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.

Headlines
Over 1,000 prisoners from the Meishan and Xingwen prisons were relocated to a new facility about 40 kilometers away late last month. Conditions at the new Meizhou prison are reported to be much better than those at the previous two. Facilities include a medical center and psychological counseling rooms. More photos of the movement can be seen here.

During the mass movement before and after Spring Festival, buying a train ticket to travel anywhere outside of Sichuan can be extremely difficult. Amid the rush, a number of previously decommissioned "ultra long-distance" bus lines reopened to reduce the pressure on railways.

Two bus passengers were killed and 20 wounded in an accident on the Guang'an-Chongqing High Speed road on February 15.

A pair of graduates from Sichuan Agricultural University recently made RMB 60,000 in five days by feeding and selling pheasants.

Over 791,800 tourists visited the 57 official tourist attractions in Chengdu during "Golden Week," the seven-day holiday for Spring Festival.

Culture and Society
Demand for car-wash services exploded during the Spring Festival holiday this year. On the last day of the holiday, waiting lists grew so long that some drivers waited as long as two days to have their cars washed.

Last Friday, a police convoy escorted an extremely rare orchid from Xichang to Chengdu for the West Shu Orchid Expo. The flower's owner, Chen Jiwu, claimed the orchid to be worth more than RMB10 million.

Speaking of distinguished escorts, a live tiger was seen walking down the street in Jinsha on the second day of the Lunar New Year (February 15). The tiger was part of the annual Sun Festival parade and was led by a troupe of Russian actors and actresses. According to Chinese tradition, it is considered good luck to see a healthy and energetic tiger this year.

The Jinjiang District Tourist Agency has shut down the picnic tables at Tazishan Park on the grounds that pollution from the fire pits affects air quality. The area had already been closed twice before Spring Festival, but this time it may be permanent. The park manager, however, has argued that the charcoal and solid alcohol fuels used by most picnickers have a negligible impact on the air.

The 2010 Lantern Festival Commodities Trade Fair of Chengdu opened on February 19 in the Shawan Exhibition Center. Apparently, the most exciting part of the fair was free tasting of tangyuan—the glutinous rice flour balls traditionally eaten during the Lantern Festival—of which 100,000 were given out. The following day, the organizer held a "Family Tangyuan-making Contest."

An exhibition of precious stones known as "Wonder Stones" was held on February 16 in Yibin. The "Wonder Stones" are reported to have come from the area where the Minjiang River drains into the Jinsha River. Of all the stones on display, the most prominent was the "Peach of Longevity."

Speaking of peaches, the Chengdu International Peach Blossom Festival will open on March 18 in Longquan.

Construction and Development
In honor of this year's Lantern Festival, the Chengdu government has instituted a new code regulating the release of the traditional Kongming lanterns. Anyone releasing the lanterns within an airport clearance area will be fined RMB 100,000.

Stairways to Heaven: A second batch of pedestrian overpasses is set to be finished on March 10, with a third batch over the Second Ring Road to be completed sometime afterward. Free tip: invest in good walking shoes and a lightweight bicycle.

The city is planning to build a new park, Chenghua Park, next to the Chengdu University of Technology Dinosaur Museum. The park is scheduled to open in September, raptors notwithstanding.

To ease Chengdu's ongoing drought—said to be the worst of the past five decades—the government employed rain-inducing techniques last Monday.

Compiled by Chih Tseng and Isaac Myers

At the behest of the Pengshan county government, residents--especially those from in Lianhua village--have begun scouring their homes for evidence of the tomb of Liu Bei, an emperor from the Three Kingdoms Period. This comes after last December's discovery of what may be the tomb of Cao Cao, another Three Kingdoms Period emperor, in Henan province. The tomb has created so much business for the village where it was unearthed that other villages are eager to emulate the discovery. Thirteen farmers recently asked the State Administration of Cultural Heritage to begin excavating a hill in Lianhua, where 80 percent of the residents have the same surname as Liu Bei. Of course the real question is: which one is the rightful heir to the throne?

A week ago Thursday, an army of train-ticket scalpers ambushed six police officers when the officers tried to search a bag belonging to a scalper in a small town in Wusheng county. One of the officers was hit on the head with a steel bar, which fractured his skull. Although railways began an ID-based ticket program this year for Spring Festival in order to prevent scalping, the system is still vulnerable to exploitation; in the scalper's bag, the police (who apparently won the battle, somehow) found 45 ID cards.

The production of bear bile--a substance sometimes used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, whose extraction involves carving permanent holes in the abdomens of enslaved Asian black bears and draining the bile from their gall bladders--has long been decried as an unnecessary cruelty as well as a danger to the people who use the bile as medicine. A recent campaign by Animals Asia's Chengdu Moon Bear Rescue Center has led to 33 Chengdu pharmacies placing stickers on their doors and counters advertising that they no longer sell medicine derived from bears. The campaigners bought any bile remaining in stock and burned it in front of the shops.

"Informants" have accused Sichuan Changhong Electric Co, Ltd. of submitting bogus financial reports for at least the past 12 years, including approximately 5 billion yuan in fake profit. It isn't clear whether or not these informants consist entirely of Fan Dejun, a former sales director for Changhong in Hunan province, who went to jail from 2000 to 2007 for misappropriation and embezzlement. Surprisingly, Sichuan Changhong, one of the country's top producers of television sets and other electronics, has denied any wrongdoing.

When Deng Xiaoye, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, died of a brain infection on Feb 16, her parents made the unusual choice of donating her corneas to the Red Cross Eye Bank of Sichuan. The Eye Bank was founded last March, but so far has only received 27 donations. On the other hand, more than 10,000 people require cornea transplants in Sichuan every year. What remains unexplained is why so few people sign up to donate their corneas.

This week General Motors announced that negotiations to sell Hummer to Sichuan Tengzhong failed, and it will begin to "wind down" production of the iconic military-style vehicle.

Compiled by Isaac Myers

A man and a woman hijacked a car in Meishan while taking it for a test drive. After driving away from the dealership, the man threatened the staff with a pistol while the woman added the contents of a cleverly concealed container of gas to the fuel tank. A few hours later, the man called to assure the dealership that he intended to borrow the car just to commit crimes and would return it the next day.

On the Neijiang-Yibin expressway, a car was found parked in the emergency stop lane without warning lights and with its license plate number covered by pieces of paper. When a police officer approached the vehicle, the driver informed him that he was too tired to drive and wanted to sleep. The officer asked to see his driver's license. Instead, the driver handed the officer some cash, whereupon he was arrested for bribery.

If you've been enjoying new flower displays around Chengdu to celebrate the new year, you have the Chengdu Forestry and Garden Authority to thank. The bureau put installations on four major blocks, including Tianfu Square's "Tigers' Romping Spring," (pictured) Renmin Dong Lu's "To Celebrate the Spring Festival," Renmin Xi Lu's "Happy New Year," and Renmin Park's "Sound of Firecrackers" (more photos in the link).

The Jinsha Site Museum is hosting a "Jinsha Kingdom mask carnival night." Activities will include Chinese wushu shows, dances, African-style performances, and 10 fireworks displays featuring over 20 types of fireworks. Performances run from 8 to 9:30 p.m. through February 27; fireworks displays start at 8:20 p.m. nightly through February 19 and again on February 26.

The Municipal Administration of Work Safety has repeated its announcement that from the second to the sixth day of the lunar new year (Feb. 15 to 19), fireworks must not be set off between midnight and 7 a.m. within the Third Ring Road. People who see or hear anyone violating this rule are asked to call 110.

Society and Culture
More than 1,000 couples in Chengdu tied the knot on January 31 ... and the marriage-license requests kept coming in for two weeks. The unexpected marriage rush before the Spring Festival overwhelmed the city's major restaurants and hotels, who say they have reservations for weddings booked until November.

Many florists took an extra-long vacation for the new year because New Year's Day coincided with Valentine's Day, causing the demand for Valentine's roses to fall sharply compared to previous years.

A local teacher posting on the Internet criticized fellow teachers for becoming idle during their winter vacations; instead of reading and adding to their intellect, they are playing mahjong, chatting, watching TV, and so forth. The post was hotly contested, with some wondering, "If teachers aren't reading, what is education becoming?"

Two cans of silver coins were unearthed at a construction site on the afternoon of February 3rd. One of the cans disappeared before police arrived on the scene. The cans are estimated to have contained at least 1,000 coins. According to the police, the construction site used to be a shrine belonging to a wealthy family. Early analysis suggests that the coins were buried before 1949.

A record number of people applied for travel visas with the Nanchong Municipal Public Security Bureau this year, with that number reaching 202 by February 8th. Tourism is especially vigorous around the Chinese New Year, with Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and other Southeast Asian countries being popular destinations.

The demand for holiday trips is high enough, in fact, that Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport added 182 international flightsto its schedule, including 88 to several famous tourist areas in Thailand.

Construction and Development
The Municipal Environment Protection Bureau has declared the four roads with the highest traffic noise to be the Third Ring Road, Jiefang Lu, Chenglong Jie, and Jichang Lu. Traffic is now officially considered the most significant contributor to noise pollution.

Sichuan Airlines' first long-range, wide-body aircraft, the Airbus A330-200, arrived recently in Chengdu from Toulouse, France. The airline is planning to add two more of the same model in the next two years. Due to its energy efficiency, the Airbus A330-200 is expected to save about 700 tons of aviation fuel every year. And its first-class seats are capable of reclining to a full 180-degree position.

Seventeen new pedestrian overpasses on the First Ring Road have been completed as of February 14. This year, a similar overpass project is expected downtown. Forty-two steel overpasses are currently in use in Chengdu.

Compiled by Chih Tseng. Formatted by Isaac Myers.

Last Wednesday, Zheng Xiaoming, chief of the planning and construction bureau of the Chengdu National Hi-Tech Zone, announced the development of the first large foreign-only community in western China--a haven in which western families can go to church, shop, and send their children to school without crossing paths with more than a handful of locals. The Tianfu International Community will occupy 250,000 square meters in the Chengdu's Hi-Tech Zone, and will include modern, government subsidized housing for 5,000 residents. The community will be staffed by a cadre of English-speaking locals, but no local Chinese will be allowed to rent the apartments or villas. This ridiculous restriction has triggered outrage among netizens and Chengdunese, with some comparing it to the foreign concessions that followed the Opium Wars in the mid-1800s, which were off-limits to Chinese people.

When asked about the policy by the Global Times, one Mr. Wang, an employee of the Chengdu Hi-Tech Investment Group's marketing department, said that "the foreigners we are talking about are those Western-looking people. We want to ensure that the international community is pure." According to the Times, this means that "foreign passport holders who look like a Chinese" may also be denied access to the complex. Other news sources have been quick to take this interpretation even further; AFP has stated simply that "ethnic Chinese--even foreign passport holders--will not be welcome" though it is not clear that this was Mr. Wang's actual intended meaning.

In other land use-related news, last Friday the state council presented amendments to the laws governing land acquisition in an attempt to decrease the number of violent and abusive evictions and demolitions, such as the eviction last November in Chengdu that led to one woman's self-immolation in protest after the eviction crew beat her family. The new law would require developers to offer property owners compensation based on the market price of the property, and would prohibit coercive and violent means of eviction. Also critically, it would force evictions and demolitions to stop while a lawsuit is in progress. Shen Kui, one of the law professors from Beijing who met with the deputy director of the State Council Legislative Affairs Office to argue in favor of such an amendment, said that although the new law has some problems, he was "basically satisfied."

A Sichuanese man who says his four-year-old daughter went missing last month has started chaining his two-year-old son to a pole outside of a shopping mall while he works as an unlicensed motorbike taxi driver in Beijing. The man has refused aid from the local government, offers to adopt his son for money, as well as requests by the district government to return to Sichuan where his son can legally enroll in kindergarten.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding has begun searching for a Sichuanhua teacher and a boyfriend (chosen by a vote among "panda fans worldwide") for Mei Lan, a three-year-old giant panda who will be FedEx'd tomorrow from her current home in Washington.

Compiled by Isaac Myers

Chengdu will soon be home to a 6 million-square-meter furniture shopping mall and the world's largest used-car retail store (at almost 270,000 square meters). The furniture mall will be built in Xindu District in the north and will host about 3,000 companies. The used car store is supposed to open by the end of the year in Longquanyi District.

Last Tuesday, 26-year-old Chengdu native Zheng Jie became the first Chinese tennis player to reach the Australian Open semi-finals by beating Maria Kirilenko of Russia with a score of 6-1, 6-3.

Last Thursday in Le Shan City, eight people were killed and six others injured when a minibus swerved off the road and rolled into a river. Fourteen passengers were riding the minibus when it crashed—six more than the intended capacity.

A newborn baby was stolen from Wuhou District No. 5 People's Hospital in Chengdu last week when hospital staff neglected to double-check the identity of a woman claiming to be the baby's relative. The woman abducted the baby, who was born to a poor family in Yibin and adopted by a couple from Pengzhou, after paying its medical costs and saying that she would take the baby to see its dying grandfather.

"Inspection authorities" discovered pop singers Fang Ziyuan and Ying Youcan to have been lip-syncing at a recent concert in Chengdu. Last October, new regulations were put into effect under which lip-syncers may face fines of up to RMB10,000 and a lifetime ban from performing onstage.

Isaac Myers

Odd News
One man's scheme backfired when he was sentenced to death earlier this month. In 2007, after insuring his life for millions of RMB, the 45-year-old went to the Jinjiang District human-resources office, selected a jobseeker with similar physical features, brought him to a factory, killed him, and planted his own ID on the body, in an attempt to fake his own death and thus claim the insurance money.

An enraged bus passenger who forced his way to the driver's console in order to open the doors after the driver refused his request to be let off in between bus has pleaded guilty and expressed regret for his action. The incident took place in September of last year on an 825a bus heading from Shuangliu to Huayang.

After Mr. He found a mobile phone that someone had left behind in a snack bar, he informed the owner he would return it for RMB400. The phone's owner countered with RMB200—and then tracked down Mr. He, leaving him seriously injured.

Society and Culture

Liu Chang, 50, earns his living by making and selling straw sandals in popular tourist destination Jinli. Liu claims to be a descendant of the emperor Liu Bei, who made a living by weaving and selling straw sandals in his youth. Liu's claims to the aristocracy are a big draw for his customers.

A restaurant on Sanhuaishu Road has introduced a new, speedy service policy. Customers who don't receive their first dish within 10 minutes and the whole meal within 40 receive a free dish—and the chef or wait staff deemed responsible has the cost of the dish taken out of his or her wages.

Construction and Development
Chengdu was formally withdrawn from the coal-mining industry on the last day of 2009, when all 12 remaining coal mines were shut down. As to what to do with the abandoned mines? The government is considering converting them into training and research bases as well as educational sites that would be open to the public.

Chengdu Metro Corporation officially announced that Metro Line 1 is on schedule: Construction will be finished in March, debugging completed by June, and the line will be in use by October.

Chengdu city will build more than 160 high-tech taxi stands outside hospitals, shopping malls, and other high-traffic areas. These stands will display waiting times on LED screens as well as house public-service announcements and advertisements. This year, 1,000 vehicles will be added to the city's existing fleet for a total of 10,515 taxi cabs.

An environmental-impact assessment will be conducted on the under-construction second High-Speed Ring Road (aka the Fifth Ring Road). The road is under way to be opened by the end of 2012.

Chengdu Airlines' inaugural flight took off on January 22 at 9:30 a.m. and landed at its destination, Shenyang, at 2 p.m.

In line with the construction of the "Modern World Garden City" (世界现代田园城市)—no, don't ask—Chengdu will revise its urban planning to highlight four key elements considered fundamental in building a worldwide garden city with a modern approach. The elements are: mega-city, world-class city, modern city, and rural cities (don't ask us what that means, either).

Economic News
Chengdu will officially become China's western financial center the year after next. In 2012, Chengdu will boast more than 200 various financial institutions, employing over 20 million in the financial industry. And Sichuan province's banking institutions will possess assets worth a total of 4.7 trillion yuan, 4.1 trillion yuan in deposits, and 2.6 trillion yuan in loans. In the meantime, the provincial government announced that last year's GDP grew to 11 percent, up 1.5 percent from last year's 9.5 percent.

Finally, 23 vegetable markets in the Jinjiang District are organizing with the aim of developing a brand that offers low prices by directly purchasing goods from surrounding vegetable growers.

Compiled by Chih Tseng