By FEICHANG WURAN
Environment Correspondent

Protestors demand China continue polluting

WASHINGTON (China Daily Show) – The piggybanks sit empty and silent. Wishing wells report a sharp decline in deposits. And across the continental United States, despairing thugs resort to filling socks with bottle caps in desperation.

The bloody Shifang protests in Sichuan, China may have ended with one in the win column for the little guy – but in the US, the decision to shut down this giant, polluting copper factory is already having dire consequences.

“Without copper sweatshops in China excreting toxins into the local water, the US will have to look elsewhere to make its pennies,” explained economist Paul Kruger.

The penny shortage is hitting Americans where it hurts the most – by causing minor inconveniences in their everyday lives.

“The other day, I needed to open the back of the remote, but… nothing. It’s not the kind of problem you expect to find in a developed country,” said exasperated student Ben Warner.

Amateur garden enthusiast Jim Thorne claims the drought has already claimed its first victim – Thorne’s own hydrangea bushes. The plants needed a pH boost, a common problem usually easily solved by planting a few pennies.

“They didn’t know what hit them. They died. And for what?” asked a bitter Thorne yesterday. “So that some kids in China don’t grow tumours?”

Meanwhile, panic buying of pennies has driving the price of pennies up to 1.5-2 pennies.

Faced with the prospect of having to do their own DIY, it seems many Americans are turning their anger on China. In Poolfield, Wisconsin, protestors outside a Chinese takeaway carried signs demanding, “Who will fix my wobbly table-leg?”

No one seems sure when the shortage will end – but from penniless towns across the nation, the message is clear: “Will Pollute China for Pennies.”

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BY DU QISHI
Health Correspondent

Public bathroom – or death trap? For many, it’s a bit of both

GUANGZHOU (China Daily Show) – A group of female sophomores – angered at conditions in their campus restrooms – suffered a setback yesterday, after three of their members died during a protest.

“‘Occupy Restrooms’ was never going to end well,” shrugged local police chief Xi Zheng. “This tragedy could have been prevented if more men had been consulted.”

At least six female students began to suffocate during a proposed four-day movement in the male lavatories at Guangzhou Number 4 HGV Training University this week.

The “Occupy Restrooms” protesters, a nod to the anti-Wall Street group, are complaining that long queues for female toilets are unfair. But, as of yesterday, waiting for a slash was the least of their worries.

Campaign organizer Wang Yu, 19, and five others succumbed to flatus eighteen minutes into their heavily publicized squat-in. Officers eventually dragged them to safety but three later died.

The incident brings the total number of deaths in Chinese toilets this year to 189. With the country facing growing water shortages, local governments have been instructed to take a ‘hands-off’ policy towards cleaning public bathrooms.

Critics point out that maintaining appalling hygiene is a costly business. Surplus methane gas from factory farming has to be pumped in via concealed vents, animal corpses smeared on walls weekly and floors must be doused several times a day with ammonia and menstrual blood.

But economists point out that not cleaning restrooms also frees up enormous quantities of caustic chemical fluids, which can be used in China’s food and beverage industry.

To drive the message home, a national-level campaign has been mounted to discourage people from using public bathrooms. “Take a step backwards; then another. Now walk out the door,” reads one, while another simply asks: “What’s wrong with the gutter?” Several public hospitals are even offering a free set of anal stitches with selected childbirths.

The campaign is aimed at diverting funds to the “shocking shortcomings” in facilities provided for public officials. Shi Xiaobian, an expert, said that China’s government buildings lag behind those of Japan in terms of providing safe, comfortable, computer-assisted bowel relief to the elite.

“Some visiting officials are being denied the lavender soap when they visit provincial-level buildings,” he said. “This has to change.”

Last year, one senior offical reported that a malfunctioning bidet caused him to miss the turtle course at an important banquet. Another is even suing his own department, claiming that a lack of quilted two-ply in the handicapped bathroom had had disastrous consequences for his silk long johns.

But there was some good news, Shi added: a rural campaign to promote shitting in the street had “gone viral.”

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By Feichang Wuran
Environment Correspondent

Surgeon General's warning: Looking at this picture may damage your health

BEIJING (China Daily Show) — Leaded water, an absence of wildlife and thick, syrupy air are all healthy signs of a flourishing economy, China’s Minister of Environmental Protection told an open-air audience at the Renmin University Center for Conservation and Sustainability on Monday.

“Heavy fog is a sign of strength,” Wang announced from inside a Bosch hermetic eco-chamber, considered standard issue for top-level urban cadres. “To paraphrase our late Supreme Leader: to pollute is indeed glorious.

“It doesn’t matter if the air if black or white – as long as you can breathe it,” he added to laughter.

The World Bank has estimated that, annually, some three-quarters of a million Chinese die prematurely due to pollution, while birth defects and surging cancer rates are common.

Indeed, health professionals are currently urging city-dwellers to stay indoors as much as possible and, where necessary, use face masks capable of filtering microscopic pollutants.

But Wang was quick to dismiss such views as Luddite scare-mongering.

“I was visiting a far West part of China recently. The birds were singing on the trees, yaks were grazing in fields as far as the eye could see; there wasn’t a factory or car in sight. It was depressing,” Wang Yulin began.

“In places like Tibet and Xinjiang, the regions and people there are very backward,” Wang admitted. “When I got back to Beijing, I stepped out of the airport and tears immediately sprang to my eyes.”

Wang’s speech inaugurated a new air-quality index (AQI) monitor, unveiled to replace the malfunctioning AQI reader used by the US Embassy in Beijing.

“The embassy’s faulty data has caused the American staff some embarrassment, due to foreign media reports,” said Professor Han Baisheng, head of environmental studies at the Central Party School. “So the experts have introduced this new method of saving face for our foreign friends.”

Beijing’s air was previously measured by a controversial standard that quantified it as “80% nitrogen, 5% oxygen, 15% GDP growth.” The new AQI will factor in such modern variables as visiting dignitaries, public holidays and national triumphalism.

“This will bring it in line with twenty-first century standards,” observed Professor Han.

Wang – at times barely visible behind a thick veil of steam – struck a strident note as he defended China’s heavy environmental degradation.

“We cannot be judged by their so-called ‘normal’ standards,” the Minister argued. “China has 5,000 glorious years of continuous polluting, the US hasn’t even 300.”

His logic was backed up by domestic scientists.

“The notion that ‘the air is blue’ is itself a form of ‘blue-sky thinking,’” Professor Han agreed. “It’s a Western ideal and there is, therefore, no actual evidence to suggest it’s true – or, if it is true, that it is also ‘right.’”

Response to Wang’s speech among some audience members was enthusiastic. “I’ve never been so proud of my asthma,” said Renmin University undergraduate Li Guangchen. “Every breath is a wheeze in the right direction.”

Meteorologists, meanwhile, have forecast a continuous concentration of hazardous particulate matter settling over the capital over the next few weeks.

“Here in Beijing, you can literally taste the progress,” Wang concluded, unzipping his eco-chamber, stepping onto the podium and inviting guests to “breathe in China’s continuous success.”

The country’s rapid development clearly proved too heady for the minister, however: Wang fell to his knees in what was later described as “an over-sincere bow.”

“The minister became choked with emotion,” an aide explained.

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By JONAS WHALE
Environment Correspondent

Mermaids are traditionally open about baring their breasts but this little tease happens to be shy

DALIAN (China Daily Show) — There was an unexpected extra in Liu Xinpeng’s fishing net last week. A long day’s trawl off the coast of Dalian accidentally landed the unsuspecting skipper with the solution to one of mankind’s most abiding myths: the mermaid.

Along with the usual haul of mackerel, Li and his crew were amazed to find the stunned — but still alive — creature thrashing about at the bottom. The mythical half-woman, half-fish had apparently been snared unawares while relaxing in the warm tropical waters.

“She was dazed, and in her confusion dropped a mother-of-pearl comb, which later fetched a very decent price at market,” Liu told a China Daily Show reporter. “We were amazed by her large, naked breasts. Later, much later in fact, we noticed she had a long, silvery fishtail.

“I knew immediately there was enough food on her to last a month.”

After exchanging a few sentences with the mermaid, which apparently included the information that her name was Krill, and she was the 3,600-year-old last descendant of her kind, Li’s crew set about gutting and butchering the semi-piscine creature, long considered extinct.

Naturalists expressed amazement at the find.

“If the story is true, this is possibly one of the biggest upsets in recent scientific history and will completely rewrite our understanding of evolution, as well as provide research grants and new funding for hundreds of important biological endeavors,” Yale University’s Marine Biology Professor Davis Williams, who was unaware of the mermaid’s fate, told China Daily Show.

“As a side-effect, it might even encourage a new understanding of the importance of ecological protection laws.” Such laws may have prevented the discovery, last year, of Bigfoot on a Chinese menu.

“Anyone was says mermaids aren’t real can ask my wife and daughter,” chuckled Liu, as he chewed thoughtfully on a mer-rib. “They’ve been dining on one for the last week!”

Liu said he plans to sell the mermaid’s remains to a local museum, which will make a plaster cast of the skeleton and cover it with a plastic mould, before painting and displaying the result, and disposing of the bones in a nourishing medicinal soup.

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By Jason Quincy
Science and Health Correspondent

The suicidal smokes are available in two flavors

TIANJIN (China Daily Show) – “When I’m away from Beijing, working in Europe, sometimes I’ll wake up in a strange hotel room,” said traveling salesman Xin Xiaobao, 25. “The air smells of lavender and there’s no mucus on my pillow. It just feels weird.”

Xin’s discomfort is not unusual – in fact, he is part of a growing market of young Chinese men working abroad, lonely and often missing the motherland. They are being targeted for a new campaign by tobacco chiefs: the “Chinair” cigarette.

The China National Tobacco Corporation’s (CNTC) Chinair brand hit the market last week, and the gimmick is already turning the heads – and stomachs – of travelers everywhere.

Chinair cigarettes mimic the average air quality in Chinese cities, and are currently available in Beijing (Lights) and Tianjin Most Superior Motherland (Full Flavor).

“We used real flavors to make these innovative cigarettes,” says CNCT marketing executive Hu Mintao. “Chinair Beijing is the more popular of the two current flavors. The filters are made with a compound of asbestos and fiberglass, and silver iodide is added to give a taste of recently seeded clouds.”

For some lucky buyers, actual factory workers’ sweat is sealed into the packet during the packaging process.

While less popular, Chinair Tianjin already has a strong following among expats of cities such as Linfeng, Wuhan and Shenyang. The Chinair Tianjin version is not as exotic as the Beijing version, Hu explained, mainly containing coal dust with just a hint of industrial waste.

The new cigarette is doing especially well in airports, where weary travelers stumble into duty-free shops, craving any air that isn’t heady with jet fuel.

Another major selling point is that these new smokes may have a lowered risk of cancer than the average cigarette.

“These cigarettes are still dangerous, but no more dangerous than breathing the air in Beijing or Tianjin,” said Wo Lin Ma, chief medical officer at CNTC. “It is so similar to the air quality in these major cities that, for the smokers there, it could actually be a viable quitting mechanism.”

Even though it’s still early days, the CNTC has a bright future planned for the new product. A Chinair Wuhan (Menthol) brand is in the works, though Hu declined to divulge how the flavor is achieved.

But he hinted that the CNTC may not be limiting its flavors to domestic cities in future. A chance to give Chinese smokers a taste of the exotic, with flavors from New Deli and Mexico City, is a “distinct possibility.”

“It’s like I never left,” said returned expat Justin Morton, 47, who picked up a pack of Chinair Beijings at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. “Somehow it has that special Beijing feel. It’s almost painful.”

And Chinese expats agree as well.

“Now I’m really in flavor country!” wheezed Xin Xiaobao from his latest bed – this time, in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital’s cancer ward.

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