Last member of carjacking gang detained

A day after announcing on August 1 that six of Guangdong’s ten most wanted fugitives had recently been taken down, police in Shanwei detained a seventh person from the list, Zhuo Huitong, the last member of Guandong’s ‘hit-and-rob’ gang still on the run. Police have connected Zhuo and the gang of four to at least two robberies involving car theft in Shenzhen.

The gang gained notoriety last year for targeting luxury cars, first rear-ending a vehicle and then kidnapping its driver at knife or gunpoint. Shots were even fired in January last year as the group took one man’s BMW in Shenzhen, later dropping him off at a lychee farm somewhere close to Shantou.

Zhujiang New City Park

Guangzhou’s Forestry and Parks Bureau is now seeking public feedback on its recently announced plans to turn Zhujiang New City into a large flora-filled public park. The plans include converting 40% of the area into green space using at least 500 different species of plants and trees.

New artificial lake, designed to perfection

Also in Guangzhou, after 19 months of construction, the park surrounding the city’s new Haizhu Lake will be opened to the public beginning September 1. Between its outer and inner bodies, Haizhu Lake will contain over a million square cubic meters of water surrounded by 100,000 square meters of green space and 3.5 kilometers of walkways. Located east of Guangzhou Avenue South and west of the Xinguang Expressway on-ramp, Datang Station on line 3 of the Guangzhou Metro will put you right across the street from the lake. The site was opened for public viewing on May 1 this year, and a number of photos have begun appearing on Weibo.

City looks to raise parking space fees

Having more or less just wrapped up a public hearing on a taxi fare hike which pissed almost everyone off, Guangzhou’s price control administration announced this week that another hearing is in the works to debate upping parking space fees in the city. No date for the hearing has been set.

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Guangzhou’s legal aid office told reporters yesterday that its services can also be extended to foreign residents of the city. A spokesperson for the office said that it provided legal assistance to foreigners in 461 cases between January 2008 and April this year, all of them criminal cases, 319 of which were for drug-related offenses. Lawyers available through the office are equipped to offer services in English, and translators can be provided for those who speak only lesser-known languages. Guangzhou has legal aid offices in every district, in addition to city- and provincial-level offices, phone numbers for all of which can be found in Chinese here.

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