A tomb in an ancient cemetery in northwest China, in which 14 mummies were unearthed, were recently conferred by the Shanghai Office of Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest family joint burial tomb of mummies.
The tomb dating back to 1,400 to 3,000 years ago was found in Qiemo (Qarqan) County, in the southeast of the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where there was one of the 36 small kingdoms about 2,000 years ago.
The bodies of mummies including male, female and children were flexed, lying on their back in the five meter-long, 2.7 meter-wide and 3.4 meter-deep tomb.
Pottery, stone, wood, bronze and iron articles, along with exquisite cotton and wool fabric were excavated together with the mummies.
Archaeologists say the custom of family joint burial was quite popular in the region at that time. When the ancients of Qiemo were buried, their eyes were covered with stone chips, face being masked by cloth, mouth being sealed by gold foil and flour paste, and nose being plugged with wool.
Archaeologists also found that the ancients of Qiemo liked wearing wigs, hats and necklaces.
Archive for May, 2009
World Largest Family Joint Burial Ancient Tomb Found in NW China
Sunday, May 31st, 2009Drug Addicts Steal 5 Million Rupees From Sri Lankan Woman Banker
Sunday, May 31st, 2009Three drug addicts stormed the house of a woman banker Ganemulla, 25 kilometers away from Colombo, and got away with household goods and cash worth 5 million rupees (around 55,000 U.S. dollars) on Saturday night, according to police.
When the woman banker returned home from work at 11 p.m. on Saturday she found the front door of her house smashed and two windows broken. Inside she found glass strewn all over and she discovered that several household items including two Television sets, two video decks, two cassette recorders, a VCD player, two gold necklaces and 50,000 rupees (around 550 dollars) in cash had been stolen.
The intruders had also smashed a cabinet, three window panes and two tables.
Police investigations have revealed that the woman banker was estranged from her husband but had refused to grant him a divorce. Police suspected the theft was committed in revenge, using members of an underworld gang who were seen running away in a double cab after the incident.
The husband, a businessman, reportedly has connections with the underworld gang for his crooked business deals.
Bus firm sued over inaction toward theft
Sunday, May 31st, 2009A Shanghai woman who was robbed on a bus is suing the bus company because the driver didn’t close the door in time to prevent the thief from running away, according to Tuesday’s Shanghai Daily.
Xu Ruijuan said she is still looking for more witnesses to tell the court what happened that day.
Xu is seeking 6,000 yuan (US$723) in compensation, but she said the suit is more about principle than cash.
Xu was robbed on June 11 when she was riding on bus No. 709.
As the bus was pulling up to a bus stop, a young man sitting in front of Xu stood up.
As soon as the door opened, the man ripped a golden necklace off Xu’s neck.
Despite Xu’s cries for help, the man was able to rush out the open bus door with her jewelry.
The bus driver realized what happened, Xu said, but he only glanced back at what was happening without taking any action.
Xu’s lawyer Wu Dong said the bus company has responsibility to deliver its passengers to their destination safely and on schedule.
“But the driver didn’t close the door in time and even drove the bus away with Xu’s bag after Xu got off to pursue the robber,” Wu said.
Xu didn’t catch the robber, neither did the police.
A policeman had to give her 10 yuan to take a taxi back to the bus terminal. Xu got her bag back but she didn’t find the driver there.
Managers of the bus company said drivers should close the door if they know a theft is taking place on their buses.
But they argued in this case the driver didn’t know what was happening.
They did say however that they are still investigating the incident.
Wu Dong said one passenger has provided a written deposition stating the driver looked back when Xu began shouting for help.
Changning District People’s Court officials said they will hear the case soon.
A similar case was once heard in Baoshan District People’s Court earlier this year.
The plaintiff, a delivery man surnamed He, was beaten for 10 minutes on a bus by three pickpockets while the driver and conductor looked on without taking any action.
He was beaten because he told a fellow passenger the pickpockets had stolen his wallet.
After mediation, the bus company agreed to pay He 17,620 yuan for the silence of its employees.
Suspected gangsters nabbed in robberies
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009Thirty gang members suspected of being responsible for hundreds of robberies in Dongguan, South China’s Guangdong Province, since the start of the year have been rounded up by local police, authorities announced Wednesday.
According to an official from the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Security, 90 gang suspects had been detained for questioning by October 15.
Dongguan is in the prosperous Pearl River Delta that borders Hong Kong and Macao.
Police have seized 503 mobile phones, 14 gold necklaces, rings and jewellery, more than 120,000 yuan (US$14,460) in cash and several motorcycles, the official said.
In addition to allegedly pickpocketing at big local shopping centres and department stores, it is claimed the gang members snatched bags and mobile phones from pedestrians - particularly single woman - while riding motorcycles.
They are believed to have been operating since the start of the year and have stolen from more than 120 people.
It is claimed the gang is also responsible for more than 500 robberies in Dongguan, taking more than 1,500 mobile phones in the first nine months of the year, the official said.
They allegedly sold the phones in their stores in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Zhongshan and other cities in Guangdong.
With the help of undercover agents, police started arresting members of the gang at the beginning of the month, after several weeks of investigation.
”The crackdown has put the breaks on the number of robberies in the region and contributed to a better social environment,” the official said.
He said the suspects included local jobless residents and people from Anhui, Hunan, Jiangxi and Sichuan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Many of them are drug addicts, it is claimed.
HK int’l jewelry show attracts more overseas buyers
Monday, May 25th, 2009The four-day Hong Kong International Jewelry Show concluded Friday has attracted a total of 26,753 buyers from 136 countries and regions, up 7.39 percent when compared to the jewelry show in 2004.
According to a press release from the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, in addition to local and mainland buyers, most of the buyers are from the United States, Chinese mainland, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Australia, India and Italy.
According to an independent industry survey conducted by Oracle,during the Show, industry players are optimistic on jewelry exports in 2005.
Jewelers expect a 10 percent increase in sales growth this year.They also expect a bullish growth of 16 percent in sales growth inemerging markets, such as the Chinese mainland, Russia, India and Eastern Europe.
A total of 427 exhibitors and 716 buyers from around the world joining the show were interviewed. Most of the respondents (88 percent) said the global jewelry market in 2005 would be better than or same as that in 2004 - a year that Hong Kong experienced a19 percent growth in jewelry exports.
Over 66 percent of overseas buyers said Hong Kong and southern China are their most preferred souring region as it provides a wide variety of quality goods and is located adjacently. Jewelry buyers are impressed by Hong Kong’s design, craftsmanship and quality.
On product trends, the survey indicated that “simplicity” and “classic” style are preferred, while heart and floral pattern are expected to be popular in 2005.
Consumer segments with highest growth potential: executives, professional and office ladies, and housewives aged 35 or above.
Fastest growing Jewelry category: ring is regarded as the fastest growing product category in 2005, followed by necklace andearrings.
In 2004, Hong Kong exported 2.58 billion US dollars worth of Jewelry to the world. Hong Kong International Jewelry Show 2005, the largest ever, featured 1,546 exhibitors from 40 countries and regions.
Super Girls’ accessories auctioned off
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009An auction of clothing, jewelry and other goods belonging to the top contestants on the hit TV show “Super Girl” raised more than 650,000 yuan (US$80,000) for charity last night.
The sale was held on a boat cruising the Huangpu River.
A man in his 40s paid 380,000 yuan for the white overcoat and necklace Li Yuchun wore when she was named winner of the televised talent contest.
Money raised from the auction will be used to assist underprivileged university students studying in Shanghai, said Ma Zhongqi, executive deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai Charity Foundation.
Altogether 13 “super girls,” including the top three finishers, attended last night’s auction, which attracted more than 200 bidders. Participants not only snatched up all 19 items on sale, mostly accessories like necklaces and bracelets, but also paid 2,888 yuan for tickets to the event.
All the proceeds went to the charity foundation, according to Ma.
Before showing up at the charity party, the “Super Girl” held a concert on Thursday night at the Shanghai Stadium, which proved a big success.
More than 40,000 fans from the city, as well as from nearby Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, took in the show.
In late September, a charity auction of tickets for the 160 best seats at the concert raised 516,500 yuan, with one seat selling for 100,000 yuan.
The money was also donated to the charity foundation.
President Hu joins in National Day get-together
Thursday, May 21st, 2009President Hu Jintao joined in 200,000 local people in this national capital Friday, to celebrate the55th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China(PRC).
At 9:00 am, Hu, who took over as chairman of the Central Military Commission last month, appeared in the Zhongshan (Yat-sen)Park, in central Beijing, when young children clad in festive dress began dancing to the tune of welcoming music, while hundredsof pigeons and numerous balloons were set free to fly into the skies.
Hu, also general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, first visited an exhibition dubbed as “Tibetan people are singing”. A young Tibetan woman presented him with Hada (a white-colored silk ribbon used by Tibetans as a traditional gift for guests) and Tibetan food and wine.
Hu showed his heartfelt happiness about the enormous changes the Tibet Autonomous Region has experienced over the past five decades. He called on Tibetan people to promote economic and social development as well as to safeguard social stability.
Hu worked as Party chief in Tibet between 1988-92.
Afterwards, he had a meeting with some model workers from different fields, in front of the statue of Sun Yat-sen, who led ademocratic revolutionary to topple the last feudalistic Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) in the early 20th century.
Hu shook hands with the model workers, saying that China’s great achievements in the past 55 years are inseparable with the working class.
Then, he stopped over nearby a pavilion, where several elementary students were working on a painting roll titled “I’m growing up along with the motherland.”
“Now, you are drawing the beautiful future scenario of the motherland with your paintbrush,” he said to the children, “I hopethat you will be able to materialize the goal of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with your own hands.”
Later, Hu visited some other young children who were showing their skills in making handicrafts. Cao Wenxiang, a 16-year old student from a local special education school for handicapped children, gave one of his own products — a soft-ceramic necklace to the president. Hu accepted the present and encouraged the handicapped students to be self-reliant, improve their own abilities, and contribute to the country’s development when they grow up.
During his stay, the president also watched singing and dancing performances, visited exhibitions on “Building up and Implementinga Scientific View of Development” and “New Beijing, Great Olympics”, respectively.
Hu advocated a scientific view of development, calling it a change the Party has made on the issue of development and a summary of the practice and experience for China since its founding in 1949, and in particular since the launching of the reform and opening up drive in the late 1970s.
He also showed his support to the government’s macro-economic control measures this year. “It has further proved the correctnessof a scientific view of development and it is compatible with the realities of our country,” he noted.
The leader highlighted the importance to implement the Important Thought of “Three Represents” and the goal to achieve anoverall well-off society. He called for being more self-conscious and firm in carrying out a scientific view of development and adhering to a scientific view of development in practice, so as toachieve a faster and better development in China. Enditem
China quake survivor’s undying love
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009More than a month after the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that killed 69,172 people in China, memories of his wife, Shi Huaqiong, linger with Wu Jiafang, a peasant in the southwestern Sichuan Province.
So do the heartbreaking scenes he faced as he retrieved her body from the rubble, dressed her in her favorite winter coat and carried her home on his motorbike.
When the couple made their last trip home together on May 14, two days after she died in the devastating quake, his wife’s arms tied around his waist and her legs dangling limply, passing vehicles stopped to make way for them. A reporter who tried to ask questions broke into tears herself.
Wu, 44, became famous after a news photo featuring his final ride home with his wife was published and moved millions in China. The photo was entitled “preserving dignity of his dead wife,” although dignity was not even in Wu’s lexicon.
Like most Chinese men of his age, Wu rarely told his wife he loved her. The peasant who eked out a living at construction sites only knew he had to take his wife home so that they would be together.
“I buried her in the grain field 20 meters from home. I hope she still feels close to me,” Wu said on Tuesday in his temporary shelter close to his ramshackle home in Xinglong Town, Mianzhu City, one of the hardest hit areas in the May 12 quake.
A month since the couple was named one of the country’s “most touching couples” by Chinese Internet users, the once muscular farmer is apparently thinner and older. His sunken cheeks, torn jacket and near-silence speak of his misery.
“If only she had stayed home that day,” he murmured as he gazed at his wife’s photos.
HAPPY MARRIAGE
Wu and Shi married in 1986. He was 22 and she was 21.
They met at a construction site in Hanwang Town, the same place where she died. “I was poor but she said she admired my honesty.”
Shi was not beautiful but was always attentive to her looks. On the early afternoon of May 12, she carefully fixed her hair and looked at herself for several minutes in the mirror before she left for Hanwang to buy a prepaid card for her mobile phone.
“She was different from other women in the village. She always made herself neat and presentable even at home.”
Shi, a small bespectacled lady, taught for a few years but lacking a formal education, she was eventually dismissed.
The couple were poor but Wu insisted he should be the breadwinner. “I didn’t want her to toil. Her parents used to dote on her and so did I.”
A good housekeeper, Shi made their home clean and cozy and planted pear trees in the yard. She had prepared several dishes for him before she went to town. “Get back as early as you can,” he had told her.
When the earth rocked and buildings collapsed at 2:28 p.m., Wu dashed out of the cement factory where he was working and rushed home, only to find their teenage son standing dumbfounded in the yard. Shi was not home.
Wu’s motorbike bumped along the road to Hanwang, blocked here and there by the ruins of toppled homes and screaming crowds. Fighting against a crowd that was pushing to get out of the telecommunications office, he elbowed his way in. Shi was not there.
He hurried to a four-story teahouse she often frequented, but it was no longer there. He climbed atop the ruins and cried out her name, hoping she was somewhere waiting for his help.
“I searched everywhere and then saw her between two floor slabs. She was in her black T-shirt and blue jeans, with a red hairpin in her hair that was dyed yellow.”
Wu squeezed into the space between the slabs and held her in his arms. She never responded. A nephew passed by and helped him pull her out. He ran to the nearest hospital for help but doctors told him she was dead. The slabs had hit her on the head, causing fatal injuries.
HOME AT LAST
Wu never remembered how he got home that day.
At night, he searched her wardrobe and took out her favorite winter coat, a rosy one he had bought her.
The downpour on May 13 trapped him and his son at home. They built a tent in the yard because they feared their ramshackle house could be toppled by aftershocks.
When it cleared up again on May 14, Wu and some relatives rode to Hanwang town to take his wife home. Their trip was halted by fears of a dam burst and flood. Everyone else left but he stayed, waiting until the alarm was called off in the afternoon and he was allowed into town.
He knelt next to his wife, lit candles, burned the “paper money” that Chinese offer up to help the deceased in the after life and set off firecrackers, according to custom.
He washed her face, dressed her and wrapped a scarf around her face. Rescuers, largely People’s Liberation Army men and armed police officers, tearfully watched him but he never cried. “Come, let’s go home,” he told her.
Soldiers helped carry her to his motorbike and tied her to him with a rope.
For Wu, the 10-minute ride home was like a lifetime.
At home, he built a coffin with timber he had planned to use to build their new home.
Most of their neighbors had built two-story homes but they still lived in the same simple house built when they were married. She never complained but he felt sorry.
The subsequent wheat harvest and summer planting numbed Wu, who worked like a horse in the field.
He burned her belongings, hoping they, like the money, would follow her to the next world.
All he kept was her necklace, which he had bought for 300 yuan (43 U.S. dollars) as a gift for her 40th birthday. She had worn it until the day she died.
Man gets 10-months jail for using counterfeit money
Monday, May 18th, 2009A Chinese farmer was sentenced to 10 months in prison and fined 15,000 yuan (2,193 U.S. dollars) for using counterfeit money Tuesday by a Shanghai court as the country steps up efforts to crack down on counterfeit currency.
The Nanhui District People’s Court in Shanghai convicted Mo Qinsong, a 34-year-old farmer from southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, of using 52 counterfeit 100-yuan notes to buy a gold necklace on Nov. 13 in a jewelry shop in the district.
Zhang bought 55 counterfeit 100-yuan notes whose serial number started with “HD90″ at a price of 10 yuan per note. He purchased them at the railway station in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province on Nov. 9, the court heard Tuesday.
He was caught when attempting to flee after the jewelry shop staff grew suspicious of the notes and asked him where he got them.
According to Chinese law, in the most serious cases, a person can face more than ten years in prison if convicted of intentionally holding or using counterfeit money.
Fake 100-yuan notes, most starting with serial number “HD90,” have been reported in more than ten Chinese provinces and cities. The case aroused public attention as reports said the quality of some fake bank notes are so high that they can even cheat some low-quality counterfeit money detectors.
The Shanghai headquarters of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said Monday it has strengthened cooperation with the public security and industry and commerce bureaus to fight counterfeit crimes.
The headquarters ordered commercial banks to conduct more exchanges with counterfeit detector manufacturers and upgrade their detection systems.
Taiwanese lawmaker disputes accuracy of report on value of first lady’s jewelry
Saturday, May 16th, 2009An opposition lawmaker on Saturday disputed the accuracy of a report on the value of the jewelry collection of Taiwan’s first lady, stoking the fires of a long-running campaign to remove her husband from office.
Nationalist Party Legislator Chiu Yi told Taiwanese cable news station TVBS that first lady Wu Shu-chen’s jewelry collection had a value of around 42 million New Taiwan dollars (US$ 1.31 million; €1.05 million) — more than 10 times the figure provided by the Presidential Office in a report filed to a civil service oversight board Friday.
Television footage of Wu adorned with expensive items including jade earrings and a pearl necklace have buttressed the opposition’s effort to remove President Chen Shui-bian from office over a series of high-profile corruption scandals.
Last month, Chen’s son-in-law was arrested on charges of insider trading. Prosecutors are now investigating whether Wu was involved in illegal financial dealings linked to the takeover of an upscale Taipei department store — an allegation the Presidential Office denies.
In his remarks to TVBS, Chiu said the Presidential Office had seriously understated the value of Wu’s jewelry collection in a report it filed Friday with the Control Yuan to comply with a Taiwanese law on wealth disclosure by senior officials.
The report listed 14 items held by Wu and a pair of watches owned by Chen, putting their total value at NT$3.72 million (US$115,000; €92,000).
“If you add to the report the jewelry worn by the first lady on public occasions, the total number of pieces is 27 and the value is NT$42.57 million,” Chiu said, referring to items he claims had been captured in archived television footage but went undeclared by the Presidential Office.
Chiu did not say how he had arrived at the appraisals of the allegedly undeclared pieces.
His allegations come less than two weeks after an opposition bid to put a measure to recall Chen to Taiwanese voters failed to secure the necessary two-thirds majority in Taiwan’s Legislature.
Despite the legislative setback, opposition politicians have kept up their efforts to force Chen from office two years before the end of his second and final four-year term, organizing island-wide petitions calling for his resignation, and maintaining a drumbeat of criticism in anti-government newspapers.
Chiu has been at the center of the storm. A declared candidate for the mayoralty of Taiwan’s second-largest city, Kaohsiung, he won considerable notoriety in 2004 when he stood atop a truck that had rammed a police-guarded courthouse during protests over Chen’s razor-thin election victory.
The protesters alleged that the poll was rigged — an allegation that has never been proven.