Morbid details have emerged in the story of the British toddler who was crushed by a "falling screen" last Monday in a Shanghai restaurant. The accident happened at Kervan Orient Express just after 8 pm when the three-year-old boy, playing with a seven-year-old girl, fell down and "touched the partition screen, which fell and hit him in the head," according to Shanghai Daily. The partition is taller than an ...

Via Go Chengdoo A 6.6/7.0-magnitude earthquake (according to the US Geological Survey/China Earthquake Networks Center) affecting 69 counties and 1.5 million people struck Sichuan province at 8:02 am on Saturday. People are calling it the Ya'an Earthquake, after the city where the the epicenter is located, 140 kilometers from the capital Chengdu. The current death toll is 203, with more than 11,000 injured. ...

Above, a play about Ai Weiwei; see this review by the Guardian Saw and killed our first mosquito yesterday. Springtime is officially here! Enjoy BarCamp on Sunday, links. ...

You know you have an environmental problem when... A) You have to import 5 million tons of freshwater B) Your source of tap water is "dark as soy sauce" Both of the above for Luohe, Henan province. Via Global Times: ...

This could well be a headline from the Onion, but it's from Time: Tibetans Turn to Alternative Protest as Self-Immolations Prove Futile What other forms of protest, one asks? The story begins anecdotally with Norbu Jorden, a young man who tried to kill himself with fire but failed. Now Jorden is expressing his dissent differently. On a Wednesday in late March, he was one of hundreds of young Tibetans kitted ...

There's a mighty "might" in this, but China Daily is reporting that one person infected with bird flu might have caught the disease from a human host. An investigation by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention is underway: The family involves two brothers and their 87-year-old father, who died on March 4 and was reportedly China's first human death from H7N9. The elder son, who has recovered ...

Holy crap there are a lot of links today. Quickly, to it. ...

Chickens, by Adam Cohn, via China Digital Times Guo'an and Shenxin played a barnburner last night. We could use a drink links. ...

Spot the difference between the two? Via Reddit Are you at the Beijing Improv Comedy Festival? Links, then. ...

Tsinghua University body-building contest, via Shanghaiist A shout-out to the Beijing Caledonian Society for" its whisky tasting yesterday. Happy links. ...

I've seen way more live chickens on the streets of Shanghai than Beijing, but soon, we might not see any at all. That's because authorities are considering a permanent ban on live poultry sales in Shanghai, according to the latest. SCMP brings us this: The director of Shanghai's agriculture commission, Sun Lei , said it would consider a public consultation on a permanent ban for the live-poultry trade, afte ...

Hope you enjoyed the Great Leap Brewing Back Alley Chili Cook-Off on Saturday. We'll have a write-up tomorrow, but for now, links. ...

Your H7N9 avian influenza roundup, because there's too much for the links post. We now have at least 18 cases of bird flu, by the way. ...

Pyongyang at night on April 2, via Koryo Tours It's still Tomb-Sweeping holiday. Spare a thought for the dead chickens over links. ...

Poutry market in Shanghai shut down, via Sina This was going in tonight's links post, but why wait? ...

Pictures of PiL at Beijing's Yugong Yishan on Saturday, via Foukography; if you haven't yet, check out Pete DeMola's words on the subject. Dissent Magazine really rolled out the China stories this week. Short work week this week thanks to Tomb-Sweeping Day (which means a longer week next week, yay), which means it's holiday links time. ...

This will be fun: let's track new cases of bird flu, specifically this new, confounding H7N9 strain. Four more cases have been reported by a health bureau in Jiangsu province, according to AP. It remains non-contagious and not actually caused by birds. The health bureau of eastern Jiangsu province said in a notice on its website that three women, aged 45, 48 and 32, and an 83-year-old retired man, from diff ...

"I used to assume history and memory would always triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful place," writes author Yan Lianke in this New York Times op-ed. "It now appears the opposite is true." China is winnowing memory out of its people, creating an "amnesic generation," Yan argues. It's "state-sponsored amnesia," a phrase designed to send shivers up one's spine. ...

Via Car News China: "An Audi driver in China had to be at the Shanghai University, on Sunday... when he came back on Monday morning, he had a big problem…" April Fools Day links, with none of the foolery. Go time. ...

Move over, H5N1. There's a new strain of bird flu that can infect and kill humans -- though currently it does not appear to be contagious. Xinhua reports that three humans came down with H7N9 avian influenza recently in Shanghai and Anhui province. The two from Shanghai are dead, while the other, a 35-year-old woman from Chuzhou City, is in critical condition. Worryingly, while one of the victims was 87 yea ...