region:southern china

The contradictions of Africa-China in Guangzhou
▻https://africasacountry.com/2019/02/the-contradictions-of-africa-china-in-guangzhou

Guangzhou, in Southern China, hosts the largest community in China of people from the African continent.

US diplomat in China reports mystery symptoms in case that echoes Cuban embassy illness | South China Morning Post
▻http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2147448/us-diplomat-china-reports-mystery-symptoms-case-echoes

A US government employee in southern China has reported abnormal sensations of sound and pressure, the State Department said on Wednesday, in a case that recalls the mystery illness that hit American diplomats serving in Cuba.

In an emailed notice to American citizens in China, the department said it was not currently known what had caused the symptoms in the city of Guangzhou, where an American consulate is located.
“A US government employee in China recently reported subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure,” the notice said.

“The US government is taking these reports seriously and has informed its official staff in China of this event.”

#syndrome_cubain

Biafra, nostalgia as critique
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/06/biafra-nostalgia-as-critique

It was past midnight in a sleepy suburb of Guangzhou in southern China, and the loudspeakers of a restaurant were blaring highlife, upbeat but mournful: Ojukwu has died, people of Nigeria Ojukwu has died, people of Biafra Ikemba [Ojukwu] has died About one hundred young Nigerian men were celebrating the 2014 launch of an Igbo-language…

Ancient poop shows how diseases may have spread along the Silk Road | Science | AAAS
▻http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/ancient-poop-shows-how-diseases-may-have-spread-along-silk-road

The proof is often in the pudding, but sometimes it’s in the poop. That’s the case in western China, where scientists have found fossilized intestinal parasites in 2000-year-old human excrement: the first evidence of infectious diseases spreading along the Silk Road. Preserved by the arid climate and stone walls of the latrine in which they were found, the poo was deposited on “hygiene sticks,” bamboo sticks with strips of cloth used to wipe the nether regions.

The sticks, excavated in 1992 from a latrine at a relay station where travelers most likely slept and ate, were kept in a museum and forgotten about until now. The sticks—and their trimmings—were transported to the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where researchers examined the feces under microscopes. They discovered eggs from four different parasites, including the Chinese liver fluke—a flatworm endemic to marshy areas. People contract the parasite by eating infected fish. Because the sticks were found on the eastern edge of the Taklamakan desert—dry and arid even then—scientists concluded the parasite must have been picked up from the marshy lands of modern-day Guangdong province, about 2000 kilometers away. The findings, reported today in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, suggests two things: that infectious diseases were carried and spread along the Silk Road, and that these early travelers toted a lot more than silk.

De quoi l’orange est-il le nom et de quoi la carotte est-elle la couleur :)

Why the Carrot is Orange : Blame the Prince of Orange - Tested
▻http://www.tested.com/science/43812-the-crazy-history-of-the-orange-carrot

http://files.tested.com/photos/2012/08/09/56-37372-carrot_orange-1344486359.jpg

“Almost all citrus fruit is derived from a common ancestor that first evolved in southern China about 20 million years ago,” Stepahin explained. “By the year zero, oranges in particular were known in India where they were known by the sanskrit word naranga. The prefix ’nar’ I believe means aroma, and it should be known that back then oranges weren’t eaten as food. They were just used for their aromatic properties.”

The orange traveled west and was called the narang in Persia. When the fruit arrived in France, it may have been pronounced un naranj, which doesn’t sound very different than un aranj. Linguists actually believe the “n” from the front of the word was lost due to confusion with the preceding indefinite article, “at which point the French presumably misassociated that first syllable with their word for gold, or, leading to the modern orange,” Stepahin said.

“What this etymology tell us is that the color was named after the fruit, and not the other way around. If you go back far enough in the literature, you can find really weird passages like one from Canterbury Tales where Chaucer describes someone’s complexion as being ’between a red and a yellow.’”

The fruit is responsible for naming the color, but we’re still not to the reason virtually all carrots are orange. Things just get more mixed up from here.

A town in Southern France, Arausio, founded by the Romans in 35 BC, was classically pronounced “Aurenja.” Predictably, that became “orange” once the French conflated naranj with or. When a man named William the Silent from Nassau inherited the rule in Orange in 1544, he became William of Orange. He led the Dutch in Revolt against the Spanish in the late 1500s, and they eventually won their independence in the form of the Dutch Republic.

“Back then the Dutch were known as carrot farmers,” Stepahin continued. “You could get their carrots in white or yellow or purple. Then in the 17th century a breed of carrot was developed that had a lot of beta-Carotene and was orange. And the Dutch started growing this in great abundance in tribute to William of Orange to such a degree that almost all other forms of carrot had gone out of mass agricultural production...in this very roundabout way our carrots are orange because our oranges are orange, and they’ve been that way for political reasons.”

#orange #carotte #légumes #histoire #alimentation

African Business in China - Al Jazeera English

▻http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2015/12/african-business-china-151213114754484.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2015/12/13/de5b61f54bfe45f2b1efcf56454dfcb9_18.jpg

Many African entrepreneurs today consider China as the new land of opportunities.

One of them is Nathalie Fodderie from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

On a reconnaissance trip to Guangzhou, in Southern China, she has three weeks to find equipment for her Kinshasa restaurant that needs complete refurbishment.

Fodderie works with an established network of African and Chinese middlemen and traders and haggles with some of the toughest businessmen in the world.

Through her journey, we see how African and Chinese traders grapple with geographic and cultural hurdles to make a profit.

#afrique #chine #rdc

Stubborn Chinese home owners refuse to let ’nail house’ be demolished - Telegraph

▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11530266/Stubborn-Chinese-home-owners-refuse-to-let-nail-house-be-demolished.htm

via la check-list du Monde

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03264/NANNING_1_3264190k.jpg

In a rare act of resistance to the wishes of authorities, the owners of a house in southern China are refusing to let their property be demolished, despite its location in the middle of a road.

The unoccupied house in Nanning, a city in southern China, is little more than a shack, yet it occupies the middle of Yaning Road and has prevented long-awaited maintenance work from being completed, Chinese state media reports.

#chine #marrant #resistance