分类： society

The 15th iteration of the China International Garden Expo kicked off officially on Wednesday in Wenzhou, a coastal city in East China’s Zhejiang province. This opening marks a historic milestone for the event, which was first launched in 1997: it is the first time the expo has ever been hosted within Zhejiang’s borders.

Speaking at the expo’s opening ceremony, Zhejiang Governor Liu Jie highlighted the natural alignment between the event and the province’s long-term development priorities. For years, Zhejiang has prioritized the construction of the ‘Beautiful Zhejiang’ initiative, a comprehensive campaign that expands accessible green public spaces and advances ecological conservation across the region. Liu noted that these ongoing investments have already delivered tangible improvements to public well-being, noticeably boosting residents’ overall sense of fulfillment and happiness. He added that Zhejiang will leverage the Garden Expo as a catalyst to further elevate traditional and contemporary garden culture, and contribute new progress to China’s modernization model centered on harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature.

Convenience for visitors stands out as a key design feature of this year’s expo. The main venue, Wenzhou Garden Expo Park, sits less than 800 meters from Wenzhou South Railway Station — closer than any previous main venue in the expo’s 29-year history. A purpose-built landscaped skybridge connects the station directly to the park entrance, allowing guests to reach green space within 10 minutes of disembarking from their trains, giving both local residents and out-of-town visitors instant access to the expo’s natural and artistic offerings.

At the core of the main park sits Ouyue Garden, a 12,500-square-meter landscape installation that draws inspiration from a panoramic landscape scroll created by Wang Zhenpeng, a court painter from China’s Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Through careful artistic abstraction, the garden reinterprets the poetic depictions of Wenzhou’s natural scenery and vibrant historical daily life captured in the centuries-old artwork, blending traditional cultural heritage with modern landscape design.

Qin Haixiang, Vice-Minister of China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, used the opening to outline the nation’s evolving approach to urban development. China’s urbanization process, he explained, has shifted from a phase of rapid expansion to an era of steady, high-quality growth that prioritizes upgrading existing urban spaces rather than building new ones. The nation’s current goal, Qin noted, is to advance the development of modern, people-centered cities that are innovative, livable, ecologically beautiful, resilient, culturally vibrant, and digitally smart — changes designed to make daily urban life more convenient, comfortable, and enjoyable for all residents.

Organizers emphasized that the 2026 expo is designed to be a truly public, ‘people’s expo’, with a distributed structure that includes one main venue, 13 secondary sub-venues, and 49 exhibition sites spread across all 12 of Wenzhou’s counties and districts, bringing garden art and green space directly to communities across the city.

The expo also features robust international participation: 11 dedicated international city gardens showcase landscape designs from global partners including Liverpool, the United Kingdom, the Syrdarya region of Uzbekistan, and Ishinomaki, Japan. In a notable first for China, the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) has opened its first ever themed garden in the country at the Wenzhou expo, and will establish a permanent ‘IFLA International Cooperation and Exchange Center’ at the site to foster global collaboration in landscape architecture.

Designed to be accessible to all, the 100-day expo offers free entry to all visitors, and will run through July 2026.

A two-year-old captive wolf has captured the collective imagination of South Korea after escaping a zoo in Daejeon last week, sparking a massive multi-agency manhunt that has stretched into its second week with the animal still at large. Named Neukgu, the young wolf squeezed under a perimeter fence at Daejeon’s O-World, a combined zoo and theme park, to win his freedom, turning into an unexpected national sensation and even inspiring a namesake meme cryptocurrency.

More than 300 personnel, including local firefighters, police officers, and military troops, have been deployed across the wooded hills and suburban neighborhoods surrounding O-World to track Neukgu down, but the wily animal has repeatedly outsmarted search teams, slipping away just as searchers close in. The first close call came just 24 hours after his escape, when thermal imaging cameras picked up Neukgu’s heat signature moving through thick foliage within a few kilometers of the zoo. Search teams lost his trail, however, when a drone battery needed to be replaced, allowing the wolf to slip away undetected.

A new lead emerged on Monday night after a local resident reported spotting Neukgu on a mountain roughly 1.2 miles from O-World. Social media users quickly shared a video showing the wolf trotting down a dark rural road, illuminated by oncoming vehicle headlights. Dozens of officers and military drones were immediately dispatched to the area, but by the following morning, Neukgu had once again vanished from search grids.

As the manhunt drags on, the case has gripped the South Korean public, spurring a wave of uncoordinated community participation and false leads. Within a day of Neukgu’s escape, authorities received dozens of unconfirmed sighting reports. Local newspaper Chosun Daily documented multiple cases of misidentification, including a group of elementary school children who mistook stray dogs for the fugitive wolf. One local resident even showed up to aid the search with their personal wolfdog, a move never coordinated with official search teams. A widely shared image that appeared to show Neukgu walking down a paved city street, which prompted authorities to expand their search into populated residential areas, was later confirmed to be a fabricated AI-generated image.

Public anxiety and sympathy for Neukgu have been shaped by a haunting precedent: in 2018, an 8-year-old puma named Porongi escaped from the same O-World facility and was shot and killed by responding police. This history has put pressure on authorities to capture Neukgu alive, with high-profile figures and advocacy groups adding their voices to calls for a safe resolution. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung publicly shared his hopes for the manhunt in a post on X, writing, “I hope no human casualties occur and I pray that Neukgu also returns home safely.”

Local animal rights organization Animal Freedom Solidarity has also spoken out, criticizing the zoo for repeated safety failures. “The same accident has occurred again,” the group stated in comments reported by Chosun Daily. “We hope Neukgu will be safely captured without repeating Porongi’s fate… the reality that the life of an animal may be at stake due to an accident caused by poor management and structural defects of its facility is clearly unjust.”

Beyond public debate over animal welfare and zoo safety, Neukgu’s escape has spawned unexpected cultural and economic side effects. Crypto creators have launched a meme coin named after the fugitive wolf, framing Neukgu as a “symbol of independence” and a “wolf that wouldn’t stay caged”. In the 24 hours after the token launched, it recorded roughly $150,000 (£110,000) in trading volume.

Neukgu was born in captivity in 2024 as part of O-World’s conservation program for Korean wolves, a subspecies that once roamed across the entire Korean Peninsula but is currently classified as extinct in the wild. For Neukgu, the challenges of life on the run extend beyond evading search teams: wildlife experts and observers have raised concerns about his ability to survive in the wild, given his lack of hunting experience and captive upbringing. The last confirmed meal Neukgu ate was two chickens, served the night before his escape. While wild wolves can survive for days or even weeks without food, Neukgu has never had to hunt for prey, the primary food source for wild packs, which typically rely on hoofed herbivores such as deer, wild boar, and cattle.

As part of the search strategy, authorities have kept O-World closed to visitors and have been playing recorded wolf howls and park announcements that Neukgu was exposed to during his time in captivity, in hopes of luring him back to the zoo grounds. As a precautionary measure, a nearby elementary school was also closed immediately after the escape to protect students from any potential encounter.

In the most recent publicly released footage of Neukgu, shared by Daejeon city authorities, the young wolf is seen resting on a bed of forest leaves before rising to pace through the undergrowth. The video’s caption closes with a public appeal: “Please, wish for a safe capture of Neukgu.”

Shanghai is pressing forward with an ambitious education initiative that aims to bring a pervasive reading culture to every educational institution across the city, with a firm deadline of 2027 to achieve full coverage of what officials call “scholarly campuses”. This plan goes far beyond encouraging casual reading: it seeks to fundamentally reorient educational spaces and practices to nurture lifelong reading habits among young learners.

Speaking at a press briefing marking the launch of China’s first National Reading Week on Wednesday, Yang Zhenfeng, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, outlined the city’s core strategy: upgrade physical reading environments across campuses, expand access to high-quality digital reading resources, and embed consistent reading practice into daily school life. A “scholarly campus”, as defined by the initiative, is an institution that boasts a rich, immersive reading culture, purpose-built dedicated reading spaces, and a consistent calendar of community reading activities, all designed to shape both reading habits and positive personal character in students.

Yang emphasized that intergenerational example is the foundation of successful reading education, noting, “If teachers and parents do not read, children will not learn to value reading.” To turn the vision into action, the commission’s textbook and language management division – the lead agency overseeing adolescent reading development in the city – has partnered with more than 20 municipal departments to build a holistic reading education framework that serves both educators and students.

The initiative’s reading content is curated to reflect both local and national identity, covering three core themes: revolutionary Red culture, regional Jiangnan culture, and Shanghai’s modern urban development. To extend reading engagement beyond classroom walls, organizers have built a connected home-school-community reading network that draws students in through after-school reading clubs and interactive digital reading platforms.

A key feature of the plan is its age-tailored approach, designed to avoid forcing developmentally inappropriate pressure on young learners. For preschool-aged children, the explicit priority is nurturing a natural love of reading, rather than pushing exam-focused reading drills. “Cultivating children’s reading interest and habits is the core of reading education in Shanghai’s preschools,” explained Xu Jiajie, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission’s preschool education department.

Progress on the initiative is already well underway. More than 1,600 primary and secondary schools across the city have completed renovations of their campus reading spaces to make them more welcoming and accessible. Beyond K-12 institutions, the city has also called on local universities, public libraries, and independent brick-and-mortar bookstores to partner with schools and host deep, community-focused reading activities.

In a sign of the initiative’s regional impact, Shanghai will team up with neighboring Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces on April 19 to launch a joint cross-regional reading campaign centered on Jiangnan culture, expanding the reach of Shanghai’s reading promotion work across the Yangtze River Delta.

Turkey is grappling with shock and grief after two successive school shooting incidents over a 48-hour period left four people dead and more than 30 others injured, in a rare outbreak of gun violence on Turkish educational campuses.

The deadlier of the two attacks unfolded on Wednesday afternoon in the southeastern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, where an eighth-grade student opened fire inside Ayser Calik Middle School. Speaking in a live public address, Kahramanmaras governor Mukerrem Unluer confirmed that the shooting left three students and one teacher dead before the teen attacker turned the gun on himself and took his own life.

Initial investigations have found that the student smuggled five firearms and seven loaded ammunition magazines onto campus before carrying out the attack. The shooter fired intermittently into two separate classrooms, and the weapons he used are believed to belong to his father, a retired senior police officer, according to Unluer. In addition to the fatalities, 20 students were hurt in the attack, with four of those wounded remaining in critical condition and undergoing emergency surgery as of Wednesday evening.

In response to the incident, Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek announced that seven senior prosecutors have been appointed to lead the official investigation, and a temporary media broadcast ban has been ordered to prevent outside interference with the probe. Cabinet ministers overseeing education, internal affairs, and health were immediately deployed to Kahramanmaras to coordinate emergency response and support affected families.

The Kahramanmaras attack came just one day after a separate school shooting in the southern Turkish province of Sanliurfa, which left 20 people wounded before the attacker also died by suicide. That attack was carried out by a 19-year-old man identified only by the initials O.K., a former student of Ahmet Koyuncu Vocational and Technical High School who told authorities he carried out the attack out of revenge for what he viewed as unfair treatment that led to his academic failures. He specifically targeted the school’s principal, according to local reports.

Turkish daily newspaper Sabah later revealed that the 19-year-old failed to finish middle school due to prolonged absenteeism, before transferring to an online distance education high school that he also did not complete. Weeks before the attack, O.K. began sending explicit threats to the school community, even writing in one message, “Get ready, there will be an attack at this school in a few days.” He was taken into custody over the threats just 24 hours before the shooting, but was subsequently released, prompting questions over official oversight.

School gun violence is extremely uncommon in Turkey, making the two back-to-back attacks all the more alarming. Local television commentators have raised the possibility that the incidents are linked as copycat attacks, noting that widespread national media coverage of the Sanliurfa shooting may have inspired the attacker in Kahramanmaras to carry out his attack just one day later. Turkish authorities have not yet confirmed that connection, but have pledged a full review of security protocols at schools across the country in the wake of the violence.

As rising spring temperatures sweep across Southwest China, the capital city of Guizhou Province, Guiyang, has entered its most visually stunning seasonal window, with countless floral varieties bursting into full bloom across the region. To celebrate this annual display of natural beauty, local authorities have launched a charming flower-viewing guided tour led by Xiaoshuang, a beloved local cultural IP character.

Xiaoshuang draws its inspiration from the energetic wild macaques that inhabit Guiyang’s iconic Qianling Mountain, a landmark popular with both local residents and domestic tourists. The character offers audiences an immersive, curated journey through the city’s most breathtaking floral landscapes, highlighting the diverse spring scenery that defines Guiyang this time of year.

The tour showcases a vivid spectrum of blooms: soft pastel pink and white peach blossoms that line urban parks and hillside pathways, rolling golden fields of rapeseed flowers that stretch across suburban outskirts, romantic dense clusters of colorful roses that fill specialized garden spaces, and sweeping dreamlike purple expanses of verbena that create a fairy-tale atmosphere across the city’s green spaces. Every curated stop on Xiaoshuang’s tour highlights a distinct side of Guiyang’s springtime charm, weaving together natural scenery, local cultural traditions, and one-of-a-kind regional character into a cohesive engaging experience.

The official Xiaoshuang IP is authorized for promotional and public use by the Publicity Department of the CPC Guiyang Municipal Committee and the Cool Guiyang smart integrated livelihood service platform, a local digital initiative designed to connect residents and visitors with cultural and public services across the city.

A cross-cultural exchange initiative brought 40 teachers and students from California-based Vistamar School to Qingdao Changjiang School in Jimo District, Qingdao, Shandong Province, on Thursday, opening a day of hands-on immersion into traditional Chinese culture and people-to-people connection.

Against the backdrop of growing interest in cultural exchange between young people from China and the United States, the visiting group got a rare opportunity to engage directly with centuries-old Chinese cultural practices. Participants tried their hand at two iconic Chinese folk arts: calligraphy, where they guided brush pens across rice paper to feel the rhythm and artistry of Chinese character writing, and paper-cutting, where they crafted intricate decorative patterns by hand. Later, they gathered to listen to and try playing the guzheng, a 2,500-year-old traditional Chinese string instrument known for its smooth, resonant tones that have shaped Chinese musical culture for millennia.

Beyond cultural exploration, the event also fostered casual friendship-building between young people from both countries. American students teamed up with their local Chinese peers for friendly basketball matches and joined martial arts sessions, learning basic forms of the traditional practice that connects physical movement to mental discipline.

The most anticipated and memorable part of the day was a joint dumpling-making session, where students from both nations gathered around tables, kneading dough, filling wrappers, and sharing stories and jokes as they worked. The casual, collaborative activity broke down cultural barriers, turning formal exchange into warm, personal connection.

This event is part of a broader push for youth-focused cross-cultural exchange between China and the U.S., designed to give young people first-hand experience of Chinese culture beyond what is presented in international media, and build grassroots connections between the next generations of the two countries. A video recording of the exchange is available to view, capturing participants’ experiences and reflections on the day. Zhou Meihan and Liu Qing contributed reporting to this piece.

For seven decades, two iconic cultural landmarks in Changsha’s Kaifu District — the Hunan Museum and the adjacent Hunan Martyrs’ Park — have operated as separate sites, even as they sat meters apart. That decades-long separation came to an end this week, as the two institutions opened their newly merged, integrated cultural and public leisure space to the public on Tuesday, marking the completion of a high-priority provincial infrastructure project.

Long a top destination for domestic and international tourists seeking to explore Hunan’s rich historical and cultural heritage, the Hunan Museum has grappled with critical space constraints for years. During peak tourism seasons, huge volumes of visitors would crowd the narrow area outside the museum’s entrance, forming long queues that stretched for blocks. Waiting visitors were left exposed to extreme sun or rain, with no adequate shade or shelter to make their wait more comfortable. Beyond visitor discomfort, chronic traffic congestion in the surrounding neighborhood has also plagued the area for years, creating headaches for both guests and local residents.

The integration initiative is not a simple local adjustment: it was named one of Hunan Province’s key people’s livelihood projects for 2026, and was formally included in the provincial government work report released this past February. Construction kicked off in June 2025, with the core modification involving the removal of roughly 140 meters of the original boundary wall that separated the park from the museum. In its place, the project team built a new open-air public gathering area named Fusion Square, creating a seamless, interconnected flow between the museum’s exhibition spaces and the park’s green, recreational grounds.

The newly launched combined space is designed to offer visitors a more holistic, enriching cultural experience, blending curated historical exhibitions with quiet green outdoor space for rest and reflection, while addressing longstanding accessibility and congestion issues that have affected the site for decades.

As China prepares for the upcoming 2026 May Day public holiday, national railway operator China State Railway Group has unveiled a tailored peak-season operating plan to address the expected surge in passenger travel demand, the company announced in a Wednesday media briefing.

The extended holiday travel window will span eight days from April 29 through May 6, aligning with the five-day official public holiday scheduled from May 1 to 5, and ticket sales for the travel period opened to the public the same day the plan was announced.

Industry analysts and railway officials project sustained high passenger volumes throughout the travel period, fueled by robust pent-up demand for family reunions, leisure tourism, and spring outings as mild spring weather draws travelers across the country.

To meet this projected demand, China’s nationwide railway network will operate an average of approximately 13,000 passenger trains daily over the travel period. Network capacity will be adjusted dynamically in real time, leveraging booking data collected from the country’s centralized 12306 ticketing platform to align service capacity with shifting travel patterns.

A key addition to this year’s peak service lineup is the expansion of overnight high-speed rail services, which will be deployed on major trunk routes including Beijing-Shanghai, Beijing-Guangzhou, and Beijing-Harbin during the busiest travel windows. Additional high-speed sleeper trains will also be added to key long-distance routes connecting major population and tourism hubs, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Kunming.

Railway authorities have also upgraded ticketing services to improve passenger experience this year, rolling out enhanced features such as streamlined waitlist booking and simplified seat selection. Ticket allocation will be adjusted in real time to better match unmet demand, and targeted support services have been rolled out to accommodate elderly and student travelers who may require additional assistance.

While the expanded service plan is designed to meet most travel demand, officials have warned that popular travel routes and peak departure windows are still likely to experience temporary ticket shortages. Wherever additional line capacity is available, extra train services will be arranged to clear backlogs, with newly released tickets prioritized for passengers already on waitlists for popular services.