Latest news with #southwesternChina
South China Morning Post
18-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
China's coffee revolution sees youth swapping tea for lattes
At a cafe on a mountainside in southwestern China, Liao Shihao makes coffee using locally grown beans, bringing a modern twist to the area's traditional beverages. For a long time, Pu'er in Yunnan has been famous for its fermented tea. However, younger Chinese people now favour strong espressos, creamy lattes, and flat whites. Every year, Pu'er's plantations sell tens of thousands of tonnes of coffee to big cities in China, according to government data. Liao's family has run the Xiaowazi, or Little Hollow, coffee plantation for three generations. Little Hollow produces around 500 tonnes of raw coffee fruit each year. China's coffee production has significantly increased in recent years. However, it is still much lower than that of major producers like Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia. Yunnan produces almost all of China's coffee, mainly in Pu'er. Officials are keen to expand the sector further. Answer: coffee made with locally grown beans
South China Morning Post
18-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
China shop owner live-streams feather-plucking chicken butts to promote delicacy
A shop owner in southwestern China has gone viral for live streaming herself plucking feathers from the bottoms of chickens, drawing tens of thousands of people seeking stress relief. Advertisement Wang Yuxian, a snack vendor in her early 30s from Leshan, Sichuan province, runs a small eatery with her friend Yang Yanli. The shop specialises in local delicacies like chicken behinds, rabbit meat and duck tongues. However, business had slumped since early 2025, with profits dipping. Wang Yuxian, left, carefully plucks away at piles of chicken pieces during a live-stream. Photo: In March, Wang posted a video of herself plucking feathers from the rear end of chickens.
New York Times
07-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Genetic Study Retraces Covid's Origins in Bats
In the early 2000s, a coronavirus infecting bats jumped into raccoon dogs and other wild mammals in southwestern China. Some of those animals were sold in markets, where the coronavirus jumped again, into humans. The result was the SARS pandemic, which spread to 33 countries and claimed 774 lives. A few months into it, scientists discovered the coronavirus in mammals known as palm civets sold in a market at the center of the outbreak. In a study published on Wednesday, a team of researchers compared the evolutionary story of SARS with that of Covid 17 years later. The researchers analyzed the genomes of the two coronaviruses that caused the pandemics, along with 248 related coronaviruses in bats and other mammals. Jonathan Pekar, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Edinburgh and an author of the new study, said that the histories of the two coronaviruses followed parallel paths. 'In my mind, they are extraordinarily similar,' he said. In both cases, Dr. Pekar and his colleagues argue, a coronavirus jumped from bats to wild mammals in southwestern China. In a short period of time, wildlife traders took the infected animals hundreds of miles to city markets, and the virus wreaked havoc in humans.
