Hong Kong woman dies during 100-metre training dive in Philippines
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The Immigration Department on Thursday confirmed it had contacted the family of the deceased to provide assistance.
The department also said it immediately contacted the Chinese foreign ministry's office in Hong Kong and the Chinese consulate in Cebu.
According to local media reports, the woman surnamed Fong died on Saturday while taking part in a 100-metre dive as part of technical training with a coach from Hong Kong.
The report said her body remained in the Philippines.
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According to Padi, or the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, divers must pass both a 40-metre and 60-metre technical diving courses before qualifying for the 100-metre one.
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South China Morning Post
06-08-2025
- South China Morning Post
Fiercer competition for Hong Kong students vying for university, diploma spots
Of the students who received offers through Hong Kong's Joint University Programme Admission System (Jupas) this year, about 83 per cent got a spot in one of their top three programme choices, down from 87.46 per cent last year. Overall, about 37 per cent of Jupas applicants secured a place in local tertiary institutions this year, a slight decrease from last year. These percentage decreases are related to fiercer competition. This year, Jupas applications rose by 9 per cent, from 39,634 to 43,269, leading to a 3.27 percentage point drop in the proportion of students securing tertiary education places. In absolute numbers, 15,808 applicants were offered spots in local universities or a subsidised diploma course through Jupas this year – a slight increase from the 15,776 who secured places last year. Eighteen-year-old Abby Woo Ka-lam, who got an offer to the integrated bachelor of business administration programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), said she observed this heightened competitiveness based on social media posts from other DSE candidates. 'This year's competition was much tougher than before. Many programmes now require higher DSE [Diploma of Secondary Education] scores, even for subjects that were previously considered easier to get into,' the 18-year-old said. 'I saw many ... posted on their social media, mainly talking about [how] their mark is higher than [the] 2024 mean score but still can't get into the course.' CUHK announced that it had attracted the highest number of DSE top scorers, all of whom chose to enrol in its medicine programme. Wang Haibo, this year's only DSE 'ultimate top scorer', will be joining CUHK's medicine programme. Photo: May Tse Some students expressed concern that this year's DSE exams were more competitive because of an increase in non-local private candidates from mainland China. Out of the 55,489 candidates who took the DSE this year, 960 were non-local private candidates, up from 549 last year and 238 in 2023. Officials did not reveal how many of these non-local candidates were from across the border. But according to an article published in April by Professor Chan Cheuk-hay, president of the Hong Kong College of Technology, the influx of mainland Chinese private candidates has contributed to the rise in non-local exam takers this year. This year's overall number of candidates signed up for the DSE increased by 10 per cent from 50,591 last year. Even though non-local students hold DSE results, they cannot apply for university places through Jupas. They compete with holders of other qualifications – such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) or local sub-degrees – for admission to Hong Kong universities. Jaskirat Singh, a student from Po Leung Kuk Ngan Po Ling College, said stress levels were higher this year even though many of his peers got their top choices in the Band A category. 'This year was quite anxious for local students due to the increasing number of students from the mainland taking the DSE exams, and especially after the difficult math paper,' the 18-year-old said. A total of 55,489 candidates signed up for DSE this year, a 10 per cent increase from the 50,591 last year. Photo: Handout Singh will study a five-year double degree for a bachelor of business administration (law) and bachelor of laws at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He explained that this double degree would open up more options for his career path since he could work in law or finance. He added that studying in Hong Kong would be a 'good choice' for its reputable universities and multicultural campus environment. 'HKU's emphasis on international law is also a big advantage, as I may move abroad and practise law overseas in the future,' he said. Flora Ng received an offer from her Band A2 choice, HKU's bachelor of arts programme. 'It was a safe choice and something I genuinely wanted to study, so I'm quite satisfied,' the 18-year-old said, adding that she had not been very concerned about competition from mainland Chinese candidates. 'I'm not particularly worried about mainland students competing with me, as their performance tends to fall in the mid to lower range, especially in English,' she explained. 'In my opinion, they pose more of a challenge to middle- or lower-ranked local students. At the higher level, competition is already intense among top-performing locals.' Students received their university offers from 9am on Wednesday via the Jupas website or SMS. Hong Kong's eight public universities offer a total of 15,000 first-year, first-degree places, with 79 per cent allocated through the Jupas system. The remaining places are filled through non-Jupas admission routes.
HKFP
03-08-2025
- HKFP
Fruit and vegetables now defy the seasons – with one exception: the lychee
When I was a kid, my mother was still in the habit of shopping daily. We had a fridge, but it hadn't really changed our eating habits yet. Most shops featured a counter, behind which the 'assistant' would stand and fetch what you wanted. Fruit and vegetables were different. In the UK, these came from a specialised shop called the greengrocer's, which was set up rather more like a Hong Kong wet market. The fruit and veg were out on shelves or in baskets so you could inspect and fondle the goods. There was a big open space in the middle of the shop where the greengrocer performed, juggling fruit, chaffering with the customers (most of whom he knew by name) and weighing purchases on a large weighing machine. There was, I noticed, a lot of variation in what was available. We were at the mercy of the climate. You ate salad in the summer because that was when lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes were 'in season.' You had Brussels sprouts with your Christmas turkey because sprouts were the only green vegetable immune to frost. Strawberries were a treat at Wimbledon because they had been unobtainable for nine months before. Well, we have changed all that. Wandering my local supermarket, I find that most of the fruits and vegetables are reassuringly consistent. They may come from different places at different times of the year, but they are always there. This is partly because food now frequently flies. So what is out of season in the northern hemisphere will be just coming into fruition in the southern one. Also, a lot of food production is now conducted in entirely artificial environments. Confused plants can be persuaded that it is fruit time regardless of the calendar. This is all well and good, and no doubt makes it easier to follow a healthy diet. But there is one exception. We have just passed, you may not have noticed, the end of the lychee season. I was a fan of the lychee long before coming to Hong Kong. This is because Chinese restaurants in the UK, at least outside the big cities, sold a rather specialised foreigner-friendly version of Chinese food, and this did not include desserts. If you really wanted a dessert, there were only two possibilities: ice cream or tinned lychees. This was thoroughly misleading. When I came to Hong Kong, I found whole restaurants devoted to Chinese sweet dishes, offering an intriguing range of soups, dumplings, fruits and variations on rice. There were no tinned lychees or, for that matter, ice cream. In due course, I was introduced to the real fresh lychee. In those days, the Xinhua news agency office in Hong Kong was routinely described as China's de facto embassy in the British colony, but they did perform some press relations stuff. And so I was invited on a day trip to see the lychee harvest in Shenzhen, which in those days still had trees and farms. I am not sure how the industrial-scale picking is done, but we were all issued with bags and urged to help ourselves. The lychee tree is a conveniently low tree. But it seems somehow to have eluded the trend towards fruit and vegetable globalisation. You can get lychees when they are in season in Guangdong. Outside that time, you can't. This is surprising. When kiwis were a New Zealand speciality, they were seasonal. But the fruit, also known as the Chinese gooseberry, was long ago transplanted and copied. So now they come from a variety of places, and you can get them all year round. Why has this not happened to the lychee? Let me offer a free suggestion to any New Zealand farmer who thinks the kiwi business is getting a bit crowded these days. Buy, borrow or steal a lychee tree. In the summer – that is your summer, not ours – you will have the world to yourself.
AllAfrica
01-08-2025
- AllAfrica
Pandas as China's most valuable and vulnerable diplomats
Anthony Albanese's recent visit to Chengdu's panda breeding base showed the enduring power of China's panda diplomacy. China has been sending pandas to other countries, sometimes for obviously political reasons, since the 1940s. The term 'panda diplomacy' became widespread when China gifted two pandas to the United States on Richard Nixon's 1972 visit. In a new paper published in The Pacific Review, we explain the importance of panda diplomacy for the Chinese state. This importance persists during times of high political tension between China and other countries that host pandas, such as the United States. And it persists despite growing concerns about it in China. No other animal can match the giant panda's combination of universal appeal and national distinctiveness. The global popularity of pandas is a rare source of soft power for China, inspiring warm feelings and cultural acceptance. But the flipside of cuteness is vulnerability. Pandas are seen as 'national treasures' in China, and nationalist netizens are becoming upset about the practice of entrusting them to foreign powers. This is not the only case where Chinese popular nationalism has been at odds with the official nationalism of Chinese foreign policy. In our article, we explore these issues by looking at the Chinese government's response to the death of a panda in an American zoo. And we examine how the panda came to be such an emotionally charged and politically powerful symbol in the first place. In February 2023, the 25-year-old giant panda Lele died of heart disease in Memphis Zoo, shortly before he was due to return to China at the end of his 20-year loan. His female companion, Yaya, went back to China soon after. Yaya had suffered from a skin condition for many years, and in 2020 American animal rights groups In Defense of Animals and Panda Voices began posting photos of the pandas appearing dirty and emaciated, with missing fur. These photos generated rumors on Chinese social media that the pandas were being fed substandard bamboo and contaminated water. Much of the outrage and concern, expressed across millions of social media posts, was couched in nationalist terms. One Weibo user commented: our national treasure panda begging for food while kneeling is the same as us 1.4 billion Chinese people begging for food while kneeling! Another complained: pandas are claimed to be national treasures, but they are more like princesses in diplomatic marriages. In the face of national interests, whether a panda is doing well or dying is fundamentally unimportant. Many called for the abolition of panda diplomacy. The Memphis Zoo controversy happened at one of the lowest points in the recent history of relations between the US and China. Former President Joe Biden had just ordered the destruction of a Chinese surveillance balloon that had spent weeks in American airspace. Planned diplomatic talks had been cancelled, and both sides were accusing each other of infringing their sovereignty. Under these circumstances, we might expect the Chinese government to exploit popular nationalist outrage directed at the United States. Instead, its response to the death and illness of the Memphis pandas was measured and conciliatory. Following Lele's death and just before Yaya's return, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters the pandas had received good care from the zoo and great affection from the American people […]. China stands ready to continue to work with cooperation partners including the US to play our part in protecting endangered species. Chinese zoological authorities confirmed Lele and Yaya's conditions were normal for pandas 'in the geriatric phase of their lives.' They declared that the Memphis Zoo's care of the pandas was 'excellent.' The hawkish state-owned newspaper Global Times ran editorials exonerating the Americans, even while acknowledging nationalist concerns. It would also exonerate a zoo in Thailand where a panda died a few months later. Other newspapers ran stories about the broader benefits to China of panda diplomacy. Both the online nationalist outrage and the calming state response to the Memphis controversy show the emotional weight and political importance of pandas in China. How did they get to be so important? Historians have documented that pandas were virtually absent from Chinese art, literature and culture until the 20th century. In historical terms, the panda is an unusual political symbol. Many national animal symbols are chosen for their ferocity, such as lions, eagles, and the dragons that long symbolised Imperial China. Pandas, on the other hand, are loved for their roundness, innocence and clumsiness. If a dragon can be seen as a nation's protective parent, a panda is more like its vulnerable child. The fact that wild pandas are only found in China deepens this attachment, much as it does for Australians with koalas or New Zealanders with kiwis. Our search for mentions of xiongmao (panda) in China's People's Daily newspaper shows a developing consciousness of pandas as a rare national animal from the 1950s onwards. This was accelerated in the 1970s by the popularity of pandas gifted to other countries, and the widespread commercialization of panda images. In 1983, the wild panda population in Sichuan was brought to the brink of starvation by the flowering and death of bamboo plants. This led to the mass mobilisation of the population to save the precious bears through donations and volunteering. This incident enshrined the language of pandas as 'national treasures.' It also elevated the panda as a global icon of wildlife conservation. Today, conservation research is China's main public reason for sending pandas abroad. The 21st-century panda has many layers of accumulated symbolism. It is a symbol of China, a symbol of international friendship, a symbol of global environmental consciousness and a symbol of the universal power of cute. These symbolic layers have generated complex and contradictory political emotions around pandas in China. In 2023, there was widespread speculation that pandas would not be returning to the United States and Australia because of their poor relationships with China. That speculation turned out to be premature. But the question of whether 'national treasure' pandas should be diplomats will remain a difficult one in a world defined by both environmental and human vulnerability. David Smith is associate professor in American politics and foreign policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney and Minglu Chen is senior lecturer in government and international relations, University of Sydney This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
