakers have
also been experimenting with other temper-
atures and terrains. In the quest for more
interesting tastes and characters, they’ve
grown grapes in extreme places such as the
icy south and the Atacama desert.
Back at Viu Manent, the team of tour-
ists has gathered about 1,100 pounds (500
kilograms) of grapes. It seems like a lot
but Grez says that depending on the har-
vest, professional workers can pick two to
four times as much — anywhere from
2,000 pounds (900 kilograms) to 4,400
pounds (2,000 kilograms) a day.
“I thought it was interesting because I
put myself in the shoes of the people who
do this work,” lawyer Ana Maria Farren
said. “We were here for half an hour and
ended up tired. The (workers) are here for
hours at a time. This experience allowed
me to understand all the heavy work that
is behind a bottle of wine.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
16 L IF E
By CHEN NAN
chennan@chinadaily.com.cn
O
n March 22, 1963, the
Beatles released their
debut album, Please
Please Me. Recorded in
EMI’s Abbey Road studio, it reached
the top of the British album charts in
May of that year and remained there
for 30 weeks before being replaced
by their second album, With the
Beatles. It also started the journey of
arguably the most legendary and rev-
olutionary rock bands of all time,
brought into being by its four mem-
bers — Paul McCartney, John Len-
non, George Harrison and Ringo
Starr — in Liverpool in 1960.
Fifty-five years later, from March
22, 2018, 28 famous Beatles albums
including Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band and The
Beatles 1962-1966, have been made
available on major Chinese streaming
services, such as QQ Music, Kugou
and Kuwo.
To mark the 55th anniversary of
the release of the band’s debut
album, a Chinese documentary
titled Here Comes the Beatles, has
been launched on three online
streaming music services under
Tencent Music Entertainment
Group-QQ Music, Kugou and
Kuwo. With one episode being
streamed online each week, the
documentary, which has five epi-
sodes, has veteran Chinese singer-
songwriters and music critics
sharing their memories of the Beat-
les and discussing the bands endur-
ing influence.
Gifted, young violinist made
his return to China
By CHEN NAN
After making his debut in China
by performing with Mariinsky
Orchestra under the baton of Mae-
stro Valery Gergiev at Harbin Grand
Theater in August, Swedish violinist
Daniel Lozakovich returned to Chi-
na, joining in the Verbier Festival
Chamber Orchestra’s tour in the
country.
From March 23 to April 1, the Ver-
bier Festival Chamber Orchestra
visits Chinese cities, including Bei-
jing, Guangzhou, Xi’an and Nanjing.
Under the baton of Hungarian vio-
linist and conductor Gabor Takacs-
Nagy, who is also the music director
of the Verbier Festival Chamber
Orchestra, Lozakovich performs J.S.
Bach’s Violin Concerto No 2 BWV
1042.
“I have performed the piece many
times. I try to find the composers’
characters in their works. When I
play, I try to become the composers,”
says Lozakovich in Beijing recently.
At 17, the violinist, who was born
in Stockholm, Sweden, is hailed as
one of the most exceptional young
musicians in the world. As he
recalls, he decided to become a vio-
linist when he saw the instrument
for the first time as a child.
“My mother wanted me to
become a tennis player, and I tried
LONG
AND
WINDING
An exhibition, titled The Beatles,
Tomorrow, is currently under way at
the Today Art Museum in Beijing.
Kicking off on March 24 and run-
ning until May 27, the exhibition dis-
plays posters, newspaper articles,
album cover art, famous quotes, vid-
eos, audio clips and more than a
hundred photos of the Beatles, from
behind-the-scene shots to live
shows, spanning from 1963 to 1972
and shot by photographers from
Britain’s The Mirror newspaper.
“The first time I read about the
Beatles was in a youth magazine in
the 1980s when I was a student at
the Central Academy of Drama in
Beijing,” recalls renowned music
critic Zhang Youdai in Beijing at the
exhibition’s opening ceremony.
“Their name was literally translated
into Chinese as jia ke chong. The
article said that the band influenced
a whole generation of young people
in the 1960s and I was curious about
them and their music.”
Then Zhang asked one of his
classmates, a Japanese student, to
buy him a cassette during a trip to
Hong Kong at that time. Unfortu-
nately, his classmate bought a cas-
sette by a band from the Philippines
covering Beatles’ songs.
“When my Japanese classmate
finally bought me the legal record-
ing of the Beatles, I listened to their
hard to convince her that I want to
become a violinist,” he says. “I tried
to compose a violin concerto at 9
years old but I am still not finishing
yet.”
He started his violin studies at 6
years old in 2007, and made his con-
certo debut with the Moscow Virtu-
osi Chamber Orchestra and Russian
conductor Vladimir Spivakov two
years later.
Performing as a soloist through-
out Europe with orchestras now,
including Vienna Chamber Orches-
tra and the Konzerthausorchester
Berlin, he has signed an exclusive
recording deal with Deutsche
Grammophon in 2016 and will
begin his cooperation with the label
by recording two orchestral albums
and a recital album.
Since 2012, Lozakovich studies at
the Karlsruhe University of Music,
and he is mentored by German vio-
linist Eduard Wulfson. Currently, he
is a student at the College du Leman
in Geneva.
In his spare time, Lozakovich
enjoys playing football, boxing, ten-
nis and chess. Musically, he is also
inspired by jazz.
“I enjoy different kinds of sports,
which makes me more flexible,” he
says. “I don’t practice for long
hours. The brain needs to function
and it’s much more effective to
A new documentary about the
Beatles influence in China is
coinciding with a Beijing exhibition
to mark the 55th anniversary of
the band’s first album
ROAD
We admire the
Beatles’ creative
songwriting. It’s
amazing to think that
50 years later we are
looking back on their
music, which is still
vibrant and
pioneering.”
Kong Yang, lead vocalist of Beijing-
based indie band The Life Journey
practice with your head.”
“My goal as a violinist is to help
people with music. No one hates
classical music. Some just don’t
know it,” he adds.
Lozakovich has a long time rela-
tionship with Verbier Festival, an
international annual music festival,
which takes place for about two
weeks in late July and early August
in the mountain resort of Verbier,
Switzerland. The violinist has been
performing at the festival since
2015.
Founded by Martin Engstroem in
1994, Verbier Festival also has an
academy, which nurturing young
musicians from around the world,
including Lozakovich. In 2000 and
2005, Engstrom set up the Verbier
Festival Orchestra and the Verbier
Festival Chamber Orchestra, which
tours worldwide with young musi-
cians aging from 15 to 29 years old.
“This is our fourth tour in China
and we perform with these young
soloists, who best show our ambi-
tion to promote the young talents,”
says Engstroem in Beijing. Besides
Lozakovich, Chinese-American
pianist George Li also joined in Ver-
bier Festival Chamber Orchestra’s
tour in China.
Born in 1953 in Stockholm, Eng-
stroem obtained his degree in Music
History and Russian at Stockholm
Daniel Lozakovich, violinist. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
University. In 1975, he moved to Par-
is and became a partner in the artis-
tic agency Opera et Concert,
working closely with Austrian con-
ductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-
89) for many years. In 1986, he
moved to Switzerland.
“All the rehearsals and master
classes at the Verbier Festival open
to the public. We want to present
young musicians,” says Engstroem,
Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I N A DA I LY USA
songs and realized why they influ-
enced so many people,” says Zhang.
“They invented a new sound for a
rock band. I particular enjoyed
their impeccable vocal harmonies.”
As he grew up, Zhang became a
big fan of the Beatles and bought the
band’s albums on his travels around
the world. One of his favorite songs
from the band is called Carry That
Weight, which was written by Len-
non and McCartney and was
released as a single from their
album Abbey Road in 1969.
“I particularly like the lyrics: ‘Boy,
you’re gonna carry that weight, Car-
ry that weight a long time’. When I
listened to that song in my 20s, I was
overwhelmed then and I am over-
whelmed even today,” says Zhang.
“Undoubtedly, they are one of the
greatest bands in the world and
their legacy can still be felt today
around the world.”
who has invited Chinese musicians
to perform at festival, including Chi-
nese pianists Lang Lang and Yuja
Wang. “Those musicians are willing
to come back to the music festival
since we have a long relationship
since they were teenagers.”
Engstroem came to Beijing for the
first time in 1997 as a production
team member of the opera Turandot
by Giacomo Puccini, which saw a
Besides Chinese fans, the Beatles
have also been a great inspiration
for Chinese singer-songwriters.
Beijing-based indie band, The Life
Journey, traveled to London to record
their new album, titled Always Be
There, at Abbey Road Studios last
year, as a tribute to the Beatles.
They have collaborated
with Scottish musician
and producer Howard
Bernstein, professionally
known as Howie B, who has
worked with artists like U2.
The four members of the band
also took a picture outside the
studio, imitating the cover pho-
to of the Beatles Abbey Road
album, which is regarded as
one of the most iconic imag-
es of pop history.
“There were lots of
tourists taking photos on
the road. Because of the
Beatles, people make the
pilgrimage to London to fol-
low in their footsteps. We
were deeply impressed,” says
Kong Yang, the band’s lead
vocalist.
“When we were working in the
Abbey Road Studio, we felt close to
not only the Beatles but also to
George Martin, who produced many
of the Beatles’ classic albums,” adds
guitarist Huang Zijun. “Producing an
album is like doing experiment in a
lab. It’s the achievement of all four
members of the Beatles and George
Martin.”
The band was founded by lead
vocalist Kong and guitarist Huang
when they were about 16 years old.
In 2005, they moved from their
hometown, Liuzhou, in South Chi-
na’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous
region, to the capital to pursue their
music dream. So far, they have
released eight studio albums.
“We admire the Beatles’ creative
songwriting, which evolved along
with their personal growth. It’s
amazing to think that 50 years later
we are looking back on their music,
which is still vibrant and pioneer-
ing,” says Kong.
My mother wanted
me to become
a tennis player and
I tried hard to
convince her that
I want to become
a violinist. I tried
to compose a violin
concert at nine
years old, but
I am still not
finishing yet.”
Daniel Lozakovich, violinist
born in Stockholm, who
returned to China joining in
the Verbier festival Chamber
Orhcestra’s tour
joint collaboration of conductor
Zubin Mehta and Chinese film
director Zhang Yimou.
He was impressed by the fast
development of the country and the
classical music scene here.
“Many great orchestras have per-
formed in China but for Verbier Fes-
tival, it’s more youthful and it shows
a different way of making music,” he
says.
 C H I N A DA I LY USA Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 LI F E 17

“WHEN CHINA
GOES BIG, THEY
GO MASSIVE;
THERE IS
NOTHING IN
HISTORY LIKE
THIS.”
Bay McLaughlin,
co-founder of Brinc, discussing
the Belt and Road Initiative

CHINA TECH
SHINES
By MAY ZHOU in Austin
AT SXSW “This system is the modern version of
mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com A flying car and hyperconnected megalopolis were among the stories told at the Silk Road. Already 68 countries have

A
flying car certainly got some
attention at SXSW 2018.
“It feels so futuristic,” a
member of the audience com-
mented after Derrick Xiong,
co-founder and chief marketing officer of
Ehang, finished presenting the company’s
latest development.
Ehang, a Guangzhou-based company
specializing in automated flying, was
founded in 2014 and has been developing
passenger drones in earnest ever since.
Dubbed an autonomous aerial vehicle
(AAV), the Ehang 184 represents the com-
pany’s most advanced technology.
“The traffic system we have right now
is all 2-D, and we have all been caught in
traffic jams. The only way out is the sky,
and Ehang 184 is the answer,” said Xiong.
Ehang 184 is designed with fail-safe
redundancy — eight propellers and four
arms — to ensure safety, Xiong said. The
company has extensively tested Ehang 184
in deserts, densely populated cities, in rain,
in fog and in force 7 typhoons, more than
1,000 times.
Recently it completed more than 40
flight tests with passengers onboard.
“Vice-mayors of Guangzhou and Xi’an
flew in an Ehang 184. Some of our inves-
tors flew in it. That’s me in the drone,”
Xiong said pointed to the video playing
on the screen.
The image of Xiong riding in the Ehang
184 was selected as one of the sharpest sci-
ence images in February by Nature, along
with pictures of the take-off and landing of
Space X’s Falcon Heavy rocket.
With a top speed of 130 kilometers/hour,
Ehang 184’s longest tested range is 8.8 km
with a designed range of 30 km. The flying
car is remotely controlled just like smaller
the annual event in Texas attended by some 60 Chinese companies
drones and flies one person at a time.
Ehang was one of more than 60 Chinese
companies that attended SXSW this year, a
big jump from last year’s 15.
Xiong said the biggest challenge the
company faces is not technology or regula-
tions but people’s mindset.
“People fear for their safety. People don’t
feel comfortable flying in this,” he said,
adding that to allay those fears, all of the
executives in the company will commute
in an Ehang 184 every day.
“If you still find us alive in three years,
you probably will feel much more comfort-
able,” he said.
Xiong said the company was ready to
release a new product later this year: a
drone for two. He also announced that the
company will soon begin a global demo
tour to attract investors.
“We believe in the future, which is com-
ing very soon. We want to work together
with others,” Xiong said.
China’s flying car was not the only thing
that caught people’s attention at SXSW. In
a discussion about Mobike’s business mod-
el, Chris Martin, vice-president of global
expansion, faced an audience eager to
learn the secrets of the “sharing” business.
Martin presented the big picture of
Mobike: In the two years since it launched
in 2016, the company raised $1 billion,
reached 200 million users, owns 8 million
bikes in 230 cities in 17 countries and con-
ducts about 30 million transactions a day.
“I flew in from Santiago, Chile this
morning,” Martin said. “Thousands of
people riding Mobike bikes in the cen-
tral financial district of Santiago — it’s an
amazing sight.”
The secret of the sharing economy is
using a fixed amount of assets to serve lots
of consumers to maximize use of one dura-
ble product, Martin explained. In Mobike’s
case, one bicycle gets used by five to 10
people a day.
It’s important to develop a computer
algorithm to run the system efficiently.
“Efficiency is what makes share econo-
my profitable,” Martin said.
The sharing economy can help change
cultures, too, Martin said.
“Singapore was launched in May last
year. It is super humid, rich, got a great
metro system, Uber is everywhere, and
roads don’t get too clogged up. It didn’t
seem likely. Now we get several hundred
rides a day; the culture changed visibly,”
Martin said
Martin experienced the change first
hand. Living in Shanghai, he changed jobs
when Mobike started to come out. Origi-
nally, he was planning to move to accom-
modate his job change, but soon he real-
ized that with Mobike, he didn’t have to.
“It took about 25 minutes to commute
[by bicycle]. Soon on weekends I found
myself going to coffee shops and restau-
rants on a bike. After a couple of months,
I gained this larger feeling of being outside
all the time, moving all the time, and it
showed the distance I traveled and calories
burned,” Martin said.
How can the model be used for some-
thing else? someone in the audience asked.
Find something that people use often but
not all the time. Maybe umbrella share in
large cities in tropical areas where sudden
showers often occur? Martin suggested.
China was being discussed by more than
just Chinese. Bay McLaughlin, co-founder
of Brinc, told people at SXSW: “The Great-
er Bay is in China, not Silicon Valley.”
McLaughlin spent 10 years in the Bay
Area, including eight at Apple. Four years
ago he moved to Hong Kong.
McLaughlin introduced China’s Guang-
dong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area: 11 cities
in the Pearl River Delta region, includ-
ing Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and
Huizhou.
China’s bay area represents 67 million
people with GDP of $1.4 trillion a year,
McLaughlin said.
When the bullet train system under con-
struction is completed in a couple of years,
the commute between the cities will be
shortened to less than an hour.
The hyperconnected region forms a
super cluster, with each city focusing on a
major area: Hong Kong on fintech, Shen-
zhen on electronics and IoT, Guangzhou
on auto and fashion and tech, and Macau
on gaming and virtual reality.
“China has made the structure to make
this super cluster work for a long time. The
government provides grants and incen-
tives to people who want to be part of it. It’s
where the convergence comes. When you
have that many people working toward
the same direction, it will be big,” said
McLaughlin.
While the Greater Bay will have more
impact on people in the next two to three
years, China’s Belt and Road Initiative
makes the Greater Bay look like nothing,
McLaughlin said.
signed up, which represents 65 percent
of the entire world population and 40
percent of the world’s GDP. When China
goes big, they go massive; there is noth-
ing in history like this,” he told the crowd.
“This is the China century; we are just
living in it.”
Zhang Peng, founder and CEO of China’s
GeekPark, said that more and more Chi-
nese tech companies are capable of devel-
oping their own core technologies and
have the ability to expand globally.
Beijing-based GeekPark is one of China’s
largest internet and technology innova-
tion platforms. For the second year, the
company organized Chinese companies to
exhibit at SXSW.
Other Chinese companies were there.
Alibaba’s senior director Paul Fu discussed
the company’s two successful shopping
festivals. He said the company plans to
make future shopping more personally
tailored, and there was much room to grow
in that area.
Leung Shanying, design director of Ant
Financial, a subsidiary of Alibaba, showed
how Alipay helps to break the barrier of
international borders, revolutionize retail
sales and give people equal access of
payment.
Zou Xiaowu, CEO of Yeahmobi, China’s
leading mobile marketing platform, pre-
sented China’s important role in mobile
apps in the global market — about 60,000
apps are from China.
Nikita Huang, marketing manager at
DataMesh, discussed how to mix big data
with reality in real time to produce inter-
active video programs such as creating a
fire-breathing dragon or dancing with a
virtual avatar. The company enthralled the
visitors with its interactive program at the
SXSW trade show.

By MAY ZHOU in Austin The groups appeared together on

The huge conference room at Aus-

tin’s Convention Center was packed
to the gills when the creators of the
hit HBO TV series Westworld took
the stage on March 10, day two of the
South by Southwest (SXSW) 2018
festival.
On stage were director Jonathan
Nolan, producer Lisa Joy and four
cast members of the futuristic sci-fi
drama about a Wild West-themed
amusement park staffed by androids
run amok.
The audience was treated to foot-
age of the yet unreleased Westworld:
Season II. Toward the end of the
following discussion, Nolan started
to talk about artificial intelligence
applications more optimistic than
the bleak, dystopian vision of West-
world — things like space programs
and a certain red car.
Suddenly there was a buzz in the
air, and lo and behold, Elon Musk
walked onto the stage. The audience
erupted in cheers as smartphones
popped above heads to capture the
moment.
“There are a lot of negative things
in the world all the time,” Musk began
without any introduction or greeting.
“There are lots of problems that need
to get solved, lots of things that are
Austin SXSW keep growing
miserable and kind of get you down.
“But life can’t be about solving one
miserable problem after another; we
need things that inspire you, that’s
why we did this,” Musk told the audi-
ence, referring to his recent Space X
rocket launch.
Musk quoted a Russian scientist:
“Earth is the cradle of humanity, but
you cannot stay in the cradle forev-
er”, and continued, “It’s time to go
forth and start another star-faring
civilization, be out there among the
stars, expand the scope and scale of
human consciousness. That makes
me glad to be alive. I hope you all feel
the same way.”
A Q&A session with Musk was
staged the next day at the packed
Moody Theater. For an hour, Musk
shared his vision of the future, talking
about space travel, colonizing Mars
and the danger of uncontrolled AI
development.
When the talk ended, his brother
Kimbal Musk joined him on stage
carrying a guitar. Together in cowboy
hats, they sang the duet My Little
Buttercup.
Musk’s appearances summed up
smartcar. The examples were endless.
Originally started in 1987 as a
regional music festival by a few staff-
ers at the Austin Chronicle newspa-
per, the first SXSW attracted about
700 attendees.
The name South by Southwest
(SXSW) was a play on Alfred Hitch-
cock’s classic thriller North by North-
west, referring to Austin’s location on
the map.
Its influence grew by the year.
In 1994, film and multimedia were
added. Eventually, SXSW was divided
into three major components: music,
film and interactive, which focus on
emerging technology.
Elon Musk (center), co-founder of Tesla, joins the cast and crew of HBO’s SXSW Music is considered the
Westworld on March 10 at SXSW in Austin. MAY ZHOU / CHINA DAILY largest musical festival in the world,
with more than 2,000 performances
by musicians from the world over.
what SXSW is all about: the conver- speakers included Bernie Sanders, A handful of Chinese musicians
gence of high technology, music and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Melinda joined the festival this year: Fazi, a
film. Gates and Irish Prime Minister Leo post-punk / indie-rock band from
This year, more than 400,000 peo- Varadkar. Xi’an; Ruby Fatale, an audio/visual
ple from around the world jammed Many companies set up interac- experimental band from Taiwan; Bei-
downtown Austin for 10 days starting tive displays to show off their latest jing-based electronic musician Shao;
March 8. More than 3,000 talks on a gizmos. One could find a 3D-printed punk band SUBS; and Second Hand
wide range of topics were present- house model from ICON, an AI dog Rose, which is known for combining
ed. Besides Musk, other prominent from Sony and a Mercedes-Benz Chinese and Western sounds.
China Night on March 15.
Close to 140 feature films and 170
short films were screened this year,
with 89 world premieres. Among
them were the Chinese documen-
tary People’s Republic of Desires
directed by Wu Hao, which won the
Grand Jury Award.
SXSW Interactive has become an
incubator for new ideas and tech-
nologies. Speakers, meet-ups and
startup accelerators attract big cor-
porations, inventors, entrepreneurs
and investors worldwide.
AI continued to dominate SXSW
2018 tech talk with more than 100
different presentations. The other
hot topic was blockchains.
Austin has grown with SXSW as
well, from the 42nd largest city in
the US in 1987 to the 11th largest city
today, according to Austin Mayor
Steve Adler.
Adler said SXSW is “still about
the incredibly creative artists and
innovative filmmakers trying to
find managers and distributors,
except now they are called venture
capitalists.”
“SXSW is where good ideas come
to become real. It’s the World’s Fair
of the future, with the highest con-
centration of innovators and creators
in the world,” Alder concluded.
18 Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018
BUSINESS CHINA DAILY USA » CHINADAILYUSA.COM
From beggar to king of the noodles
Some thought Zhang Tianyi was wasting his education, but now he is reaping rich rewards
By CHEN MEILING
chenmeiling@chinadaily.com.cn
Zhang Tianyi decided that
he never wanted to see, let
alone eat, a bowl of noodles
again. And who could have
blamed him? In the interests of
market research, the law grad-
uate sampled 30 tiny bowls of
noodles every single day for
three months, at the end of
which his tongue was numb
and his stomach seemed to be
perpetually on fire, he said.
Yet, Zhang somehow con-
vinced himself that his future
was inextricably intertwined
with noodles, a decision based
on his discovery of what he
said is the ideal noodle recipe.
That recipe brought about
Funiutang, his branded beef
and rice noodles dish, based
on the most common street
food in his hometown, one he
has turned into a multimillion
dollar business success in Bei-
jing, and whose fame he hopes
will stretch to the four corners
of the globe.
“As with McDonald’s in the
United States, I want the name
and image of Funiutang to
appear wherever the red flag
with five stars is raised,” Zhang
said.
Since Zhang and three of his
classmates founded Funiut-
ang in 2014, and after several
rounds of financing, its value
is put at up to 500 million
yuan ($78 million.)
As the chief executive offi-
cer, Zhang, 28, now manages
17 offline restaurants in Bei-
jing with about 400 employ-
ees, in a company that reaped
about 100 million yuan in rev-
enue last year.
Beef and rice noodles, a spi-
cy, salty and oil noodle made
from rice, is one of the special-
ties in Changde, Hunan prov-
ince, that has a history of 6,500
years and one that Zhang said
he and fellow locals eat every
day.
Zhang Tianyi, founder and CEO of Funiutang, a Chinese beef and rice noodles brand, prepares lunch for customers at a restaurant in
Beijing. XINHUA
Indeed homesickness was
one of the things that set him
on his quest for the perfect
dish. Another was the poten-
tial he saw in rice-based food
products worldwide as the sta-
tus of China, where much of
the world’s rice is consumed,
continues to rise.
“The world has long been
dominated by wheat because
it’s eaten in Western coun-
tries,” he said. “It’s a pity that
rice noodles, despite their
long history, don’t have a
brand.”
He decided to go into the
food business three months
before he graduated in law
from Peking University so that
if the venture left him penni-
less he would still have time to
find a job.
Much to his surprise, things
went well. Now, he said, he has
enough patience and confi-
dence that he can envisage it
taking him 10 years to build a
rice noodle brand that is wide-
ly recognized.
Specifically, the goal is to
open 500 to 1,000 restaurants
in cities worldwide in the
future, including in the US and
Europe.
At a Funiutang outlet in
Zhongguancun, in the Haidi-
an district of Beijing, all the
service and kitchen staff wear
black T-shirts inscribed with
the word baman, Hunan dia-
lect meaning never give up,
dare to say no and be yourself,
Zhang said.
“Just as McDonald’s repre-
sents Americans’ culture of
fast, clean and efficient service,
we want to share the spirit of
Chinese young people with our
brand — hard-working, posi-
tive about life, and who are
ambitious enough to pursue
their dreams.”
The company pumps that
kind of ethos in many of its
marketing products, includ-
ing decorations, short videos
and WeChat stories.
The distinctive corporate
culture plays an important
role in brand-building, Zhang
said.
“The domestic dining mar-
ket is undergoing a transfor-
mation with the demand of a
rising generation of customers
who value the culture and
spirit embodied in a product,
rather than its price and func-
tion.”
Zhang said he is fortunate to
be living at a time when the
country is promoting innova-
tion and entrepreneurship,
and was reported to have met
Li Keqiang in 2015 when the
Chinese Premier visited
Zhongguancun Inno Way, a
cluster of startups and entre-
preneurs.
As a master’s graduate from
Peking University, rated as the
country’s top tertiary institu-
tion, Zhang said some people
have taken a bleak view of his
career, criticizing him for
wasting his education to sell
noodles.
But Zhang said diligently
doing things that some may
regard as trivial and unim-
portant is worthy of respect.
He held down about 50 dif-
ferent part-time jobs when he
was at college, he said, includ-
ing legal consulting, selling
insurance, working as a
receptionist and being assist-
ant to a chief executive. Once
he even tried out begging, just
to experience life at its nadir,
he said.
“Doing many different
things gave me the opportuni-
ty to see how society really
works. The perspective on life
that formal education provides
is far too limited.”
On the move
Ant Financial’s Lucy Peng
to helm Lazada Group
Lucy Peng
(pictured),
chairwoman
of Ant Finan-
cial Services
Group, an
affiliate of Ali-
baba Group Holding Ltd, was
appointed CEO of Lazada
Group, in which Alibaba has a
substantial stake. Lazada
leads online shopping in
Southeast Asia. Peng’s
appointment came after Ali-
baba pledged an extra $2 bil-
lion to Lazada. Meanwhile,
Lazada’s founder and former
CEO Max Bittner will become
a senior advisor at Alibaba.
Peng said she is excited about
future opportunities in
e-commerce development in
the Southeast Asian market.
Currently, e-commerce
accounts for only 3 percent of
the region’s retail, indicating
huge potential for future busi-
ness growth.
Porsche names Puttfarcken
as CEO of China unit
German luxury car brand
Porsche appointed Jens Putt-
farcken as CEO of its China
unit effective July 1. Puttfarc-
ken is the current CEO of Por-
sche Deutschland GmbH.
Detlev von Platen, Porsche’s
member of the executive
board specializing in sales
and marketing, said that
Puttfarcken has several years
of experience in sales, and he
is confident that the group
will achieve more under Putt-
farcken’s leadership in the
China market. Puttfarcken
joined the group in 1997, and
was appointed vice-president
for customer relations in
2004 and vice-president for
after-sales services in 2010.
Chen Li to head strategy at
Credit Suisse JV
Financial services provider
Credit Suisse appointed Chen
Li, who was formerly China
A-share strategist, as chief
strategist at its China joint
venture Credit Suisse
Founder Securities. Upon
joining the new group, Chen
will lead the firm’s China equi-
ty research team to explore
investment opportunities in
the A-share market and pro-
vide their clients with more
money-making options. Chen
will report to Wang Mingshen,
CEO of CSFS. Before joining
Credit Suisse in 2015, he
served UBS Securities LLC as
the head of China equity
strategy.
Onyx Hospitality appoints
Gina Wo as senior VP
Onyx Hospitality Group, a
provider of hotel manage-
ment services, appointed
Gina Wo as its senior vice-
president and head of its Chi-
nese operations. Wo took
office on March 26. In her
new role, Wo will oversee all
business aspects and aim for
ongoing growth in the Chi-
nese market, and focus on
the company’s long-term
strategy. Wo will report direct-
ly to Onyx’s president and
CEO Douglas Martell. Wo’s
appointment follows the
recent opening of the compa-
ny’s Shanghai base.
Banma Tech promotes
Hao Fei, Sr VP, to CEO
Banma Technologies, a
joint venture of Alibaba
Group Holding Ltd and car-
maker SAIC Motor Corp Ltd
to make internet-connected
cars, promoted Hao Fei, sen-
ior vice-president, as its CEO.
Scientist Alex Shi, aka Shi
Xuesong, the former CEO,
will remain as the chairman
as well as on the technical
committee to continue offer-
ing support. Shi said he
looked forward to a younger
management team and
hoped it will bring in fresh
thinking and brighter future.
CHINA DAILY—AGENCIES
 C H I N A DA I LY USA Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018
Customers visit Guangzhou Wanglaoji Pharmaceutical Co Ltd’s 1828 Wanglaoji outlet in a shopping mall in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
Time-honored brands trying new ideas
Traditional firms using retail outlets to
compete in more sophisticated market
By ZHENG YIRAN
zhengyiran@chinadaily.com.cn
China’s time-honored
brands, known as laozihao,
are adopting fresh operation
modes to catch the eyes of the
country’s increasingly sophis-
ticated consumers.
Recently, traditional Chi-
nese herbal tea producer
Guangzhou Wanglaoji Phar-
maceutical Co Ltd launched
four outlets, called 1828
Wanglaoji, in Guangzhou,
Guangdong province, bring-
ing handmade herbal tea to
physical stores.
Unlike conventional herb-
al tea, which is usually sold in
cans in supermarkets, the
handmade teas are now
being served in physical
stores, where clerks offer cus-
tomized herbal drinks for the
consumers.
“I ordered a classical one.
Customers can choose herbs
to add to their drinks, such
as orange peel, goji berry and
licorice. Compared with
Wanglaoji’s herbal tea sold
in cans, I think the hand-
made one has a heavier taste
of Chinese medicine,” said
Jackie Chen, 25, a increasing number of diversi-
Guangzhou resident.
Three of the new 1828
Wanglaoji outlets are in
shopping malls, and consum-
ers find them a great combi-
nation with adjacent
restaurants.
“I feel great to have a herbal
tea after having a spicy meal
in the Sichuan restaurant
Yili bakes up Western recipe for success
By ZHENG YIRAN
For a good example of how
China’s time-honored brands
are embracing new retail
channels, consider Century
Yili, a bakery that’s long been
famous for its delicious pas-
tries and breads.
Finding itself up against
competition with new brands
selling Western-style cakes,
Yili is now offering its prod-
ucts in brick-and-mortar
cafes, including one in Shu-
angjing, the southeastern
part of Beijing, that wouldn’t
be out of place in, say, Europe
or North America.
The 150-square-meter cafe
encompasses both Western
nearby,” Chen said.
“Because the climate in
Guangdong is usually damp
and hot, we often suffer from
excessive internal heat. In
order to repel internal
humidity and heat, we are
fond of drinking herbal tea,”
he added.
Industry insiders said that
currently, the two leading
Chinese herbal tea makers,
Guangzhou-based Wanglaoji
and Hong Kong-based JDB
Group, take up more than 80
percent of the market share.
Both the density and the
scope of the distribution
channels have reached a satu-
rated level, and all categories
of the products of the time-
honored brands have reached
maturity, making it difficult to
find new market growth
points.
As a result, they said, it is
reasonable for those time-
honored brands to extend
their product categories and
establish their own distribu-
tion channels.
Recent years have wit-
nessed earthshaking changes
in China’s catering market.
Consumers are aware of an
fied food and drinks, and
those time-honored brands
that mainly rely on traditional
operation modes face severe
challenges.
Meanwhile, the market
for instant food and bevera-
ges is continuously growing.
Official statistics show that
by the end of 2017, the mar-
and Chinese style delicacies,
including cakes, light refresh-
ments, fast food and salads.
Its brand elements can be
found everywhere, including
the logo of Beibingyang soda
— a white bear — printed on
wall hangings.
“This is our first chain store
with Western style, and we
plan to launch more such chain
stores in Beijing in the future,”
said Ma Chunying, director of
Beijing Century Yili Grocery Co
Ltd of Beijing Yiqing Group.
The new outlet is one of
more than 120 chain stores
across Beijing, and the growth
rate of its annual sales revenue
is greater than 20 percent.
During the 13th Five-Year Plan
A consumer chooses his own customized herbal drink at an 1828 Wanglaoji outlet.
LI ZHIHAO / FOR CHINA DAILY
Against the backdrop of ‘new
retail’, more and more conven-
tional enterprises are attempting to
open offline experience stores.”
Zhao Yue, analyst at Beijing-based market research firm Analysys
ket volume of instant drinks
had reached more than 50
billion yuan ($7.94 billion)
per year, and the figure is
still rising.
“People’s taste is randomly
changing. In the market
where competition is so
fierce, physical stores with no
distinguishing features are
doomed to be knocked out,”
period (2016-20), Beijing Yiq-
ing Group plans to launch a
total of 300 Yili chain stores.
The new direction for Yili is
already winning raves from
customers.
“In the past, we could only
buy Yili bread in supermar-
kets, and the category was
quite limited. Now, physical
stores offer a variety of selec-
tions, both Chinese and
Western, and the quality and
taste is just the same as I had
in my childhood,” said Zhang
Min, a consumer from Bei-
jing who had just visited the
chain store.
Apart from launching
chain stores, to realize operat-
ing transformation, Century
researcher He Liting of Zero
Power Intelligence Group, a
research institution head-
quartered in Shenzhen, told
China Industrial and Eco-
nomic News.
Huo Liren, deputy manager
of Wanglaoji, said in a media
conference that the company
opened four physical stores
simultaneously to meet con-
Yili also invites consumers to
visit its bread factory, where it
offers lessons in making
breads and cakes.
At the Yili factory in the
Daxing district in Beijing, vis-
itors can learn about the
time-honored brand, which
enjoys a history of 112 years.
Walking down the corridor of
the factory, with old pictures
hanging on the wall, consum-
ers gain a better understand-
ing of the brand’s origin, and
how the company evolved
over time.
“Not only kids, but adults
and the elderly are attracted
to the factory to experience
the charm of the time-hon-
ored brand. Especially during
LI ZHIHAO / FOR CHINA DAILY
sumers’ rising consumption
demands for herbal teas.
“In 2018, we will continue
to explore the market in
Guangdong, and we plan to
enter East China in the
fourth quarter of the year,”
Huo added.
Other time-honored
brands are taking similar
steps. Recently, Chinese
snack and candy maker Hsu
Fu Chi International Ltd
opened its exclusive offline
shop in Dongguan, Guang-
dong province.
The traditional pineapple
cake maker is trying its hand
at what’s called “experiential
consumption”, or consump-
tion driven by the desire for
memorable experiences, by
Visitors take pictures in front of the Beijing Century Yili Grocery
Co Ltd factory. QIAO JIAN / FOR CHINA DAILY
festivals, numerous visitors
come to our factory. During
the busy season, we get more
than 1,000 arrivals per day,”
said Li Qi, general manager of
Beijing Yiqing Group.
In addition, Yili is embrac-
BUSI NE S S 19
offering hand-made pastries.
The well-decorated shop,
opened in a shopping mall in
Dongguan, offers handmade
pineapple cakes in a variety
of flavors, including original
taste, Japanese-style matcha
and cranberry. It provides
both eat-in and take-away
services, and all the pineap-
ple cakes it sells are beauti-
fully packaged.
Zhao Yue, an analyst at Bei-
jing-based market research
firm Analysys, said “against
the backdrop of ‘new retail’,
more and more conventional
enterprises are attempting to
open offline experience
stores, where they can have
the closest encounter with the
consumers, bringing brand
values to them.”
“However, the difficulties
lie in how to cater to consum-
ers’ personalized and diversi-
fied consumption demands in
the new era. They need to fig-
ure out more crossover mar-
keting strategies, based on the
brands’ own advantages and
conditions,” Zhao said.
At present, there are 1,128
time-honored brands regis-
tered at the Ministry of Com-
merce, with the brands
enjoying an average history
of 160 years. Among them,
more than 60 percent are in
the catering and medicine
sector.
Last year, the MOC, togeth-
er with 15 government author-
ities, jointly issued a guideline
to protect these time-honored
brands, by promoting online
and offline integration, calling
for stronger intellectual prop-
erty protection and offering
additional favorable govern-
mental policies.
ing the ‘new retail’ era by join-
ing hands with many
ecommerce platforms, such
as Tmall.com, JD, miss-
fresh.cn and Womai.com, fur-
ther expanding its
distribution channel.
Digital era
helps old
foodmaker
in delivery,
expansion
By ZHENG YIRAN
For Lu Nan, a 35-year-old
Beijing resident, waiting in
line for some conventional
delicacies has been a holiday
tradition.
He never celebrates Spring
Festival, Lantern Festival or
Mid-Autumn Festival with-
out first picking up some
freshly made seasonal deli-
cacies from Daoxiangcun, a
time-honored brand that’s
been a favorite of Beijing res-
idents since it opened in
1895.
They’ve been such a favor-
ite, in fact, that purchasing
them before a holiday has
meant waiting in line —
sometimes for up to two
hours — at one of the compa-
ny’s physical branches in
Beijing.
“I’ve always come to Daoxi-
angcun since I was a kid,” Lu
said. “I never go to other
shops to buy snacks and
cakes. It has become a habit
for me. I trust the quality of
the brand, and the price is
fairly reasonable.”
Today, however, Lu no
longer has to wait in line.
Daoxiangcun, like other time-
honored brands, has
embraced the digital era,
which means that its signa-
ture yuanxiao (rice dump-
ings) are just a few computer
clicks away.
In 2014, Daoxiangcun
established its flagship
stores on Alibaba’s e-com-
merce platform Tmall.com
and China’s leading online
retailer JD. It also teamed
up with online food-deliv-
ery platforms Baidu Waimai
and JD Daojia, a step
toward exploring the O2O
retail mode of time-honored
bakeries.
Tenfold
Tenfold
increase in 2017 sales reve-
increase in 2017 sales revenues
nues of Daoxiangcun com-
of Daoxiangcun commodities
modities from JD
from JD compared with 2016
compared with 2016
Last year, Daoxiangcun
signed a strategic partnership
with JD, and now, as long as
consumers make their order
before 3 pm, they can get
fresh rice dumplings on the
same day.
Daoxiangcun’s teaming up
with e-commerce platforms
quickly proved to be a suc-
cess. According to statistics
from JD, last year, consum-
ers ordering Daoxiangcun
commodities from its plat-
form expanded by 4.1 times
compared with 2016. The
sales revenues in 2017
surged rapidly, with a ten-
fold increase from 2016.
The digital era has also
expanded the company’s
reach far beyond Beijing.
Going online means Daoxi-
angcun can deliver its prod-
ucts nationwide, including
small cities.
From JD’s data, in 2017,
from first to sixth-tier cities,
subscribers to Daoxiangcun
on its platform grew by five to
10 times, and the growth rates
in the fifth and sixth-tier cities
were the most obvious, reach-
ing eight times and 10 times
respectively.
“The fast-developing e-com-
merce retail industry in China
has injected new growth
points into the time-honored
brand,” said Cheng Wenhua,
deputy general manager of
Beijing Daoxiangcun Food-
stuff Co Ltd.
“Back in 1985, we used old-
fashioned scales to weigh the
pastry, and consumers lined
up outside the store during
peak hour.
“Now, with the online plat-
forms, consumers can enjoy
the delicacies more easily, and
many of the young generation
have become our fans. We see
tremendous room for develop-
ment,” she said.

20 IN DEPTH
YE LU / CHINA DAILY
MINDING THE
MACHINE:
THE AI RACE
The race for dominance in artificial intelligence is heating
up, especially between China and the United States, but
as one report says, AI “is still largely shrouded in mystery’’,
reports Christopher Davis from New York.
I
t’s the hottest thing in
technology now, but the
co-founder of Google
said: “I didn’t see it com-
ing, even though I was sitting
right there”.
“It’’ is artificial intelligence
– AI.
“I didn’t pay attention to it
at all, to be perfectly honest,”
Google’s Sergey Brin said in a
session at the World Economic
Forum’s annual meeting in
Davos last January.
But now everyone seems to
be jumping on the bandwagon,
yet many aren’t exactly sure
where it’s going. As Brin said:
“What can these things do? We
don’t really know the limits. It
has incredible possibilities. I
think it’s impossible to forecast
accurately.”
A recent Boston Consul-
tants-MIT Sloane survey of
3,000 international business
executives found that 84 per-
cent think that over the next
five years, AI will give them a
competitive advantage, and 72
percent of respondents from
the telecom, media and tech
industries said they expect AI
to have a significant impact on
their business and products.
The catch is, few of them are
sure exactly how. As the report
says, “The field is still largely
shrouded in mystery.”
Funding for AI startups in
the West has been making
quantum leaps and bounds —
from $4 billion in 2016 to more
than $14 billion in 2017. Silicon
Valley is awash in AI backing.
In July 2017, China’s State
Council announced a “New
Generation AI Development
Plan”, setting benchmarks for
AI industries and allocating
through 2030 a gross output
of $151 billion for the core AI
industry and $1.5 trillion for
related industries. They aim to
be No. 1.
Last year, Russian President
Vladimir Putin put an ominous
spin on AI, saying that it raised
“colossal opportunities and
threats that are difficult to pre-
dict now”. But Putin did predict
that: “The one who becomes
the leader in this sphere will be
the ruler of the world.”
SpaceX/Tesla founder Elon
Musk responded with the
tweet: “China, Russia, soon all
countries w(ith) strong com-
puter science. Competition for
AI superiority at national level
most likely cause of WW3…”
Finish line
China and the US, the recog-
nized leaders in the field, are
locked in a race to the finish
line, whatever that finish line
may be.
A recent study from
Oxford University’s Future of
Humanity Institute gave Chi-
na a score of 17 for its overall
capacity to develop AI technol-
ogies; the US scored 33.
Of the main drivers of AI
development — hardware,
research, talented scientists
and their algorithms and raw
data — China trails the US in all
but data, and that, with more
than a billion smartphone
users and 750 million internet
users, it has a mountain of.
Combined with strong
government support, aggres-
sive recruitment of talent and
development of chips, China
looks to close the gap fast.
But where it is all heading
remains anyone’s guess.
Before he died recently,
physicist Stephen Hawking
warned that the emergence of
AI — computers that “can, in
theory, emulate human intel-
ligence, and exceed it” — could
be the “worst event in the his-
tory of our civilization”, if we
don’t find a way to control it.
Heavyweight scholars
and tech leaders are form-
ing groups in places like the
Harvard Kennedy School of
Government’s Future Society
and the Max Tegmark Future
of Life Institute to envision
ways to protect mankind from
a menace that seems to loom
but remains elusive.
The highest-profile cabal
is probably the handsomely
endowed non-profit OpenAI,
founded in 2015 by — who else?
— guru of the future Elon Musk
(who has since had to recuse
himself over possible conflicts
with his car company). The
group’s list of board members
still reads like a Who’s Who of
Silicon Celebs.
Human extension
In its mission statement,
OpenAI says it believes “AI
should be an extension of indi-
vidual human wills.”
The statement goes on to
say: “It’s hard to fathom how
much human-level AI could
benefit society, and it’s equally
hard to imagine how much it
could damage society if built
or used incorrectly.”
N o w, t h r e e y e a r s
later, OpenAI’s policy and eth-
ics adviser Michael Page told
a reporter with futurism.com
about his job of looking at “the
long-term policy implica-
tions of advanced AI”.
“I want to figure out
what we can do today,
if anything,” he
said. “It could be
that the future
is so uncertain
there’s noth-
ing we can
do.”
Protecting
the future
means pre-
dicting the
future, and
no one is
there yet.
One of
the big
problems
with AI is
that the term
is increas-
ingly thrown
around to
embrace just
about anything
that happens in
the digital universe.
YouTube picks your
next video, the hiking
boots you were looking
at yesterday appear in a
banner ad.
“It took me a whole
book to describe what
AI is and isn’t,” said
Meredith Broussard,
an assistant professor
at the Arthur L. Carter
Journalism Institute at
New York University.
Her new book, Arti-
ficial Unintelligence:
How Computers Misun-
derstand the World (MIT
Press), comes out at the end
of the month.
“When people talk about
artificial intelligence some-
times they mean ‘machine
learning’ and sometimes they
mean Hollywood imaginary
things like The Termina-
tor,” she said. “The confusion
comes from the fact that we
have this term that has mul-
tiple meanings.”
Broussard said it comes
down to math and data, and
“machine learning” is a species
of computational statistics.
“It turns out that when you
have a truly vast amount of
data,” she said, “you can make
really, really good guesses
about things using computa-
tional methods.”
Apparent edge
Here China’s edge again
becomes apparent. Liu Qing-
feng, chairman of speech-rec-
ognition software developer at
iFlyTek, told the South China
Morning Post, “China has the
most internet users. And the
Chinese government’s determi-
nation to push the application
of AI forward is unmatched in
any other country.”
“Machine learning” and its
offspring “deep learning” are
behind most of the stunning
headlines that stir excitement
about the emerging technol-
ogy: AI translates news from
Chinese to English in real time
as well as any bilingually fluent
human can. Computer teaches
itself to distinguish cats from
dogs. Google uses AI to help
the Air Force analyze drone
footage.
Google Deep Mind’s Alpha-
Go, having digested a huge data
base of expert and amateur Go
games, estimates its next best
moves and beats the hitherto
undefeated world champion
three out of four games. But
wait.
AlphaZero comes along and
teaches itself the game from
scratch, exploring just the rules
and discovering new ways to
beat itself. It then turns around
and beats its older brother
Artificial Intelligence Revenue,
World Markets: 2016-2025
$40,000
$35,000
$30,000
$25,000
($ Millions)
$20,000
$15,000
$10,000
$5,000
$-
2016 2017
AlphaGo 100 games to zero.
The machine learning
branch of AI turns out to be
particularly good at visual
tasks, such as picking a face
out of a crowd or guessing a
person’s age, but, as Cambridge
educated mathematician
David Foster points out, “these
are not the kinds of problems
that most businesses are trying
to solve”.
Foster, who co-founded the
London-based consultancy
Applied Data Science, advises
clients on things like predictive
models for customer behavior,
price optimization and build-
ing their own data teams.
Their service, he said in an
email, is driven by the three
key aspects of any data science
project: the business problem
to solve, the data that’s avail-
able and the desired outcome.
AI is getting hyped and he
thinks that’s not such a good
thing: “The label ‘AI’ itself is
beginning to carry the value,
rather than the underlying
technology. There is a real dan-
ger of businesses being sold
the ‘triple A’ technique of AI,
without really understanding
exactly what is being invested
in. And these things don’t tend
to end well.”
We are so eager
to do everything
digitally — hiring,
driving, paying
bills, even choosing
romantic partners.”
Meredith Broussard, author,
Artificial Unintelligence
The “triple A” sales pitch is a
reference to the financial crash
of 2008, where top-drawer AAA
ratings were given to many
securities that turned out to be
the complete opposite because
nobody really understood what
was in them.
Foster thinks there’s a paral-
lel to be drawn with AI today,
where companies are being
sold the dream of AI as a solid
investment, without really
understanding what technolo-
gies and techniques constitu-
ent commercial AI today.
“With any kind of gold rush,
there are a lot of charlatans,”
Broussard said. “I would cau-
tion people to be very clear
about what computers can and
can’t do, because it’s very easy
to get carried away with what
we imagine what AI might be.”
China’s recent use of facial
recognition technology to spot
fugitives in crowds offers a per-
fect example of the difference
between machine learning and
AI. Showing the machine thou-
sands and thousands of pairs
of faces, it becomes better and
faster than humans at mak-
ing a match. That’s machine
learning.
When the machine makes
the decision to make an arrest,
that’s AI. With something like
that, Foster said, “There is a
lot more to be wary of and the
ethical dilemmas start multi-
plying.” What if the “fugitive”
is wrongly arrested, who takes
the blame for the error — the
programmer? The police? The
AI itself?
Not so fast
In her new book, Brous-
sard makes the case that the
wild enthusiasm for applying
computer technology to every
aspect of life has produced a
lot of poorly designed and per-
forming systems.
“We are so eager to do
everything digitally — hiring,
2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Source: Tractica
Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, 2018 C H I N A DA I LY USA
‘Automata Studies’ becomes ‘Artificial
Intelligence’ and a new science is born
In 1956, John McCarthy, an
American computer scientist
pioneer and inventor, called
for research on “Automata
Studies”. But few people
understood what he meant,
so he came up with another
phrase for the research he
was promoting: artificial
intelligence.
While teaching
mathematics at Dartmouth
College in Hanover, New
Hampshire, in 1956,
McCarthy was the principal
organizer of the Dartmouth
Conference on Artificial
Intelligence, the first
academic conference on the
subject.
Global market for AI: $37 billion by
2025, 26% of China’s GDP by 2030
The global market for AI
is projected to reach $37
billion in revenue by 2025, a
57-fold increase from $644
million in 2016, according to
a new report from Tractica,
a Boulder, Colorado-based
market intelligence firm that
focuses on human interaction
with technology
For China, AI-related
industries are expected to
generate up to 26 percent of
its gross domestic product
by 2030. The largest sector
gains will likely be in retail,
financial services and
healthcare.
Last year, President Xi
Jinping outlined the nation’s
technological ambitions in
his opening address to the
19th National Congress of the
Merging drones, AI to help clean energy
hum along: the ultimate integration
“We look at ourselves as a
global startup. In addition to
China, we are eyeing markets
in Southeast Asia, Europe and
North America,” said George
Yan, founder and CEO of
Shanghai-based AI start up
Clobotics.
The startup now has more
than 10 employees at its
R&D team in Seattle and is
looking for fast development
of the team in the next two
years.
Clobotics has developed
the world’s first computer-
vision based wind turbine
blade inspection service
using UAV drones. It takes
pictures of wind turbine
blade surfaces, and then
uses computer vision to
inspect the images on the
cloud. The system notifies
maintenance personnel of
damages, deterioration and
other early warning signs,
which are critical for reducing
maintenance costs.
GGV Capital, a US-Chinese
venture capital firm, is
leading a $5 million financing
round to get Clobotics off the
ground.
Clobotics was one of
16 startups taking part in
the Microsoft Accelerator
driving, paying bills, even choos-
ing romantic partners — that we
have stopped demanding that
our technology actually works,”
she writes.
She has coined the term “tech-
nochauvinism” to describe the
belief that technology holds the
key to everything and warns
that “we should never assume
that computers always get
things right”.
Both Broussard and Foster
agree that, as the cyborg revolu-
tion, where AIs suddenly gain
consciousness and enslave man-
kind, isn’t coming anytime soon.
Toaster revolt?
“There’s currently as much
chance of this happening as your
toaster and microwave starting
a revolution from your kitchen,”
Foster said.
Driverless cars are probably
the best example of a genuine AI
technology that has the poten-
tial to affect daily life, according
to Foster.
There is little doubt that the
machine learning underpin-
2025
ning driverless tech is superior
to human judgment at keep-
ing a car on the road. But there
The objective was to
explore ways to make a
machine that could reason
like a human, and was
capable of abstract thought,
problem-solving and self-
improvement. McCarthy
believed that “every aspect of
learning or any other feature
of intelligence can in principle
be so precisely described that
a machine can be made to
simulate it.”
McCarthy, a professor
emeritus of computer science
at Stanford University, died in
October 2011 at his home in
California. He was 84.
CHINA DAILY
Communist Party of China
(CPC). It largely confirms
previously announced
plans for AI research, giving
itself a target to become an
“innovation center” by 2030.
According to the
International Federation of
Robots, China will lay claim to
40 percent of total worldwide
robotic sales by 2019.
China is the biggest
shareholder of the robotic
global market, with a net
worth of $30 billion.
It is No. 1 in sales for
industrial robots. South
Korea and Japan are
ranked second and third,
respectively. The US is
fourth.
LINDA DENG
program in Beijing last March,
and GGV’s investment moved
the venture closer to the head
of the class.
Jenny Lee, managing
partner of GGV Capital and
a Clobotics board member,
said Clobotics was chosen
because it’s “an interesting
convergence of the
transportation, robotics and
AI production”.
On Jan 23, the company
announced a new $5 million
A+ round of financing led
by KTB Network, the largest
venture capital firm in
South Korea, and followed
by GGV Capital and Capital
Development Investment
Fund (CDIF) in China. This is
Clobotics’ second round of
financing in its first 12 months
of inception.
“If you look at how China
and even the government
look at its growth, it is very
clear that combining the
AI technologies with the
traditional industries is where
the government wants to take
it. It is amazing,” Yan said. “In
next 15 years AI will change
the looks of the traditional
industry.”
LINDA DENG
are other judgment calls that
only humans can — or should
— make.
Writing in the current issue
of The Atlantic about the recent
tragic death of a woman hit by
an experimental self-driving
Uber car, Broussard said, “An
overwhelming number of tech
people (and investors) seem to
want self-driving cars so badly
that they are willing to ignore
evidence suggesting that self-
driving cars could cause as
much harm as good.”
Again, the blind optimism
she calls techochauvinism. “In
a self-driving car, death is an
unavoidable feature, not a bug,”
she writes.
“One of the problems with
self-driving cars is they can’t see
the things that humans do.”
China has prioritized devel-
oping sensors and positioning
technologies for self-driving
vehicles, and the rush to put AI
in the driver’s seat in Silicon Val-
ley seems to be a flat-out sprint.
The whole AI race brings to
mind the great last line of Jack
Kerouac’s classic On the Road:
“Whither goest thou, Ameri-
ca, in thy shiny car in the night?”