You really have to wonder???

I am sure you might have heard this already but the latest craziness here comes from northwest China's Gansu Province where least 18 pre-school children were killed when an overloaded kindergarten minibus collided head-on with a truck. The bus driver and a teacher also died in the crash. Another 44 children were injured, 12 of them seriously.

Terrible does not describe the accident, but what is just so crazy is the school bus was a mini van built to carry nine passengers but 62 children were crammed inside.

A preliminary investigation found that the bus had been driving fast on the wrong side of the road (what else is new) on a street shrouded in heavy fog when the accident happened. The collision with the truck occurred at around 9:15am in Zhengning County of Qingyang City.

The minibus was taking the children to a kindergarten after picking them up from remote farmlands. Five people, including bus driver Yang Haijun and four children, died at the scene. The teacher and 14 children died later either on their way to hospital or while they were being treated for their injuries. Of the 44 children who survived, 12 sustained severe injuries with two of them in a critical condition.

"This accident says a lot about the problems with the local government's role of monitoring school safety," said Liu Shanying, a public administration expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

To me it says that no matter how advanced and comopolitan the urban cities of China may be, there majority of the rural population has a long way to go to catch up. My guess is someone on the school board or in fact the whole school board will be executed for this but that won't solve the problem. The Chinese are extremely resourceful, especially the poor but this action was clearly irresponsible and crazy.

Fresh air anyone

Monday was a nasty day here in Shanghai. As the Shanghai Daily news called it, "foggy weather" grounded more than 70 flights when visibility dropped to less than 400 meters. Fog my eye -

inhalable particulates as they call pollution here rose more than seven times the normal rate on Sunday and Monday.

The "fog" is the result of particles adhering to water molecules in the air when there is high humidity - all the better to see the nasty little bits of sulphur and other noxious chemicals that I'm inhaling most days though to be honest I have not noticed any real change in my breathing or lung capacity since we've been here.

My guess is if you were born here in the last ten years and stay here, your lungs will definitely be impacted by what's happening here. For those of us lucky to have been born in North America we should be very thankful for the clean air we get to breathe every day and do all we can to insure it stays that way.

Who wants to play poker?

The police in Baoshan District busted one of the largest illegal card games in China where gamblers dropped hundreds of thousands of Yuan on a daily basis. Got to give the organizer's credit - the games were played in the middle of a dense forest and moved to new locations every day or even moved between games to evade detection.

Seems the organizers would start their first card game at 5:00 to 8:00 PM and then take the players to a local resturant for dinner while other gang members moved the game to a diiferent part of the forest where they tapped into the electricity supply for lights etc. The gamblers were provided with free shuttle service to and from the games. Pots ranged up to 600,000 Yuan or approx $95,000 (US). And if you were losing you could always get an advance from the house, with interest calculated daily.

71 people were detained in the raid near the holiday resort of Zhangshu Village. So much for having a good time on vacation.

Throwing the baby out with the bath water

We should never complain about healthcare in Canada. This from the Shanghai Daily News. Seems in Guangdong Province some medical folks got themselves into a little hot water when they pronounced a premature baby dead and put it in a plastic bag in the washroom for attendants to take away with the trash. When the baby's uncle and aunt requested to see the body, they discovered the baby was alive. The baby was rushed to the neonatal care unit while the parents were videotaping everything (I wonder why???). Doctors report the baby is doing fine.

I don't mean to come down hard on China - the people and the country have accomplished so much in such a short time but you really wonder if maybe the folks here need to sit back, take a deep breath, and relax for an hour or two every day to enjoy life.