China sentences two to death over melamine milk

BEIJING, January 22 (RIA Novosti) - A Chinese court has sentenced two people to death and three others to life behind bars over last year's melamine-tainted milk scandal, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.

The contaminated milk powder killed at least six children and left another 300,000 ill. The melamine was added to the milk in order to make it appear richer in protein.

The court sentenced Zhang Yujun to death for producing the tainted milk in the Shandong province in eastern China. Geng Jinping was handed the death sentence for selling toxic food to dairy companies.

Another man, Gao Junjie, was also condemned to death, but his sentence has been suspended for two years and could be later converted to life.

Tian Wenhu, the female head of the Sanlu dairy giant at the center of the scandal, was sentenced to life in prison and a $2.9 million fine, Xinhua said. The Sanlu Group was accused of knowing that it was selling toxic milk, and Wenhu pleaded guilty to the charges against her. Two men were also given life sentences.

Six others, including Sanlu employees, were given sentences ranging from five years to 15 years. Another 39 people are still awaiting trial.

The toxic milk scandal led to a ban on Chinese-produced dairy products in Asia, Europe and North America.

World's largest dinosaur fossil field discovered in Shandong

Scientists in east China's Shandong province have discovered what they think could be the world's largest dinosaur fossil field.

So far, the site located in Zhucheng city has produced 7,600 fossils, and more are expected to be found, Zhao Xijin, a paleontologist from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua.

Not only is the field significant in terms of its vast quantity of fossils, but also in the evolutionary sense, as it may help provide an answer as to why dinosaurs disappeared, Zhao said.

Most of the fossils in the area date from the Late Cretaceous of the Mesozoic Period, when dinosaurs became extinct, Xinhua writes.

In the 1960s, a number of duck-billed hadrosaurus fossils were discovered in the area during an oil expedition. The largest one, discovered two decades later, is currently on display in the local museum. Since then, more than 50 tons of fossils have been unearthed there, according to Xinhua.

Last March, several fossil fields were discovered in the towns of Longdu, Shunwang, Jiayue and Zhigou during mining expeditions. The Longdu field alone has so far yielded more than 3,000 fossils, one of them being a 2-meter-long skull of a large ceratopsian, the first one discovered outside of North America, Xu Xing, a researcher from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, told Xinhua.

New genera of ankylosaurus, tyrannosaurus and ceolurus have also been found in the area, Xu said.

According to Zhao, in the time of the dinosaurs, the area might have had abundant water resources and grasslands, which made it an ideal habitat for duck-billed dinosaurs. Researchers say that a volcanic eruption could have caused the dinosaurs' extinction, and that a subsequent flood could have brought the fossils to the current site.

China, which has seen a rapid rise in the number of rare fossils unearthed on its territory in recent years, is facing a growing smuggling problem. Last January, hundreds of kilograms of Chinese dinosaur fossils were recovered from warehouses and cargo containers in sting operations in Australia, according to Reuters.

Excavation in Shandong has been suspended for the winter months, but will resume in the spring, Reuters says. A report of the findings will be published at the end of next year, Zhao said.

Shandong has plans to build a fossil park on the site.

Textsource: Xinhua, Reuters

Paintings of Zhu Xunde

Prelude to Spring


Lasting Flow In


Watering Festival


Lotus Rain


Picking Pepper


Picking Lotus


Early Autumn


Voices of the Mountains

I Like this song (wo hen xi huan zhe ge ge)

China's population to reach 1.5 billion after 2033

BEIJING, October 23 (RIA Novosti) - The population of the People's Republic of China will reach 1.5 billion people not earlier than 2033, a government official said on Thursday.

China is the world's most populous country, with over 1.3 billion people, or one fifth of the global total. India takes second place, with 1.1 billion.

"In the next few decades the population of China [excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan] will grow on average by 8 million annually, and may reach 1.5 billion by 2033," the China News Service quoted the National Population and Family Planning Commission director, Li Bin, as saying.

The official said China enjoys a favorable demographic situation, "which has created a good atmosphere for the country's fast and fruitful socio-economic development."

However, Li said China would maintain its family planning policies "to maintain low birth rates and control population growth."

China has had a one-child policy since 1979, and is expected to maintain the restriction for at least another 10 years.

Since 2000, China's average life expectancy has risen from 71.4 to 73 years.

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More information about:Ba Hanging Coffins

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Mysterious hanging coffins of China

Most ancient civilizations buried their dead under the ground, a few burned them on pyres. But there are some that placed bodies of the dead in coffins and hung the coffins on a precipice.
Examples of the latter can be found in many locations throughout China. Some of those are placed on wooden beams projecting out from rock, others are on the rocks themselves. Still others are merely placed in caves high up a cliff face. Some were even suspended on wooden stakes above the ground or stuck into the cliff face.

Coffins have been found from 18 counties in various provinces, some containing hundreds of samples. The age of some preserved artifacts ranges over 13 centuries from the Jin Dynasty (265AD-420AD) to the Ming Dynasty (1368AD-1644AD). But the practice dates much further back. Archaeologists have found hanging coffins in Wuyi Mountain from as far back as the Zhou Dynasty (1027BC-777BC).

One of the most well-known examples are the Ba Hanging Coffins of the Three Gorges. Some of these are - or soon will be - lost forever as the waters of the river rise. That change was brought about by the Three Gorges River dam project which is flooding sections that were previously high above the river's surface.

Most of these contain the remains of Ba peoples, an ancient ethnic Chinese group centered around what is now Yibin City. When buried, the wooden coffin - many containing weapons, food containers and decorated with Tiger carvings - would be placed high up the cliff face. These people are believed to be among the original engineers and workers of China's famed Silk Road.

Preserved examples of the coffins can be found in various museums around the country. Dozens are housed in the Yibin Museum in Gong Xian. Others can be seen in Wuyi in the Fujian Province. Still more are stored in Yingtan City in Jiang Xi. And, for a while, viewing the Ba Hanging Coffins of the Three Gorges is possible as part of one of the many tours down the river.

The Ba culture survived for over 3,000 years but the last known descendant is believed to have died out as recently as 400 years ago though the funeral practice ended centuries earlier. The earliest known example of their funeral practices is believed to be one dating 2,500 years ago found at Three Gorges.

Why this ancient people began this practice, or what significance it may have had for them, is not known. Some believe that suspending the body high above the ground confered honor. It isn't even known with certainty how they achieved some of the engineering feats involved in placing coffins so far up a cliff, distant from the top of the mountain.

But whatever the answers to these questions are, the Ba Hanging Coffins continue to fascinate visitors to China generation after generation. Come find out why.



More information about:Ba Hanging Coffins

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