The Great Wall of China has a new rival, thanks to “China’s richest village”, Huaxi.

Photographs posted on several Chinese news websites show a replica of the Great Wall winding its way over hills near the village of Huaxi in Jiangsu Province, about 100 miles from Shanghai.  Other new developments in the town include replicas of The White House, Sydney Opera House, as well as buildings from Tiananmen Square.

Huaxi's replica Great Wall, 100 miles from Shanghai.

Over the last 40-years Huaxi has transformed itself from a rural backwater to a multibillion dollar collectively-owned company, earning itself the title of “China’s richest village.” Villagers own investments in steel, shipping, tobacco and textiles, The Guardian reported.

Huaxi's version of the iconic Sydney Opera House.

The village’s 2,000 residents receive shares in Huaxi’s commercial operations. The village owns several factories, staffed with migrants from other parts of China.

Former village chief, Wu Renbao, delivers a daily lecture in a building designed to resemble the Great Hall of the People, according to the Guardian.

A replica of a building from Beijing's Tiananmen Square

Last week Wu officially unveiled a 72 story skyscraper built in the center of the village, which is slightly taller than the Chrysler Building in Manhattan. The building contains a statue of a Buffalo cast from solid gold.

Thanks to spiraling gold prices, the value of the statue increased by 70 million renminbi ($10.7 million) last year, the New York Times reported.

Higher quality photographs of Huaxi’s new buildings can be found on Chinese website QQ.com.

In the afternoon of October 6,  a number of protesters appeared outside the Laborer‘s Culture Hall in Zhengzhou, a city of 7.1 million people in Henan province, Utopia reported. The site said the the protestors offered support to the the Occupy Wall Street movement, and quotes several of the protestors.

Protestors gather in Zhengzhou, some wearing bands reading "Determinedly support the great Occupy Wall Street movement"

“America is creating havoc over the world, starting wars whenever it wants to, interfering with the politics of other countries, and beating other countries with the stick of Democracy,” the post quotes one protester as saying.

Another protester, described as a younger man is quoted as saying, “Capitalism has no future, and the citizens of capitalist countries are starting to realize that.”

One middle-aged migrant worker from Shandong province said that Socialism could save the world, and save China.

One banner offering support for a "Wall Street Revolution"

“Although Mao is gone, the internationalism he taught us still is still present,” the post concludes.

Protestors looking at documents about the Occupation of Wall Street

The website reporting the protest, Utopia, is known in China for its support of far-left, Maoist views, and its strong nationalism. The website was hacked in July this year, as part of a dispute which broke out after Chinese media company Caixin published an article containing strong criticisms of Mao Zedong.

Photos of the Zhengzhou protest also appeared on the website of Chinese nationalist paper The Global Times.

Occupy Wall Street supporters in Zhengzhou, China

Six Chinese authors, including best selling novelist Han Han, plan to sue Apple’s Appstore for over a million dollars in lost income, Chinese media has reported.

An alliance of authors has already filed a case with Beijing’s second people’s court, reports said. The alliance plans to sue Apple on grounds of copyright infringement, claiming that at least 23 books were illegally sold on the App Store. The alliance is demanding compensation of 6,500,000 RMB (US$1,019,687) from Apple.

A press conference held by the author's alliance earlier this year.

The alliance’s spokesperson Pui Checheng said that Apple had illegally allowed downloads of the author’s works, and enjoyed profits from the downloads. Pu said that several more authors are planning to sue Apple for lost profits.

The alliance was formed earlier this year, when their authors announced their intention to take legal measures against Apple. At the time, Pu said that Apple’s App Store allows downloads of pirated books, making a 30% profits on sales. He estimated that this piracy has led to at least one billion yuan (around US$154 million) in losses for China’s publishing industry, suggesting that compensation demands from future lawsuits could be even higher.

This isn’t the first time Chinese authors have worked together to combat apparent infringement of their copyright. This March, China’s biggest search engine Baidu deleted 3 million documents from its online document store after an alliance of 40 writers, including Han Han, wrote a letter to the company demanding the removal of their works from the site, AFP reported.

China’s total land area grew by 1,158 square kilometers as the country’s border with neighboring Tajikistan was formally redrawn, Chinese media reported yesterday. As a result of the transfer, which took place on the far-western edge of China, Tajikistan’s total land area has decreased by 1%.

A ceremony was held on September 20 at a newly installed border marker. Representatives from the Tajik and Chinese militaries exchanged gifts, a Chinese military newspaper reported.

Chinese and Tajik representatives meet next to a newly-installed border marker

The land transferred contains part of the Pamir mountain range, which crosses several Central Asian countries. The mountains were considered a strategic section of the silk route, as they allowed access to modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.

China and Tajikistan agreed to the land transfer in January this year. The land handed to the Chinese covers only 5.5% of the land that Beijing originally sought, the Tajik foreign minister said. China is the biggest investor in the Tajik economy, particularly in the energy and infrastructure sectors, the BBC reported.

Tajikistan is one of several Central Asian republics sharing a border with China. Last year, Kazhakstan rejected a proposal to lease a million hectares of land along its border to China for soybean farming.

Several commentators on Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo mentioned that the handover ceremony was held on October 1st, China’s National Day.

“The timing must have been deliberate,” Hu Xijin, editor of China’s Global Times newspaper commented on his microblog. In fact, the ceremony was held 10 days previously, but does not seem to have been reported by Chinese media until yesterday.

The new breed produced of 13.9 tons of rice per hectare, more than double China’s average rice yield (a hectare is roughly the size of the field area inside a standard running track). The trials were carried out in the southern province of Hunan, according to the China Daily newspaper.

Farmers harvest the "Super Rice" in Longhui County, Hunan

The creator of the rice, Yuan Longping, has been breeding new rice varieties since the 1970s. He’s achieved minor celebrity in China, and it’s estimated that breeds developed by Mr. Yuan now account for up to 60 percent of China’s rice.

The record-breaking rice is classed as a hybrid, rather than a genetically modified variety, because it was produced without using modern genetic techniques. Sales of GM rice are banned in China, but China’s ministry of the environment admitted to the existence of an illegal trade in GM rice seeds. According to a report by Chinese newspaper Southern Weekend cited by AFP, an investigation by four government departments found that because of weak management “illegal GM seeds are present in several provinces”.

More productive rice-fields could help the Chinese Government achieve its  food security aims. Beijing has a policy of self-sufficiency in the production of grains, including rice, which it considers to be a matter of national security.

China’s rice production rose 2% last year, but imports of rice were also unusually high, at around 1.5 million tons, mostly coming from neighboring Vietnam.

“Overseas purchases of corn and rice… have revived fears over Beijing’s potential to influence global agricultural commodities markets,” the Financial Times reported.

The new variety of rice is not the only breed of ‘super rice’ competing for space in the world’s rice paddies. Thai scientists are working on breeds which are more resistant to disease, according to the China post.  This year, a research team in California invented a kind of GM rice which is resistant to drought and flooding.

As yet there are no reports on what the new breed of rice tastes like.

A hairdresser from a rural part of China has built an airplane capable of flying at a height of 3500 meters.

The plane’s designer, Wang Qiang, is from a rural part of China’s Sichuan province. He just studied one year of physics in middle school, and worked as a hairdresser.

Wang started designing airplanes in 2005 after being inspired by an article that he read in a magazine.  He produced his first working plane within three months, using scrap metal and homemade tools. The Chinese media has described Wang as a “Farmer” suggesting that he does not have the urban-residence permit given to China’s legal city-dwellers.

Wang Qiang and his first home-made plane.

A nearby flying school offered Wang the use of one of its runways so he could continue his research into flight, which has cost him over 100,000 RMB. Wang took up casual work in the coastal city of Ningbo to fund his experiments.

Wang finished work on his second plane last winter. The plane, named “Wang Qiang Number 2,” can reach heights of 3500m, and speeds of over 90 kilometers an hour. Here’s a video of Wang’s second plane in flight.

The plane is currently on display in Shanghai’s Hong Miao gallery, as part of an exhibition titled “Transport – Homemade Vehicles from around the World.” The exhibition includes a robotic rickshaw built by a farmer from near Beijing, as well as a home-made submarine.

Wang’s test-flights have not been without incident. His plane has caught fire in mid-air several times. Last spring, Wang crashed his plane into a river, eventually managing to crawl out and swim to safety.

Wang now hopes to obtain a pilot’s license, and design a two-seater aircraft so his girlfriend can join him for future flights.

The exhibition in Shanghai was organized by Colors Magazine, who asked Wang where his passion for flight came from:

“I cannot give a reason for why I want to fly. Maybe this is just how human beings evolve: we ride horses, ride bicycles, drive cars, and then we fly an airplane. I fly as best I can. It’s my dream, my joy. It’s pretty much my life.”

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks have received a lot less attention in China than in the US and Europe. Chinese people have been more occupied with the Mid Autumn Festival, which also falls today. But the anniversary has generated discussion online.

Yao Chen, the Chinese actress who is the most popular poster on Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo, reposted a message about Betty Ong, a Chinese-American flight attendant on a plane which was flown into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. The post highlights the lengths that US authorities went to in finding and identifying human remains discovered at Ground Zero.

A picture of Betty Ong, as posted by Yao Chen

Netizens responding to Yao Chen’s post contrasted those efforts with the sloppy and rushed way rescue operations were carried out after the high speed rail accident in southern China this July.  “What about the bones of the train-crash victims?” one netizen wrote.

A post asking “what were you doing on 9.11?” has been reposted more than 9,000 times, making it one of the hottest topics on Weibo today. The responses generally recall a sense of disbelief on hearing the news.

Cpis: During the night CCTV interrupted its broadcast to show the news. At the time I felt sorry for the people trapped in the building, and wondered what affect the attacks would have on international politics.

Crystal188: I was watching TV, and at first I thought it was a horror movie, but soon realised it was real.  I called a friend in New York, but the call didn’t get through.

There are also reports of indifference:

黄俊国_挑战: At the time I was in the first year of college, leading an ignorant life, and I didn’t have any particular feelings about 9-11. Now ten years have passed, my main feeling is that house prices have risen too fast.

As well as enjoyment:

阿斌088: 2001 was the year of my graduation. To be honest, I was a somewhat excited to see the news, it seemed like the weak were finally taking arms against the powerful. Then I felt sorry for the office workers in the towers.

土人做傻事: I was in high school, and watched the new on may parents TV. At first I thought it was a Hollywood movie, until I realized that it was a real terrorist attack. I still remembered the NATO attack on a Chinese Embassy [in Yugoslavia, in 1999], and to be honest, I was somewhat pleased when I saw that the twin towers had been attacked

Sina’s finance reporter Quan Jing reflected on the schadenfreude felt by some Chinese:

“We should think about how many of us reacted to the attacks with schadenfreude. Are we guilty of too much nationalism and not enough humanism? People working in the Chinese media were sometimes ashamed of how the media represented the attacks, but maybe it wasn’t so much their own fault, as the way they were forced to act by the system. In the US, a tragedy is still commemorated ten years on, but in China, how many tragedies are forgotten just a year later?”

Hu Xujin, the editor of widely-read Chinese nationalist newspaper The Global Times, posted his reflections on the anniversary.

“Perhaps Al Qaeda is not just an organization, but more of an ideology, or a spirit. It might be easy to break up the organization, but it’s hard to clean up the pieces afterward. Terrorist organizations in China could be the same. If you hate terrorism, then you need to take it seriously.”

Zhang Xinyang is one of many students across China starting their first semester at university today. But not many students have attracted as much attention as Zhang, who is entering the Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics’ Mathematics PhD program at the tender age of 16.

Most Chinese students Zhang’s age are just starting high school, but Zhang is already used to college life. He started university aged 10, and began a Masters program at 13. “My Masters thesis defense was really tough,” Zhang told one Chinese newspaper.

Zhang, pictured right, with two University officials.

According to reports, Zhang completed his university entry forms by himself, but will continue to live off-campus with his parents.

Zhang has been called “China’s youngest PhD student” by the Chinese press, but he’s a couple of years short of being the youngest in the world. American born Alia Sabur received her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at the age of 18, after entering the program four years earlier. Fourteen-year-old Gregory R. Smith began a PhD program in mathematics at the University of Virginia in 2003.

In 2008, Oxford University gave 17-year-old Chinese-Indonesian  student Horatio Boedihardjo a place on its math PhD program.

Asked whether he had any regrets about missing out on schooling with his peers, Zhang said he most regretted not experiencing the pressure of China’s university-entry examination system with other students.

“My future lies in teaching and research,” he said. “I don’t need any special treatment.”

Visitors to the front page of China’s YouTube-clone Youku are spoilt for choice. There’s a clip of Taiwanese TV show host having an argument with one of her guests (which has had about 1.5 million views), and a video of some people in Zhejiang province getting soaked by an unexpected wave (currently at about 1.3 million views).

Youku’s top video in the last couple of days is from another planet entirely. A video purporting to show a large space craft hovering over a lake in the Southern Chinese city of Guangzhou has sucked in over 4 million viewers. The video was the eighth most searched for item on China’s most popular search engine yesterday, and has been widely circulated on Chinese microblogging services. Here’s a copy from YouTube:

Netizens on Youku and microblogging site Sina Weibo have, for the most part, not been taken in by the video’s special effects. Comments instead focus on the editing skills shown by the video’s creator. “Finally, there’s hope for Chinese Cinema,” writes one Youku user.

The video taps into a more general sense of excitement about the extra-terrestrial activity,  sparked off by a number of alleged UFO sightings this month. On the evening of August 21, a strange bright light was visible over Shanghai.

The previous day, a pilot flying to Shanghai posted on his Sina microblog that he’d witnessed an illuminated sphere in the sky “hundreds of times bigger than the moon”. The same night, Beijing residents used their microblogs to post pictures of a mysterious halo of light which appeared over their homes.

There have  also been UFO sightings in the provinces of Guizhou and Shaanxi this summer, according to the China Daily newspaper. With no official body keeping statistics on UFO sightings, its hard to say whether the number sightings this year is unusually high.

However, its clear that the popularity of microblogging services in China is giving Chinese UFO spotters a new channel to publicise their photos, and provide inspiration to China’s budding Sci-Fi directors.