中国房产泡沫的缩影:鄂尔多斯50亿新城康巴什如”鬼城”

鄂尔多斯50亿新城如鬼城 成房产泡沫最佳展示品

China cracks down on recycled cooking oil

China’s food safety watchdog, the State Food and Drug Administration,  has ordered inspections of cooking oil nationwide as reports said up to one-tenth of Chinese supplies were illegally made and contained cancer-causing agents.

The order came shortly after a professor and a group of students at Wuhan Polytechnic University announced that they had found widespread use of recycled oil in their region in an undercover investigation. The professor, He Dongping, asserted that recycled oil was being used to prepare 1 in 10 meals in China. According to Mr He, the swill oil business is extremely profitable as the cost of buying food waste and refining is low while edible oil prices were rising.

Regulators are now searching for illegal oil recycling mills, and some health bureaus have begun releasing the names of restaurants and food establishments that were found to be using questionable oil.

Last November, regulators in southern China raided several workshops for turning discarded waste — possibly even sewage — into cooking oil.

In the city of Chengdu, in southwestern China, food safety officials released the names of 13 restaurants that were found to be using illegal cooking oil. The restaurants specialized in hot pot, a popular simmered dish.

City residents voiced anger at Chengdu regulators for having delayed the release of some of the names of the implicated restaurants, according to the English-language newspaper China Daily.

In Shanghai, regulators have warned that illegal cooking oil could be a problem because a large portion of restaurant food grease goes unaccounted for.

The city of Shanghai produces about 40 tons of restaurant food grease every day. But only about 29 tons of that grease is legally collected, recycled and disposed of, the Shanghai Greenery and Sanitation Bureau told some city legislators yesterday. Officials said that the rest of the food grease from local restaurant kitchens remained unaccounted for.  Hence, they can’t exclude the possibility that some could be used for the notorious and highly harmful business of swill-oil production.

还要让地沟油泛滥到何时？

《中国青年报》最近有关“我国每年返回餐桌的地沟油有200万~300万吨”的报道，几乎让每一位中国人都毛骨悚然。武汉工业学院食品科学与工程学院教授何东平估计，我国一年的动、植物油消费总量约为2250万吨，而地沟油的数量已占到消费总量的十分之一，按此推算，消费者每吃的10顿饭中，可能就会有1顿是在使用地沟油！还要让地沟油泛滥到何时？

地沟油：

地沟油实际上是一个泛指的概念，是人们在生活中对于各类劣质油的通称。

通俗地讲，地沟油可分为以下几类：一是狭义的地沟油，即将下水道中的油腻漂浮物或者将宾馆、酒楼的剩饭、剩菜(通称泔水)经过简单加工、提炼出的油;二是劣质猪肉、猪内脏、猪皮加工以及提炼后产出的油;三是用于油炸食品的油使用次数超过规定要求后，再被重复使用或往其中添加一些新油后重新使用的油。

Worst drought in a century hits southwestern China

The worst drought in a century has been ravaging China’s southwest provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou and the region of Guangxi, leaving 20.5 million residents and 12.6 million heads of livestock with insufficient drinking water.

A farmer carries pails to transport water from a partially dried-up pond at the outskirts of Yingtan, Jiangxi province.

Since 1517, when records began in the small Chinese village of Xiazha, there has always been water in its three wells.

This spring, however, the wells dried up.

“I’m 83 years old, I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Yang Kuanren, a villager in Xiazha, in Guangxi province. “Not a single drop of water can be seen in our wells. For hundreds of years, we have relied on those wells for irrigation and drinking water and we do not know what to do.

“It is time to start planting the fields, but the earth is so dry we cannot even plough it.”

Three enormous water reservoirs that normally feed the village, and its neighbours, which usually hold enough water to irrigate 5,000 acres of land, have also run dry.

A local farmer looks at dying crop in the field in Shihuitang village of Shiping County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, March 24, 2010

Nearby villages have started drilling new wells, but there is little water to be found, even several hundred feet below ground.

In Guizhou province, many distillers of Maotai – the national alcohol drunk at banquets – have stopped production due to a shortage of spring and tap water.

Huangguoshu falls_China’s most famous waterfall

Asia’s biggest waterfall, Huangguoshu, has been reduced to a trickle. More than 90% of the rivers and reservoirs downstream have dried up.

In Yunnan province, some villagers are traveling for up to three hours to try to find water in valleys.

The normally sub-tropical south of China saw its rainy season evaporate this year, with the average temperature in Yunnan two degrees higher than normal, and rainfall at only half the usual level.

Children wait to collect water distributed by local government in drought-hit Dazhuyuan village, on the outskirts of Kunming, Yunnan Province

Yunnan is the source of several of Asia’s biggest rivers, including the Yangtze and the Mekong and almost a billion people living downstream could be affected as they dry up. The Mekong is at its lowest level for 20 years. Over five million hectares of forests have withered or been ravaged by fires.

As the drought continues to grip, ethnic minority groups preparing for a water-splashing festival in April are now considering alternatives.

Boats are seen stranding on crackled bed of the Chirui Lake in Shiping County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, March 24, 2010

Blowing in the wind: Sandstorms blanket Beijing in yellow dust

Beijing residents awakened Monday to skies the eerie yellow color of a street lamp. It was the second time in three days that the Chinese capital had been scoured by sandstorms that have hit 16 provinces across west, central and north China, with winds carrying the pollution outside the mainland as far as Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Hazy Shade of Spring: Springtime sandstorms are common in China, as Siberian winds blow dust and sand off the Gobi desert across east Asia

Sand from China's northern deserts blew into the capital city, giving Beijing an eerie saffron glow

Tiananmen Square is seen amid a sandstorm: Spring sandstorms have been exacerbated by desertification. Agricultural expansion, overgrazing and population growth starting in the 1950s strained already dry regions in western China.

Pedestrians muffled their faces as the sandstorm blew through Beijing's Tiananmen Square

New CCTV Building on a clear day in Beijing last week (left) before a sandstorm covered the capital city in yellow dust yesterday.

The hazardous haze didn't stop Beijingers from picking up their scheduled softball game