BERLIN, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) — Overseas Chinese in Germany are proud of the successful Shenzhou-7 space mission, members of the community told Xinhua Monday at a party held by the Chinese embassy here to celebrate the country’s National Day, which falls on Oct. 1.

    ”Chinese feel extremely proud in 2008. After fighting the earthquake in Sichuan province, China successfully hosted the Olympic Games,” said Cui Naisheng, the head of the federation of overseas Chinese in Germany.

    ”The successful launch of Shenzhou-7 makes overseas Chinese feel proud and indicates that China has entered an advanced level in global space technology,” he added.

    Li Quanfu, the president of the federation of overseas Chinese business people in Germany, said it was a big step forward for Chinese taikonauts to carry out the spacewalk in Chinese-made spacesuits, which marks China’s entry into the elite club of world space technology.

    ”Shenzhou-7 and the three astronauts aboard it made overseas Chinese feel proud and excited. We hope that Chinese space technology will reach a more advanced world level, because diplomatic ties are based on the economy and scientific and technological research ability,” he added.

    Taiwan’s Xiao Wangxiaorong said she watched the live broadcast of the spacewalk in the Wangfujing Street during her recent trip to Beijing. She was very moved while seeing Zhai Zhigang waving the Chinese national flag in space. “I’m excited that China is becoming strong and powerful,” she said.

    ”The moment when the astronaut waved the Chinese national flag made all the Chinese feel proud. It is a great achievement. Although China was hit by the earthquake, the success of the Beijing Olympics and the launch of Shenzhou-7 have reaffirmed China’s status in the world community,” she said.

    BEIJING, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) — One body was found while five sailors remained missing after nine were saved from a vessel capsizal of a Panamanian-nationality vessel with 15 sailors in east China’s Nanji Islands sea area on Monday, local authority said Tuesday.

    The body was found at 1:10 p.m. Tuesday, said Li Hua, deputy director of the center.

    The vessel named “Helios 3″ reported its distress, saying they were “sinking”, and called for help to the Municipal Maritime Rescue Center of Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, at 2:09 p.m. Monday, Li said.

    The tropical storm, caused by Jangmi, the 15th typhoon this year, had made two cabins of the vessel flooded, which lead to the sinking, Li said.

    A rescue ship was sent to the reported site while warnings and rescue requires were sent to the nearby ships both in Chinese and English, he said.

    Two of the sailors on the life raft were found and saved at 5:05 p.m. by a ship named “Cap Doukato” passing by, who received the signals from the official rescue center. Seven others were saved by rescuers on rescue vessel setting off at 2:44 p.m. from the neighboring Fujian Province.

    The searching work was still undertaking, Li said.

    The capsized vessel was a Korean ship registered in Panama, shipping 6,000 tons of woods from Burma to Jiaxing Port in Zhejiang, with sailors from Korea, Burma and Indonesia, Li said.

    The Jangmi, which forced the evacuation of 500,000 people in Zhejiang and the neighboring Fujian and stranded 110 tourists on the Nanji Islands on Saturday, had been weakened to be tropical storm at 8:00 a.m. Tuesday. The typhoon alarm had been lifted, according to Zhejiang provincial meteorological observatory.

Special Report: Third Manned Space Mission

    BRUSSELS, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) — European news channel Euronews on Monday highly praised China’s progress as a leap in space technology when reporting the successful landing of the reentry module of Shenzhou-7.

    The three astronauts aboard carried out China’s first-ever spacewalk which was “a small step for human but a leap for China.” The successful spacewalk made China the third to master the extravehicular activity technology following the United States and Russia, Euronews said.

    The three astronauts were welcomed as heroes after they landed, Euronews reported, saying the successful launch of Shenzhou-7 spaceship is a important step of China in the way of establishing a space station and it is a fantastic gift to the Chinese for the National Day which falls on Oct. 1.

    BEIJING, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) — China’s auto imports jumped 35 percent in value in the first eight months from the same period last year, while exports surged 28 percent, according to the latest figure released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) on Monday.

    The combined value in imports and exports rose 31 percent in the same period. The exact values and the sales volume in the imports and exports were not immediately available.

    Germany surpassed Japan as the biggest motor vehicle supplier, contributing 33 percent of the total sales value. Japan took up 32percent.

    Foreign-funded companies accounted for 37 percent of the country’s total imports value, while joint-ventures imported 31 percent. That was followed by the state-owned enterprises with 20 percent share.

    Beijing imported one third of the vehicles followed by Jilin with 18 percent. Guangdong took up 14 percent of the total imports value.

    The CAAM data showed 19 percent of China’s auto exports went to United States, while 10 and 7 percent were imported by Japan and Russia respectively.

Special Report:  2008 Olympic Games

    By Li Huizi

    BEIJING, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) — Michael Phelps who claimed a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympic Games said it was harder for him to learn Chinese than to win swimming races.

    Before the American came to China for the 2008 Games he seriously took a few Chinese lessons. A popular online video shows how hard he tries to imitate the voice of a Chinese learning multimedia software in saying such basic words as “guo zhi” (juice), “nan hai’er” (boy) and “nu hai’er” (girl).

    But still, the 23-year-old rated his Chinese language studies as the most difficult thing he had tried in his life. “Learning Mandarin is even harder than winning eight gold medals in the pool.”

    In primary school Phelps took French and German courses, but the swimming ace said, “all the words, characters and pronunciations in Mandarin are so different. All of them are hard to manage.”

    He was not the only star athlete trying to learn some Chinese language and culture. When gymnast Nastia Liukin arrived back home in Dallas, Texas, with five medals around her neck, the Russian-born blonde appeared in front of her reception wearing a black T-shirt with two big Chinese characters “Beijing” in the front.

    ”The Beijing Olympics have brought world attention to the Chinese civilization and further enhanced the utility of the Chinese language worldwide,” said Zhao Guocheng, the Office of Chinese Language Council International (OCLCI) deputy director general.

    He called the Games an opportunity for the Chinese language to gain more popularity and for China to be better understood by foreigners. 

    CHINESE LEARNING AREA

    As a direct way for foreigners to gain understanding of the nation’s culture and history, Chinese characters are undoubtedly the most accessible signs of the nation.

    Some foreign spectators who witnessed the Games’ opening ceremony at Beijing’s National Stadium were completely puzzled when artistic director Zhang Yimou presented a performance showcasing the country’s ancient invention of movable-type printing. The show featured a formation of some 900 men imitating the operation of a printer and creating the image of the Chinese character “he,” meaning “harmony,” in different calligraphic styles.

    Foreigners likely were even more puzzled after they saw the sequence of entry at the athletes’ march-in, which was completely different from previous Games. The order of entry was decided by the number of strokes of the first character of a delegation’s Chinese name, but not by the country’s first English language letter.

    Anxious to learn the secrets of the strokes that formed a Chinese character, many foreign athletes and reporters came to the “Chinese learning area” in a corner of the Olympic Village.

    Since its July 27 opening, the area had received thousands of visitors from about 70 countries and regions, said an language promotion official in charge of the activity.

    With a floor space of about 30 square meters, the area is brightly decorated with Chinese painting scrolls, Peking Opera masks and China knots, a traditional handicraft symbolizing good fortune.

    The area, jointly established by the OCLCI and the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (BOCOG), was designed for foreign athletes, coaches and officials living in the village to learn some Chinese and have a taste of Chinese culture for free.

    Zhao said athletes usually learned some basic Chinese such as “ni hao” (hello), “xie xie” (thanks) and “zai jian” (goodbye) in less than 30 minutes or after a few hours.

    ”The Chinese they learned proved useful during their stay in China,” he said.

    In addition, Chinese tutors also taught the visitors how to congratulate fellow athletes or rivals in Chinese, such as “zhu heni” (congratulations) and “ni zhen bang” (you are great).

    They could also try some traditional Chinese calligraphy and play the guzheng, a stringed instrument of the zither family, or Chinese chess.

    Deng Yaping, the Olympic Village spokeswoman and four-time Olympic gold medal winning table tennis player, told the press on Aug. 15 the most popular activity at the area was to get a Chinese name for the athletes themselves or their friends. Tutors usually chose a Chinese name that suited the sound or meaning of the foreign visitor’s original name.

    The area features a large bookshelf loaded with Chinese-learning materials, and a wall to which more than a dozen brush-pen writings by the foreign learners, carrying either their Chinese names or their blessings to the host city and nation, are glued.

    Deng said the area at the Beijing Olympics was something unique that previous Games didn’t have. 

    By Zhan Yan

    BEIJING, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) — Wang He heads to the fields in the morning with the peasants. He knows how to work the crops: watering, fertilizing, weeding. But when he graduated from Beijing University of Agriculture two years ago, the law and politics major had dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

    He’s an assistant to the head of Sanjie Village, Kangzhuang Township in Beijing’s Yanqing County, under the Chinese government scheme to employ 100,000 college graduates in villages over five years from 2008.

    The scheme aims to revitalize rural China by changing the grassroots cardre structure and boosting the government’s “new countryside” initiative. It also helps to employ the nation’s rising tide of graduates.

    ”Our strong point is our knowledge, but we also have our weakness — a lack of practical experience,” says Wang, 26.

    Most villagers hope the graduates can bring new expertise to improve their living standards.

    Wang introduced the “colorful sweet potato” with the help of his alma mater. The new species has bright yellow, white and purple flesh and is highly nutritious. It also costs more than the ordinary sweet potato.

    Villagers previously planted corn and earned less than 1,000 yuan (142.86 U.S. dollars) per mu (0.07 hectares), but the figure doubled after they planted the new sweet potato species.

    Wang often works in the fields, but he knows he’s of little help. “Peasants are much more adept at farming, that’s their strong point. It’s pointless for graduates to focus on farm work. We should do something they want to do, but they can not do.”

    He focuses on technology, marketing, publicity and connecting with the outside world. His routine work is chores, such as recording village meetings, issuing certificates and broadcasting notices.

    He also applies his legal knowledge to mediate in conflicts between the villagers and help write legal papers.

    Real life is different from what he learnt in books. “Mediating conflicts between neighbors needs more worldly wisdom than legal knowledge. Sometimes laws are useless here,” Wang says.

    However, many graduates find it hard to adjust. “It’s hard to feel accepted,” says an anonymous graduate. “Families have often been here for generations and it’s really, really hard for them to accept an outsider.”

    On-line discussion about the scheme is abuzz with doubts such as whether graduates can change the villages or be changed by the villages. Can they merge into village life or will they remain semi-detached?

    Wang grew up in Beijing’s rural Miyun District and has few problems in getting on. “The connections grow daily. You must greet villagers warmly or chat with them to show respect.

    ”Most of the villagers are aged over 40. Their children are studying or working in cities. They treat me like offspring and few give me the cold shoulder as they don’t want their children to suffer the same treatment.”

    An anonymous graduate tells how he started work with little idea of what to do. Village heads assigned him chores like typing or moving flowerpots. “The real world is quite different from what I have been taught. Some ugly behavior just makes me sick.

    ”I feel the village is changing me, not I’m changing the village. I’m considering resigning.” Failing to fulfill the contract means losing the preferential treatment on insurance or further study.

    Young graduates are bringing new attitudes to villages. Hu Jiandang, 24, a martial arts graduate from Beijing Sport University, is assistant to the head of Wangchang Village in Panggezhuang Township in Beijing’s Daxing District. He found an old couple, who made a living raising cattle, were isolated as their son had been in prison for almost 30 years for robbery.

    ”A family with such a son is often ostracized,” Hu says. On the old man’s birthday he bought a cake and took photos. “Locals tell me to stay away from them, but the couple were moved and felt warmth from the outside world. I believe my behavior will help villagers accept them gradually.”

    Wang says the conservative thinking is especially hard-set. “It’s understandable. Peasants are usually poorly educated with little access to information. They are mostly poor and are wary of trying anything new that could cost them.”

    The experiences give the young first-hand understanding of rural China, which still lags far behind urban China.

    ”Urban people might struggle to buy an apartment or a car, but the peasants struggle for basic necessities like food and clothes. A child can consume all their savings and put them into debt,” says Wang.

    ”But rural China is experiencing a golden period of growth with preferential policies from the government and promises of a bigger market.”

    Two years have seasoned Wang. “I was too idealistic and believed all the things I planned could come true, but now I’m more practical.”

    After three years in villages, the graduates enjoy priority in applying for public service posts and graduate study opportunities.

    ”Chinese peasants are leading too hard a life,” says Wang. “They labor from dawn to dusk, but do not get the returns they deserve. I want to maximize their returns, particularly as my parents are peasants too. As long as I’m needed here, I will continue with the job.”