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Massive Recruitment Drive Underway in China To Build Apple’s Next iPhone

Posted: 07/25/2014 9:16 am

Foxconn is planning to hire at least 100,000 workers at its manufacturing bases in Shenzhen, Henan and Hebei Provinces to produce the latest version of Apple’s iPhone. The iPhone 6 is expected to launch in the third quarter of this year, reported Tencent News.

Jiao Jinmiao, head of the Henan Commerce Department, confirmed that Foxconn, the largest contract manufacturer of Apple products in the world, plans to hire another 100,000 workers in that particular province alone after the new iPhone 6 production equipment is put in place.

Workers in Foxconn’s Shenzhen manufacturing plant lines up for hiring.

Foxconn’s manufacturing factory in Zhengzhou, Henan has been hiring every day since June 26. In addition to the massive recruitment in Henan, its manufacturing plants in Langfang, Hebei Province, Yantai, Shandong Province, and Shenzhen have all started hiring new personnel.

The new iPhone 6 is rumored to have two versions, namely a 4.7-inch version and a 5.5-inch version, with at least one model having a sapphire screen. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Apple has ordered its manufacturing suppliers to produce 60 million to 70 million iPhone 6 units, the highest production volume of any iPhone model in the company’s history.

Foxconn has been producing iPhone 6 since March this year.

Due to the large orders of the new iPhones, workers in Foxconn’s Shenzhen manufacturing plant are requested to work day and night, according to one person who claimed to be in charge of hiring in Shenzhen when interviewed by Tencent.

Foxconn also rolled out several financial incentives to stimulate work production. Workers who chose to work overtime can get up to twice their salary. Any worker who brought in a new recruit who stays with the company for three months can also get a RMB 300 reward, according to the report.

Foxconn has previously experienced problems with its workforce. In 2012, the company was embroiled in a scandal when many of its workers committed suicide, leading to the installment of nets to catch them and the signing of a “no suicide” pact.

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Photos: T3/Screenshot; Tencent 

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Photos: The Most Fashionable Man in China is a Henan Beggar

Posted: 07/21/2014 3:20 pm

Da-yam: when you’ve got it, everybody knows. Photographs of an old man in Henan walking down the street have gone viral in China simply for this man’s fashion style.

A Weibo user from Guanlin, Luoyang posted pictures of the man, and wrote text to accompany them: (translated)

Wait until my hair grows to my waist, it will be better to marry you then.

Now, this is what you call an ‘elegant demeanor’.

Guanlin has a model for international style. 

Give me a ‘like’. 

However, while he’s lauded as an old hipster, he’s still a beggar, according to the original poster:

An old beggar, though his heart remains young. I am stupid, I am elegantly unrestrained.

And so, the compliments come in, perhaps even too easily now that everyone knows his social standing. Here are some comments from netizens from the original post:

日照-来奇：
He’s leading the way of the international trend!

爱乐游：
Feh, he’s so handsome.

壹玖柒柒：
Don’t know which sect he belongs to. [confused.emo]

海豚座星云：
After going through the circuit of all the big stars, international fashion has lost all of its moxy in the blink of an eye.

ponyo-不爱吃柠檬的啵妞：
Wow, so cool! He’s a model for international style! [laughing.emo]

沛县同城会：
He’s got the magic touch [thumbsup.emo]

郑州洛菲拾花摄：
He’s super cool [laughstifle.emo]

雨隹云龙：
His shoes are very current; he reminds me of Brother Sharp.
[Brother Sharp was a meme from a couple of years back; he was also a homeless man just walking on the street when someone took a flattering picture of him]

奢宠会所：
Whatever people are isn’t important; what’s important is the attitude with which we treat them.

胖旋BBER：
Other people laugh at me for being crazy, I laugh at other people for not wearing what they acknowledge (to be fashionable).

Photos: News China

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That Corn Sold On The Street In China? It Is Drenched In Harmful Additives

Posted: 07/10/2014 4:53 pm

Whenever you’ve waited for the bus, you’ve likely caught a whiff of the sweet aroma of corn wafting towards you from a pot over at the the newspaper stand. The mystery lingers: how can something only prepared with boiling water look and smell so good?

After a Henan man got sick after eating three ears of corn in a row, a reporter from the Henan Economic Report went in search of the answer, and it’s not pleasant: streetside boiled corn is prepared with artificial sweeteners and additives.

The reporter said vendors readily confessed to using food additives to prepare boiled corn. Their enthusiasm to disclose the information was based on the fact they consider this an “open secret” that everyone already knows about. One vendor offered this immensely quotable sentence:

There are most definitely additives used in boiled corn.

Another vendor even gave the name of the food additive market that is popular among vendors. It turns out artificial sweeteners are available for purchase at 30 to 45 yuan each at the Wankelai Foodstuff market. One store owner says artificial sweeteners are big business, and that she sells four to five bottles a month:

What it mainly does is make it more fresh, and helps preserve it longer in which the longer it cooks, the more sweet it smells.

Another store manager said:

This is an additive that can increase sweetness. It is 50 times sweeter than white sugar. Many peddlers will buy this in cases of 25 or 50kg.

Li Chunqi, a botany professor at the Henan Agricultural University, says that using excessive amounts of this food additives or using them for a long period of time will harm human health. Furthermore, Li says it is against the law add sweeteners or additives to raw foods.

If you still have the urge to eat sweet corn in China, you can try and identify which corn has been coated in additives. Apparently “fake corn” will wrinkle when cool, and has a decidedly “gummy” texture. Of course, you could always buy corn at the supermarket and make it at home.

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Not Even A Car Can Stand In The Way Of China’s Dancing Grannies

Posted: 07/10/2014 1:32 pm

The dancing grannies will not be denied. As their culture spreads to Australia and Russia, it seems nothing can stop them from fulfilling their desire of dancing in unison to loud musical accompaniment.

So when a car was rudely parked on their ‘dance floor’ in the city of Xinyang, Henan Province, the dancing grannies didn’t want to dance around it. Instead, they decided the car had to go.

And so, under the steely direction of the dancing grannies, a dozen or so people pushed this parked car a total of four to five meters, reports Sina News Video.

READ: Beijing Dancing Grannies Wield AK47s in Anti-Japanese Performance

Mr Guo, the owner of the car, took it all in stride. He accepted the blame and said he was careless parking where he did.

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Photo: Sina News Video

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Henan Stages Anti-Japanese Skit to Mark Anniversary of Marco Polo Bridge Incident

Posted: 07/8/2014 12:52 pm

Tensions between China and Japan continue to run high thanks to the dispute over the Senkaku/Dioayu islands, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, and Japan’s latest attempt to revise its anti-war constitution to give it more freedom to engage in military activities when its allies are under attack.

To express their distaste for all things Japanese, women dressed as Chinese soldiers staged a skit on July 7, which marked the 77th anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, which kicked off Japan’s invasion of China.

Women wielded their weapons at a pudgy-looking man playing a Japanese solider in Laojun Mountain in Henan Province. The Japanese soldier happened to have a toothbrush moustache inconspicuously placed on top of his upper lip. This facial feature has become a trademark for any Japanese soldier depicted in China’s patriotic anti-Japanese films and TV dramas.

The Japanese stand-in knelt in front of a giant golden statue of Lao Zi, founder of Taoism, and confessed his crimes that included murder, arson, poisoning, and rape. He was also seen “learning to write the Chinese character ren (meaning “human” in English)”, the Guangming reported. The character ren (人) only consists of two strokes, and the newspaper went on to say “it contains profound wisdom of how to be a human”, hinting that the Japanese seem to have failed to comprehend it.

The central government is promoting other campaigns to mark the anniversary, and Xi Jinping has commemorated the event. Dancing grannies in Beijing have even incorporated Japanese-bashing into their dance routines.

Most online comments criticized the Henan skit. It was mainly labelled as a ludicrous “travesty“. One Weibo user wrote: “Somewhere, (people) are using their own countrymen to portray a ‘Japanese bastard’ in a movie-style to promote anti-Japanese education. When commemoration becomes a travesty, it is a real distortion of that grim episode of history”.

Photos: icpress.cn, Weibo

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Five Injured When Police Handgun Goes Off At Kindergarten Safety Demonstration

Posted: 05/30/2014 10:07 am

Five people were hurt when a police handgun accidentally went off during a safety demonstration given by police at a kindergarten in Henan Province, reports CCTV News.

The incident occurred yesterday at around 10am at the Haiwen Experimental Kindergarten in Zhengdong New District, Zhengzhou.

Nobody was hit when the gun went off, but some were injured when the bullet hit the floor, causing fragments of concrete to hit spectators.

Injured are four parents and one child, mostly with light wounds. All victims have been treated at the No. 3 People’s Hospital in Zhengdong New District and are expected to be released from hospital in the next three to five days.

Photo: CCTV via Weibo

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Zhongshan Girl with Mental Disability Repeatedly Sold as Bride Before Being Abandoned

Posted: 04/28/2014 3:38 pm

Child abduction in China is such a common occurrence in China that it’s not even called “child abduction”. And yet that’s what happened to mentally-handicapped 14 year-old Ah Huan: kidnapped off the streets of Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, Ah Huan was repeatedly sold as a child bride before being abandoned for being “worthless”.

Ah Huan faced tragedy early in her childhood when she was given a strong tranquilizer at an early age that debilitated her cognition and memory. On August 30, 2010, Ah Huan’s mother beat her because she suspected Ah Huan of stealing money from her sister. Upset, Ah Huan left her Yinwan North Street apartment in Qiwan Village, and never returned.

It was only three years later on March 14, 2013 that Ah Huan’s fate was discovered when Duan Yumin confessed to police.

Duan Yumin was driving his three-wheeled vehicle on Yinwan North Street when he saw Ah Huan. The worst possible excuse to be inferred as a compliment, Duan thought the mentally-challenged 14 year-old girl to be pretty. Duan decided she would be a good wife for his son, Duan X* Zheng, and took Ah Huan aboard his vehicle and back to his Wanxin Plaza apartment.

In turn, Duan’s son brought Ah Huan back to his hometown in Henan Province. After two months, however, the son didn’t think that his fourteen year-old bride was capable of having children, and so gave her back to his father Duan Yumin.

Ever the opportunist, Duan thought that if Ah Huan wasn’t a suitable wife for his son, then his investment could find a proper home when put on the market. In November 2011, Duan offered to sell Ah Huan to Wang Shuai. Duan started with an opening offer of 18,000 yuan, but settled on Wang’s counter-offer of 12,000 yuan. Wang then took Ah Huan back to his Henan hometown where he sold her to his second uncle Kang X Chan for 15,000 yuan.

Unfortunately at this point, Ah Huan’s story was drawing to a close.

Three months after he had bought her, Kang was displeased with his new wife. Kang had complained to Wang that Ah Huan was misbehaving; because she had tried to start a fire, Kang wanted to exchange her. Ten days later, Kang was told that Ah Huan was abandoned in Xinyang city, Henan.

Ah Huan’s current whereabouts are unknown. She would now be 18 years old.

For this crime, three people were found guilty of kidnapping and human trafficking. Duan Yumin was sentenced to six years in jail and given a 10,000 yuan fine. Li Fazhen, Duan’s unmarried common-law partner, was sentenced to eighteen months in jail and given a 4,000 yuan fine. Wang Shuai was sentenced for five years and six months and given a 8,000 yuan fine.

Both husbands of Ah Huan, Duan X Zheng and Kang X Chan, were not named as part of this court case.

* “X”, when used in names, refers to information not released by the media/officials.

Photo: 0760114

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Depression leading cause of mental illness in Shenzhen

Posted: 10/11/2013 7:00 am

One in five adults in Shenzhen suffers from a mental illness, Chinanews reported yesterday, which was the 22nd World Mental Health Day. Moreover, 90% of sufferers in the city have never accepted treatment for their mental health problems.

According to Shenzhen Kangning Hospital in Luohu District, which is at the centre of the city’s mental illness prevention network, 21.19% of the city’s population suffers from some form of mental illness either mild or serious, and 1.41% of the city’s population (that is over 150,000 people) suffers from a serious mental illness.

Liu Tiebang, head of the hospital, said one of the problems with combating the problem was the mobility of the population. Moreover, the city is hugely limited in its resources. The national standard requires a city’s mental hospitals to have 1.71 beds for every 10,000 people, but Shenzhen has only 0.43, less than one quarter of what’s required.

One of the most common forms of mental illness in the city is depression, and homesickness has been cited as a major cause. Last time a citywide survey was carried out in 2005, it was found that 8.78% of women and 6.75% of men in the city suffer from mental illness. As with most of the world, the prevalence is higher among unmarried people than married people. It is also higher among unmarried people than married people and those with more than 13 years of formal education.

Depression is curable. Here is a list of possible ways to combat it from Britain’s NHS website.

In spite of all this, it is not just Shenzhen that is facing problems in its approach to mental health treatment. South China Morning Post reported yesterday that Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, required its subdistricts to report at least two cases of grave mental illness for every 1,000 residents.

The paper has more:

The law requires all full-service hospitals to set up psychiatric departments in an effort to make up for previous disregard for mental health services. The law also ended involuntary treatment of mentally ill patients.

The order to identify and register those with severe mental illness follows a national directive from the Ministry of Health from July last year, which stipulates the number of cases each province, city and county-level administration had to report or face administrative penalties.

Is Shenzhen being burdened by this quota system or is it simply moving faster? Either way, the stigma attached to those who are certified as mentally ill in China is hard for a Westerner to imagine.

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Foshan woman believes baby is cursed, gives it away

Posted: 08/23/2013 7:00 am

A post-90 mother in Foshan gave away her 5 month-old baby believing that it was bringing bad luck to her husband’s business. She then created a fake kidnapping case but police in Nanhai District figured out what she was up to and had the baby returned on August 19, Guangzhou Daily reported.

The curse she believed in originates from a Chinese superstition known as 八字相克 (eight digit incompatibility). That is, when a couple gets married they look at the eight digits that make up their birthday. Certain combinations are believed to bring bad luck, just as “1″ and “4″ (yaosi) next to each other in a Chinese phone number sounds like “want to die.”

Miss Qiu, 23, already has a two year-old daughter, but it’s since her five month-old younger daughter was born that the family’s luck started to take a turn for the worse. Because her 27 year-old husband’s natural remedies business was doing poorly, they would often fight and there were a number of illnesses in their extended family.

On August 7, Qiu’s friend A Ling told her she had a relative who was unable to have children and was enormously keen to adopt. Two days later, A Ling’s relative (her brother-in-law’s younger sister), Miss Chen, had Qiu send the baby’s luggage and transfer her paperwork to Dalang Town in Dongguan.

They met in Dalang on August 10 and Miss Chen agreed to adopt the “adorable” baby.

Qiu signed the adoption papers and urged Chen to treat the baby like it was her own. She turned down the 1,000 yuan that Chen’s family offered. Chen then returned to her native Henan Province with the baby.

Qiu explained the baby’s absence by saying it had been kidnapped by somebody who was demanding a 200,000 yuan ransom, believing that her husband would never be able to produce the money.

The husband, Mr. Li, went to the local police station in Dali and they traced the baby’s papers to Dongguan. Qiu, who was still in Dalang, came clean.

Li went up to Henan to find his baby and although Chen claims to have already developed a deep emotional connection with the baby, Luoyang police eventually talked her into giving it back. It returned home on August 19.

Chen reluctantly gives the baby back, image courtesy of Yangcheng Evening News

A prominent Guangdong lawyer Lin Cunbao said it is unclear what, if anything, Qiu will be charged with as no money changed hands.

Why would somebody hold such a superstitious belief in the year 2013? The Atlantic explained this recently in relation to the rise and fall of snake conjurer Wang Lin:

Superstitious beliefs have accompanied a general rise of spirituality in China, which has struggled to define its identity during the fat years of economic growth. While the government generally tolerates religion, exceptions remain: A surge of interest in the Falun Gong, a religion based around breathing exercises, led to its sudden and complete prohibition in 1999. Nevertheless, enthusiasm for spirituality hasn’t waned in the years since. Religious beliefs — both traditional and otherwise — have grown throughout the country, both in the urbanized upper class and among the rural poor.

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Helicopter crashes in Guangzhou killing both people inside

Posted: 07/30/2013 7:00 am

A privately-owned helicopter crashed in Guangzhou’s Nansha District yesterday afternoon (July 29) killing both people inside, Qianzhan reports. Inside the helicopter, which belonged to the Sui X Helicopter Company, was the pilot, Mr Pan, 37, from Sichuan Province and his trainee Miss Xi, 25, from Henan Province.

The emergency 110 call was made at 4 p.m. and both people aboard were found dead at the scene. The wreckage was found in an area of wasteland in Dagang New Village.

Fortunately, unlike the military helicopter crash in Shantou last December, nobody on the ground was hurt.

The cause is being investigated. Reports indicate that the helicopter exploded in mid-air.

Onlookers gather at the scene, courtesy of Google Images.

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