Content about Hunan

Tornado, hail, thunderstorms cause more than $210m in economic losses

At least 24 people have died and four are missing after extreme weather hit five provinces in South China this week, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said on Thursday.

Starting on Tuesday, tornados, rain and strong winds swept Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong and Guizhou provinces, and about 215,000 people evacuated for their safety, according to a notice released on the ministry's website.

Three people have died and more than 50 have been injured by a storm that swept a county in Hunan province before dawn on Wednesday.

The storm hit Daoxian county of Hunan's Yongzhou city around 3 am, said Zhou Jingzhong, head of the county government's publicity office.

One person died when a house collapsed, and the two others died of their injuries in hospital.

Zhou said all the injured are being treated in two local hospitals.

A farmer has been protecting migratory birds around Dongting Lake for almost 30 years. He tells Liu Xiangrui he is atoning for his misdeeds, having killed thousands of birds when he was a young man.

Zhang Houyi has taken it upon himself to protect migratory birds around Dongting Lake in Yueyang, Hunan province, for the last 27 years.

Often seen in his tall boots and an axe in hand, the farmer patrols the banks of the lake almost daily, rain or shine. Sometimes the 73-year-old has to wade through thick reed fields to cut the nets used to trap the birds.

Last year's big screen blockbuster Life of Pi was all about a shipwrecked boy and how he floated on the sea stranded with a huge tiger.

In certain villages in Suzhou, Anhui province, living with tigers and lions is part of daily life.

Xu Changzhou, 41, of Haogou village in Yongqiao district in Suzhou, starts his day by feeding his four tigers, three lions, two monkeys and a sheep. Xu has done this for the last 15 years.

Traffic police in China's smog-covered cities are waiting for authorities to cut the red tape that bars them from wearing protective face masks while on duty.

The recent heavy pollution in north, central and eastern regions has already taken a toll on the health of officers working outside for several hours a day.

About 37 percent of those on duty in Jinan, Shandong province, have caught colds, while almost all complain of sore throats and eye irritation, according to a survey by the city's traffic management bureau.

Variety-show director Long Mei has taken her creation a long way, cajoling stars - and fans - on stage for the ride, Liu Wei reports.

Long Mei's show was so popular that when David Beckham came to China for a short stay of six hours, he gave one of those hours to it.

Since the day Happy Camp was launched in 1997, Long has been the director and producer for the variety show, which boasts tens of millions of viewers every weekend.

The total value of private investable assets in China reached more than 73 trillion yuan ($11.6 trillion) in 2012, up 14 percent on the previous year, according to a recent report by Boston Consulting Group and China Construction Bank Corp.

By the end of 2012, the number of Chinese high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) - those with investable assets of more than 6 million yuan - will reach 1.74 million, an increase of 17 percent from the end of 2011. That growth, however, is much slower than the 38 percent growth from 2009 to 2011, according to the report.

A cold front has descended on many provincial capitals, with temperatures in some cases hitting well below -20 C, while temperatures in parts of central and eastern areas are predicted to hit record lows, the National Meteorological Center said.

The cold spell has claimed lives and led to calls for public buildings to conserve energy to ensure heating for residential areas.

Temperatures dropped sharply overnight in the north, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Fujian and Guangdong provinces, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The other day I read a commentary, which compares the total economies of nine mainland provinces in the pan-Pearl River Delta region with those of Hong Kong and Macao (PRD 9+2) in the past eight years since the “PRD 9+2” development area was established in 2004. That article indicates Hong Kong’s economy has grown at a much slower pace than the nine mainland provinces in the last eight years, largely because of political wrangles within the city. This author feels really sorry for Hong Kong over its “lost eight years”.

The Education Department in Hunan province dismissed five people who were found to have provided insufficient food to students in the government-subsidized lunch program.

The five people - two from the Education Department and three from a primary school - were sacked by the government because the primary school gave small quantities of food to students, the Fenghuang county education bureau said in a statement on Monday.

Standing on a ramshackle wooden platform about 3 meters above the ground, farmer Huang Demin edged forward, forcing one pig after another to "dive" into the river below. 

Most do not like the experience, he concedes, yet he believes it boosts the animals' appetite, so they grow faster. 

Images of Huang's making his livestock airborne in Central China's Hunan province were widely circulated on the Web this week, prompting equal measures of curiosity and criticism.