The mushroom cloud, courtesy of Sina Weibo

12 firetrucks and 78 firefighters were deployed after the explosion shortly after 8 a.m. The fire was under control within an hour.

Although there were no casualties, parents of students at the nearby Clifford International School are worried about the pollution.

The cause of the explosion is being investigated. Investigators are particularly keen to know what foam insulation material was being used on the site.

The Jiayuan matchmaking website released its loneliness index on Wednesday, showing that single men suffered more severely from loneliness than single women. Methods included asking single people how uncomfortable they felt at matchmaking events and how often they felt overcome by loneliness. Among the 26 provinces, Inner Mongolia had the loneliest single men and Guangxi had the loneliest single women.

83,656 people participated in the survey which also showed that 89% of single men and 82% of single women got lonelier with age. The main reasons cited for failing to find a partner were “still waiting for the right one,” “personal problems,” and “work being too busy.”

“Personal problems” was a problem particularly common among single men who earn less than 2,000 a month. And being too busy was often cited by educated white-collar workers.

And, remember this if you have single friends, 60% of single people resent being pitied, according to the website. However, the entire premise for conducting the survey seems to be based on the assumption that being single is a bad thing.

In spite of having all this data, the website did not suggest reasons behind the findings. Why might Dongguan’s single men be the loneliest in the land? What comforts does Guangzhou offer to its single men?

Henggang Lower Street, courtesy of Yangcheng Evening News

Henggang Lower Street first came to the media’s attention when local residents complained to Yangcheng Evening News about the number of trash cans. No bench is more than a few feet away from a trash can, so it’s difficult to sit anywhere that doesn’t stink, residents told the paper.

However Mrs. Cheng from the Suntak company, the Shenzhen-based electronic products manufacturer which owns the nearby factory, insists that the environment has been improved in the area and uncivilised behaviour such as littering, has been reduced.

The company claims to have spent 2 million yuan installing the trash cans and benches.

Other types of uncivilised behaviour such as couples making out on the benches next to the stinky bins have also been reduced, presumably.

Archaeologists discovered Saturday (June 15) that construction of the Guangzhou Subway line 6 had destroyed 5 ancient tombs.

The Guangzhou Metro company claimed it had been granted permission by the Guangzhou Archeological Institute to destroy an area that was home to the 2,000 year-old tombs during the expansion of the line. However, the institute has denied giving the company permission to construct in the area where the tombs lay, Guangdong Satellite Television reports.

The chairman of the institute, Mr. Zhang, put it down to miscommunication.

In related news, the largest Song Dynasty (960-1279) tomb in Eastern Guangdong’s Jieyang City was raided and seriously damaged twice between mid-May and early June. The damage done to the tomb, which is on the protected list of the local government, may be irreparable, Guangzhou Daily reports.

Huang Huanguo’s tomb, courtesy of Guangzhou Daily

The Song Dynasty sage and statesman Huang Huanguo, who originally came from Dingzhou in Fujian Province, is listed as the number 1 most important person in “The Jieyang Book of Ancient Historical Figures” and it was his tomb that was raided twice.

It became a protected site in 1996. Police are investigating.

One commenter on Shanghaiist said: “Destroying their heritage is a National (sic) pastime, it’s called archaeology with Chinese characteristics.”

However, modernity and greed aren’t entirely having their own way. Shanghaiist reports that a tomb raider died when a tunnel collapsed on him when he was trying to steal from a Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BCE) tomb in Shaanxi Province on June 15.

This crackdown comes after the Shenzhen Pharmaceutical Enterprise Credit Management System was introduced to oversee the city’s 60,000 pharmacies. Under the system, pharmacies with 80 points or more are deemed to have excellent credit. Those with 60 points or more have satisfactory credit. But those with less than 60 points are considered untrustworthy and those with less than 40 points are considered seriously untrustworthy.

Untrustworthy pharmacies will see a higher frequency of inspections, including special inspections and unnanounced visits from inspectors. Persistent offenders will be closed down.

One example of malpractice to make headlines in recent years was that of fake viagra. A shop in Luohu District was caught selling it last year.

Picture courtesy of sciencenet.cn

This highlights the amazing progress of China’s I.T. industry. The processors came from Intel, but everything else – from the design to the operating system – was developed in China. Forbes has more:

Tianhe-2 is built entirely with Intel INTC +0.74% processors. It contains 16,000 nodes, which each contain two Xeon IvyBridge processors and three Xeon Phi processors, for a total of 3,120,000 total processor cores. And those cores are doing the job. According to the benchmarks used by Top500, it performs a staggering 33.86 petaflop/s. That’s nearly twice as fast as Titan, which has a performance benchmark of 17.59 petaflop/s.

However, IBM still dominates the list which was inaugurated in 1993, sciencenet.cn reports. The U.S. company has five of the top ten and 34 of the top 100 supercomputers.

Add to the list objects falling from tall buildings, although on this occasion the victim looks likely to pull through.

At around 9 a.m. on Sunday (June 16) a pregnant woman was walking through a residential complex in Shenzhen when a kitchen knife fell from an upper-storey balcony, landing on her head and sliding down to her hand, Jiangsu Television reports. The victim, Mrs. Wang, is recovering in hospital.

Wang’s mother, Mrs Luo, told reporters at Peking University Hospital in Shenzhen, the knife cut a tendon in her middle finger.

A police investigation showed that the knife fell from the balcony of a resident surnamed Wang. He explained that he had left it out on the balcony to dry. “I was so stupid. I didn’t know what I was doing,” Wang confessed.

The same thing happened to a pregnant woman in Shenzhen’s Longgang District last year. She sustained a shoulder injury.

So, should we worry about similar things happening to us? In this year’s book “The Art of Thinking Clearly,” novelist Rolf Dobelli argues that we should avoid following the news. One of Dobelli’s arguments is as follows:

News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.

We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real probability.

The book is hit-and-miss and somewhat repetitive because it was originally published in the form of many short articles. But it’s enlightening and well worth a read if you don’t mind being told how to think logically by a guy who makes up fiction for a living.

Anyway, tune in tomorrow for more news.

The village is guilty of four violations: the network reporting company issued false information; local enterprises fabricated their data; industrial statistics were misrepresented by up to 6.3 billion yuan; and senior officials in the village were guilty of negligence.

Economists have been speculating for years as to whether China is cooking the books. CNN Money has this to say:

Pose this question to a group a China watchers and you’re likely to receive a variety of responses. Some observers are convinced that China is cooking its books. Others believe state statistics are largely reliable and useful for drawing conclusions about the world’s second largest economy. Still others will debate the accuracy of certain data classes, pointing to more meaningful alternatives.

The article ends by leaning towards the suggestion that official data coming out of China is mostly legit.

This particular instance of cooking the books has been dealt with, and that at least must be a good sign.

A meeting Friday attended by Mayor Huang of Shunde concluded that an extension of subway line 7 was the best way to improve ease of travel between Shunde and areas of Guangzhou such as Panyu and Nansha. The project has already passed a feasibility study, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.

The line will stretch from Guangzhou South Railway Station to Beijiao Station in Shunde, but details such as exactly which route have yet to be finalised.

Boosting infrastructure spending is China’s strategy of exiting its economic slowdown, Bloomberg reported in January.

Footage of a cargo handler at Guangzhou airport who threw boxes on the conveyor belt haphazardly (missing more than half of the time), and stopped to answer his phone, has gone viral in China.  He went about his work so inefficiently that it took more than twice as long as necessary.  The video has now been posted by such influential media as Guangzhou Daily and Southern Metropolis Daily.

The four minutes of footage, which is accompanied by highly critical running commentary given by the passenger, has been viewed over 700,000 times on Sina Video and is also on YouTube and 56.

Netizens’ reactions ranged from shame to amusement. One Chinese netizen said: “The shameful Chinese race. But don’t just blame this guy. Blame the system of management at Chinese airports and blame the culture of service.” Another called for the immediate sacking of the guy. Another said, with a laughing emoticon: “Cheap labour, you get what you pay for.”