Guiyang is Locked Down

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I lived in Guiyang for 13 years and it was known as being immune to pandemic attacks.  During the SARS epidemic of 2003, Guizou Province was the only Province to avoid infection.  Local people attributed this to the use of Moutai, a strong (maybe the strongest) Chinese liquor, made in China.  Also, Guizhou has some of the hottest chili peppers in China, which was also believed to be lethal to viruses. In 2020, the virus appeared, but the Chinese had a prompt quarantine, which seems to have limited infections during the initial outbreak to under fifty. The threat was suppressed within two months, and by April a lot of us were walking around without masks on. Guizhou is one of the most remote provinces in China.  I used to tell people that Guiyang was about as far into China before you are coming out. It was very safe. Things have changed now:

Click Here: The Guiyang Virus

I made a diary of the virus and it’s attack . . . Visit:
Jax Covid Diary

 

China Shorts . . . A newsletter by Ray Mahoney

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Ray is a friend from my Guiyang history that has been mentioned here many times.  You can find out about Ray, a little bit, by searching “Ray Mahoney” in my search box on this site.  He is now publishing a newsletter called “China Shorts” which is getting increasingly interesting. Hopefully he won’t get this website banned if I put some of his info on here. Here is a sample:

“Ch shorts: “China seals city as its worst virus outbreak in a year grows”; “Asian American Characters On Screen Are More Likely To Be Laughed At Than Laughed With”; video: “Asian Americans Reflect On TV Characters That Shaped Their Self-image”; “Tokyo Olympics: Taiwan stars trolled by Chinese nationalists”; “Harris will reject China’s claim in the South China Sea during trip to Asia”; “Sorry, America: China’s leading the real Olympic medal count”; “Macau to test population after four new COVID-19 cases”; “UAE rolls out Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine to children aged 3-17”; “Germany to offer booster against COVID-19, vaccines for children”; FP Africa Brief: “Ghana doubles down on homophobic laws”; “‘Gold Diggers’ Captures The Weight Of The Model Minority Myth Sanjena Sathian’s riveting debut novel is already being developed into a TV series by Mindy Kaling’s production company”; “The Entire Population of Wuhan is Getting Tested for COVID-19 – More than a year and a half after the . . .”

If you have an interest in his newsletter or if you want more published on this site, please let me know with an email to: My Email Address and I will forward your message appropriately.

Zhurong Mars Lander

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This comes from the BBC and is facinating:

China lands its Zhurong rover on Mars

By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent

Published
(Animation  Not Available this format)
media captionAn animation shows how the Zhurong rover touched down

China has successfully landed a spacecraft on Mars, state media announced early on Saturday.

The six-wheeled Zhurong robot was targeting Utopia Planitia, a vast terrain in the planet’s northern hemisphere.

The vehicle used a combination of a protective capsule, a parachute and a rocket platform to make the descent.

The successful touchdown is a remarkable achievement, given the difficult nature of the task.

Only the Americans have really mastered landing on Mars until now. All other countries that have tried have either crashed or lost contact soon after reaching the surface.

Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated the mission team on its “outstanding achievement” in a special message.

“You were brave enough for the challenge, pursued excellence and placed our country in the advanced ranks of planetary exploration,” he said.

Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of science at the US space agency (Nasa), was quick also to add his own congratulations.

“Together with the global science community, I look forward to the important contributions this mission will make to humanity’s understanding of the Red Planet,” he said.

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said the success augured well for its future cooperation with China.

Chinese engineersIMAGE COPYRIGHTSHUTTERSTOCK
image captionThe mission team received a congratulatory message from the president

The robot officially landed shortly after 07:00 on Saturday, Beijing time (Friday 23:00 GMT), according to state media.

It took 17 minutes to unfold its solar panels and send a signal back to Earth.

Zhurong, which means God of Fire, was carried to Mars on the Tianwen-1 orbiter, which arrived above the planet in February.

The probe then spent time surveying Utopia, taking high-resolution images to pinpoint the safest place to put the rover down.

The aim with all such ventures is to pick a spot that is devoid of imposing craters and where the landscape isn’t covered in large boulders.

Chinese engineers would have had to follow the landing effort with a time lag.

The current distance to Mars is 320 million km, which means radio messages take almost 18 minutes to reach Earth.

Every stage of the Zhurong robot’s approach to the surface therefore would have been conducted autonomously.

Chinese engineersIMAGE COPYRIGHTSHUTTERSTOCK
image captionEngineers follow events at Mars with a time lag of many minutes

The landing architecture was a familiar one.

The rover was encased in an aeroshell for the initial phase of the nine-minute descent. This capsule’s dive to the surface was slowed by pushing up against the Martian air.

The heat this generated was managed by a forward-facing shield.

At a predetermined time, a parachute opened to reduce the velocity still further.

Finally, the Zhurong robot broke away on a rocket-powered bench for the manoeuvres that took it safely to the ground.

Landing on Mars is always a daunting challenge but China would have had confidence going into the procedure, given the great competence it has shown in its space endeavours of late.

This is a nation that has been putting rovers on the Moon, and bringing lunar samples back to Earth. This month it launched the first segment of a space station above our planet.

Successful landings

Now that Zhurong has got down successfully, scientists will try to get at least 90 Martian days of service out of it, studying the local geology. A day, or Sol, on Mars lasts 24 hours and 39 minutes.

The robot looks a lot like Nasa’s Spirit and Opportunity vehicles from the 2000s. It weighs some 240kg and is powered by fold-out solar panels.

A tall mast carries cameras to take pictures and aid navigation; five additional instruments will investigate the mineralogy of local rocks and the general nature of the environment, including the weather.

Like the American rovers, Zhurong has a laser tool to zap rocks to assess their chemistry and a radar to look for sub-surface water-ice.

Utopia Planitia is where Nasa landed its Viking-2 mission in 1976.

It’s a colossal basin – more than 3,000km across – that was formed by an impact early in Mars’ history.

There is some evidence pointing to it having held an ocean long ago.

Remote sensing by satellites indicates there are significant stores of ice at depth.

Artwork roverIMAGE COPYRIGHTCNSA
image captionArtwork: Zhurong looks similar to Nasa’s Spirit and Opportunity vehicles

Dean Cheng, a research fellow in Chinese political and military affairs at the Washington-based think-tank, The Heritage Foundation, said Saturday’s success would be an enormous fillip to the country.

“From the Chinese perspective, space benefits Chinese diplomacy, Chinese technology; it’s a great advertisement; it reinforces the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party to its own people.

“Space always has military implications, and conversely, by going to Mars, it demonstrates that China can contribute to what they term the global pool of human knowledge,” he told BBC News.

America put down its latest rover, Perseverance, in February. Europe, which has twice failed with landing attempts, will send a rover to Mars next year (in a joint project with the Russians).

Six Hole Bridge Part II “From Guiyang With Love”

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Guiyang History II: The Six-holed Bridge

Upon me first arriving in Guiyang I often exercised my innate curiosity, trying to ask the locals about names of places and their connection to history. What I usually got as an answer was “it’s just a name, it means nothing” or, “it’s based on the phonetic sound of the characters, they are random”. I assume many people would just give up, but having my academic background and having dealt with similar responses in the past, I knew these were not the right answers. . . .

More History of Guiyang

The Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse

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The Four Horsewomen of PBS News !

Contributed by John S. Porter
Editor/Publisher of TourGuizhou.Com
The Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse are characterized here as the staff of the PBS News, who, on January 6th were dispatched to the Capital to report on the transition of power, from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration, the last step. This is a Constitutionally mandated ritual that has been performed about 45 times in the last 240 years. It was considered a dull assignment, where the leaders meet and count the votes from all fifty states, make speeches, and then designate the next President.

It was anything but dull this time. The last time we had this much trouble in Washington DC, was in 1812 when the British burned our capital down. Five people died and dozens of police were injured. There is no accurate number on the total number of people hurt.

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW FOR SOME REALLY HISTORIC JOURNALISM

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TOUR GUIZHOU?? This web log is about foreigners in China, particularly Guizhou Province. Culture Shock indeed “reverse culture shock” is real for those of us who have stayed in China for years at a time.

BACKGROUND: In Western Mythology the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” are famous. These four riders are said to represent  Famine, War, Pestilence, and Death (maybe). We say “Maybe” because the story isn’t entirely clear.  These four were supposedly dropped from a star. We are not sure if they are coming to kill us, warn us, or have come to save us. So we don’t know if they are good or bad. Like with some of our media and some of our Presidents, opinions vary.

These are the women who reported on the insurrection while it was happening.

Upper Left, Clockwise: Omna, Yamish, Lisa, and Judy

Judy was the only one that could see all the camera feeds and she managed the coverage. The others could listen to each other’s audio feeds.

Many of us have watched these four for years and they learned their trade from some very strong female reporters who came before them.  The video of the meeting is about 29 minutes and is really historic journalism. It gives you a flavor of what went on that day.

The 29 minute clip is located online at the following link:

Four journalists and what they saw.

China Covid Update January 29, 2021 (Reported via Waijiao)

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Chinese mainland reports 52 new COVID-19 cases (Jan 29, 2021)

TheWaijiao Today

The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported 52 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 36 locally transmitted and 16 arriving from outside the mainland, the National Health Commission said Friday.

Of the locally transmitted cases, 21 were reported in Heilongjiang, 13 in Jilin, and one each in Beijing and Hebei, the commission said in its daily report.

Two suspected cases were reported, with one each in Shanghai and Beijing.

No deaths related to the disease were reported on Thursday, said the commission.

By the end of Thursday, the mainland had reported 4,673 imported COVID-19 cases in total. Among them, 4,373 had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, and 300 remained hospitalized. No deaths had been reported among the imported cases.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland reached 89,378 by Thursday, including 1,802 patients still receiving treatment, of whom 99 were in severe conditions.

A total of 82,940 patients had been discharged from hospitals following recovery on the mainland, and 4,636 had died of the disease, according to the commission.

There were two suspected COVID-19 cases on the mainland on Thursday, and 38,876 close contacts remained under medical observation.

Thursday saw 42 asymptomatic cases newly reported on the mainland, of which 19 arrived from outside the mainland. On the same day, 12 asymptomatic cases were re-categorized as confirmed cases.

There were 996 asymptomatic cases still under medical observation, of which 293 arrived from outside the mainland.

By the end of Thursday, 10,321 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 177 deaths, had been reported in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), 47 cases in Macao SAR, and 895 cases, including seven deaths, in Taiwan.

A total of 9,239 COVID-19 patients in Hong Kong SAR had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, 46 in Macao SAR, and 809 in Taiwan.

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For comparison purposes, here is a chart on daily infections at about the same time in the USA.  Note that China has a population about four times as great as the USA.

China engages in extraordinary lockdown/quarantines for the neighborhoods when there is an outbreak.  Contact tracing is assisted by cell phone self-reporting whenever pubic transportation is used. In order to board any kind of public transit, a scan of the cell phone is required.  People from risky geographical areas are often refused permission to board public transit.  Wearing of masks was extrensive in February, March, and April, but in many parts of the country mask wearing is now only enforced in public transit..

https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-positive

Link for interactive chart.

COVID Status China 20201226 as reported by “The Waijiao”

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The following is a status update published on “The Waijiao” a foreigner related blog serving foreign teachers in China at www.thewaijiao.com:
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The Chinese mainland on Friday reported 20 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, including eight locally transmitted cases and 12 arriving from outside the mainland, the National Health Commission said Saturday.

Six of the locally transmitted cases were reported in northeast China’s Liaoning Province, while two were reported in Beijing, the commission said in its daily report.

No new suspected cases or deaths related to the disease were reported Friday.

Twelve COVID-19 patients on the Chinese mainland were discharged from hospitals following recovery on Friday.

By the end of Friday, a total of 4,193 imported cases had been reported on the mainland. Among them, 3,919 had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, and 274 remained hospitalized. No deaths had been reported among the imported cases.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland reached 86,933 by Friday, including 328 patients still receiving treatment.

A total of 81,971 patients had been discharged following recovery on the mainland, and 4,634 had died as a result of the virus, according to the commission.

There were no suspected COVID-19 cases on the mainland on Friday, and 12,055 close contacts remained under medical observation.

Friday saw 19 asymptomatic cases newly reported, 17 of whom arrived from outside the mainland. No asymptomatic case was re-categorized as a confirmed case.

A total of 245 asymptomatic cases were under medical observation, of whom 202 arrived from outside the mainland.

By the end of Friday, 8,481 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 136 deaths, had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), 46 cases in the Macao SAR, and 780 cases, including seven deaths, in Taiwan.

A total of 7,317 COVID-19 patients in the Hong Kong SAR had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, 46 in the Macao SAR, and 640 in Taiwan.