Act fast, and you can win a pair of all-day passes to the Bookworm International Literary Festival for this coming Sunday. The afternoon kicks off at 3 p.m. with two documentary screenings, the feature-length Summer Pasture and the 10-minute Kham Filmmaking Training, presented by Tibetan cultural-preservation organization Rabsal. Both explore the impacts of development on life in Tibet.

Yang Erche Namu (7:30 p.m.), who left her matriarchal Mosuo roots as a young woman to become a singer, socialite, celebrity talk-show host and household name in China known best for being the self-described "biggest bitch in China," her collection of outrageous hats, and her rejected marriage proposal to French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Sound intriguing? All you have to do is add three reviews to the Gochengdoo.com listings, and be the first person to send us an email within 24 hours of the appearance of this post.

The Details
Post reviews of three separate venues in the listings section of GoChengdoo. Then send an e-mail to chengdoo.events [at] gmail [dot] com with your name, registered GoChengdoo username, and mobile number, no later than 9 a.m. Saturday, March 20.

The winner will be contacted via email and SMS by Saturday evening with instructions on how to claim the prize.

《我是王菲》 -- I Am Wang Fei

A serious outbreak of lead poisoning in the four villages surrounding the Zhongyi Alloy Co. plant in Longchang County, Sichuan, has induced officials to order the plant to close. So far, 94 out of the almost 1,000 residents who were tested have confirmed cases of lead poisoning; 88 of these are children.

The local government of Baimiao Township, Sichuan, purchased a pad of writing paper for RMB1.5 this year. How government officials managed to find such a bargain is a mystery, though locals and foreigners alike are beginning to hunt for similar deals in the vicinity. Actually, the real news is that this purchase was made public, along with every other purchase that the Baimiao Township government made in the recent past. This disclosure, made ostensibly to quell fears of government corruption, makes the small township the first government in China ever to attempt complete fiscal transparency.

《将我喜欢的东西组合》 -- A Collection of the Things I Like

An international art exhibition focusing on female artists and "a feminine perspective and approach" opened last week in Luodai, just outside of Chengdu. The show, called "Her Vision: 2010 International Exhibition of Contemporary Cutting-Edge Female Artists" ("她视界"2010年国际当代新锐女艺术家展览) was timed to celebrate International Women's Day on March 8 and features the work of 80 artists--using many different media--in a space of about 1,500 square meters. The exhibition is free to view and will run through April 7.

The ongoing drought in southwest China has continued unabated as recent cloud seeding attempts have largely failed. This drought has been cited in some places as the worst of the past 100 years, although Sichuan appears to be less affected than Yunnan or Guizhou. While AFP simply calls it a "once-in-a-century drought," an Asiaone article places the dry spell in the context of global climate change.

Sinopec is planning to build a major gas pipeline between Sichuan and Guangdong, it announced last Wednesday.

Compiled by Isaac Myers. Images from Sichuan Online

Our friends at Hands On Chengdu recently completed a repurposed shipping container project in the outskirts of Chongzhou City. The project, dubbed "Community Flowers," brought eight shipping containers to Xiezi Village in Jiguan Shan Town, and set them up to be used as multipurpose community spaces.

A shipping container is reimagined as a community library. Photo courtesy Hands On Chengdu.

Arranged in a flower-petal layout, each container is assigned a specific use: library, healthcare center, entertainment room (equipped with computers and mini movie theater) and so forth.

Shipping containers are considered stable and safe structures that have the added benefits of being pre-constructed and easy to install. Additionally, they are easily moved and rearranged so that if the community's needs change, the structure can accomodate those changes.

The project took about a year-and-a-half to plan, raise sponsorships, and implement. Volunteers will continue to visit the site to provide further training and counseling to the villagers.

Hands On Chengdu is a branch of the Shanghai-based Hands On Network. The former was formed shortly after the May 12, 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

The winner for this week's lightning round giveaway for tickets to tomorrow's two events at the Bookworm International Literary Festival is registered GoChengdoo user olivias.

Congratulations to our winner and thanks to everyone who played. Keep an eye out GoChengdoo.com for more Literary Festival tickets this month!

Alexis Wright (left) and Alice Pung (right) both appear at the Bookworm on Saturday.

Here it is: the decisive moment. This is the moment when you will decide whether you will try to win a pair of tickets to both events at the Bookworm International Literary Festival this Saturday (at 5:00 and 7:30, respectively). We won't ask you to ask us any Jeopardy questions or do research on Alice Pung and Alexis Wright, the speakers at the two events. All that is required is that you add three reviews to the gochengdoo.com listings, and be the first person to send us an email within 24 hours of the appearance of this post.

The Details
Post reviews of three separate listings. Then send an email to chengdoo.events [at] gmail [dot] com with your name, registered GoChengdoo username, and mobile number, no later than Friday, March 12, at 9 a.m.

The winner will be contacted via email and SMS by Friday evening with instructions on how to claim the prize.

Photo credits Alexis Wright and Alice Pung

When a 93-year-old Chengdu woman broke her leg last week, saving her life required surgery and extra blood. Due to her rare blood type, however, the hospital was unable to find a donor. That is, until the woman's roommate's daughter posted a blood request on her blog and got plenty of responses.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has officially authorized Chengdu as a UNESCO City of Gastronomy. Membership in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network is intended to give higher profiles internationally to creative cities around the world. As a member, Chengdu is apparently obligated to live up to its new title in some fashion, and Chengdu's Commerce Bureau has come up with a plan for how, over the next three years, it will do just that.

The first direct flight between Sichuan and Vietnam is scheduled to open this summer, the head of the provincial General Department of Tourism stated yesterday. Both Sichuan Airlines and Air China are supposed to offer the new Chengdu-Ho Chi Minh City route when it begins.

In another milestone for Chengdu aviation, Air China's anticipated first flight between the clammy city and Bangalore took off on February 27.

In case you missed it, the Chengdu Blades and Guangzhou GPC, two of the Chinese football teams involved in the previously reported bribery scandal, have lost their places in the Chinese Super League, according to an announcement two weeks ago by the Chinese Football Association. Two other teams, Hangzhou and Chongqing, are being promoted to take their place. And Qingdao Halifeng, a second-tier team that was also involved in the scandal, has been disqualified entirely.

Compiled by Isaac Myers

Anybody who's been to the hospital in Chengdu knows what a drag it can be. Long lines, or worse, no lines at all and a free-for-all rush to get into the doctor's office, little or no privacy, bureaucracy and paperwork and payment systems that baffle even the locals ... but now some of Chengdu's blogging doctors have an alternative.

From the Chengdu Commercial Daily (our translation):

One lives in America. For a long time, his hands have been shaking uncontrollably. The other is a doctor from the Chengdu Military Hospital. His specialty is in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the nervous system. Via his blog, although they are separated by long distances and oceans, they have overturned the traditional confinements of medical practice.

Currently, the Chengdu Military Hospital employs nearly 100 specialists who also offer online consultation in order to provide a better platform through which to answer patients' questions. Word on the street is that the Chengdu Military Hospital is now considering a "Blog Hospital" project.

On the afternoon of Feb. 25, Chengdu Military Hospital Department of Nervous System Disorders. When the American David enters department head Wang Qingsong's office, it already seems that the two are old acquaintances. Even though it's the first time the two have met, they have already been corresponding for several months through Dr. Wang's blog.

It turns out that David is a "son-in-law " of Chengdu. At home in the Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone, it was Ms. Du who got to know the American David via the Internet. In 2004, after she married David, the pair decided to live in the U.S. In January of last year, the 70-year-old David's hands started shaking uncontrollably. The family doctor examined him numerous times but could not diagnose the cause of the trembling. Seeing that her husband's shaking hands were getting worse and worse, Ms. Du turned to the Internet for help. Wang Qingsong's blog caught her attention and gained David's trust. With Ms. Du translating, David left messages on Dr. Wang's blog, describing his condition and current medications. He quickly received a response from Dr. Wang.

Although it was impossible to make a final diagnosis over the Internet, Dr. Wang was able to suggest a number of ways to improve David's condition, and they set a date to meet this year in order to examine David more thoroughly.

That afternoon, these two unlikely "'net buddies" finally met and under Dr. Wang's direction, David received a series of examinations. According to Dr. Wang, David's shaking hands isn't due to Parkinson's disease but the distortion of the limb, which can be corrected by surgery.

"This is already the third time that I have made acquaintance with a foreign patient due to the blog!" said Dr. Wang. At the end of 2007, he had started a blog, and the entire department of doctors participated in its maintenance. The blog offered tips on staying healthy and also offered a forum in which patients seeking medical advice could ask questions. The blog has been up for three years, contains mountains of information, and receives millions of hits.

As it turns out, Wang Qingsong is only specialist at the Chengdu Military Hospital who's also a star blogger. The blog of hospital's director of marketing Zhang Hujun received an "Outstanding Creative Space" title during the First National Science Blog Awards.

His blog has already received over 10 million visits.

In April 2007, Zhang Hujun started his blog on Sohu. In the beginning, Zhang published a series of essays about the medical-engineering field but mysteriously the blog saw no traffic. A short time later, Zhang Hujun revived the blog with "My Story," and the visitors, medical-school castaways, swarmed in to discuss their own stories.

Zhang Hujun started to get a taste of sweet success. Through his blog he's met no small number of literary friends. And it was due to the concern of his blog-buddies that Zhang even changed his lifestyle: Every day he gets up one hour early to ensure that he'll have time to make a new blog post for the day. "If I don't update, a reader will call me to complain!," said Zhang.

Not long after the 2008 earthquake, Zhang Hujun posted news of the hospital's food and water shortage on his blog and immediately received a huge response. Within a month, the hospital was receiving daily donations of bottled water and instant noodles from all corners of the city.

Taking advantage of this period of high traffic, Zhang Hujun returned to his "regular job" of posting health tips. He settled arguments, posted essays about foreign popular science, and dispensed advice on how to stay fit, all in straightforward language. His down-to-earth style garnered lots of fans; one essay titled "It's Possible to Be Poisoned by Drinking Water" received over 300,000 views.

At the same time, Zhang Hujun's blog was a platform for asking and answering medical questions. "The blog can both serve patients and allow me to exercise my writing abilities," said Zhang. Because of this, Zhang Hujun was awarded the "Sohu Blogs 10 Most Popular Doctors of 2008" and a 2008 title from CCTV commending him for his blog's wealth of information.

According to Chengdu Military Hospital president Gu Jianwen, nearly 100 of the hospital's specialists blog, including many top-level specialists. Gu himself is the hospital's pioneer blogger.

He started his blog on Sohu in 2006, documenting the surgeries he performed, explaining the patients' illnesses, and offering online consultation to patients.

A year after Gu Jianwen started his blog, he had received over 1 million visits. Many of his visitors were patients with difficult-to-diagnose brain disease; after receiving online consultation, they would visit him at the hospital. In order to better serve patients, Gu Jianwen suggested that all of the hospital's specialists start blogs and update them regularly. Doctors who are particularly busy with patients or are unfamiliar with computers are assigned trainees to assist them in blogging.

Gu Jianwen finds time in his schedule to update his blog late at night and early in the morning.

Gu revealed yesterday that the Chengdu Military Hospital will create a "Blog Hospital" for all doctors on the Internet to blog on, each with a fixed online/live chat time in order to provide detailed consultation to hesitant patients.

EDIT: 3/8: Mistranslation (see comments) corrected.

The third annual Bookworm International Literary Festival kicked off Saturday with a pre-festival "poetry clinic" hosted by Felix Cheong and, in the evening, first guest speaker Murong Xuecun accompanied by translator and publisher Harvey Thomlinson.

After opening remarks by Bookworm manager Peter Goff, Murong and Thomlinson were introduced: Murong is the author of several novels; Leave Me Alone, Chengdu (2006) is his first and was published online before it was ever released in print. The English-language version of the novel, translated by Thomlinson and published by his Make Do Studios was released last year.

Thomlinson facilitated the talk by posing questions to the author and interpreting between English and Chinese; after this, members of the audience were invited to ask questions. Despite a large handful of awkward moments, sound-system glitches, and Thomlinson's reluctance to speak into the microphone, making much of the event inaudible to everybody but those of us in the first few rows, the audience seemed eager to interact with the speakers.

Unfortunately much of the back-and-forth seemed to get mixed up during the interpretation process--and that's not to speak ill of Thomlinson's adeptness as a translator, but this instance that demanded both live interpretation and public speaking seemed to throw him off key--and a number of questions that audience members raised ("Do you think Chengdu women really are feisty?" and "Do you equate one woman to one man to morality?" and "Would you like to win the Nobel Prize?") seemed inappropriate, confusing, or simply uninteresting to the author, if his facial expressions and guarded answers indicated anything. That said, a number of pointed questions were raised, and regardless of whether or not the diversity in age, gender, nationality, and cultural background among audience members made for lively discourse, it revealed not only the broad appeal of the Festival and literature in general, but also a continued melting of the proverbial barriers between Chinese and foreigners in China.

Festival faux-pas: no spoiler alert
When one young man stood up to ask his question--how much of the author is in his characters--he made the mistake of announcing what happens at the end of Chengdu, Leave Me Alone. And as he recited his question for the second time, in English, the audience let out a collective groan, leading us to wonder a) how many people in attendance had actually read the novel, and b) whether people read novels just to find out what happens at the end. "Sorry, sorry," he quickly exclaimed.

If the opening night is any indication of things to come, events for this year's festival will be much more packed than in years prior, so make sure to get your tickets early. The full program of events can be found here or watch our events calendar.

If you missed Saturday evening's talk, you might be interested in reading this in-depth interview with Thomlinson.

Finally, we'll be continuing to give away pairs of tickets throughout the entire festival, so be sure to watch this space for your chance to win!