Mandy Zuo

For 40 years, Linda He and her family had served themselves from a single communal dish, picking up food with the same chopsticks they used to eat their meal as part of a long dining tradition in Chinese communities. But that changed last month when she started something of a dining table revolution: she added a second pair of chopsticks – just for serving. “Sharing food has been a tradition, but I have always thought we should abandon it because it helps spread diseases,” said He, who lives with her parents and child in Shanghai. The terror of the Covid-19 pandemic has caused many people in China to examine their eating habits, in much the same way as it has prompted people around the worl

Psychologist Huang Jing has been busier than ever since the coronavirus outbreak began in China late last year.  More married couples are seeking her services, as their relationships are pushed to breaking point by the pressures of disease and enforced social isolation, she says. Based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, Huang has both domestic and overseas clients.  She said the pandemic was putting a “magnifying glass” on relationships, bringing cracks into sharper focus, with many families forced to stay at home together for months on end.  The coronavirus has sickened 2.5 million people globally and killed 177,688 as of Wednesday. In the US, the country most affected by the virus,

In the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, a sock manufacturer sensed an opportunity when the country was in the throes of the coronavirus epidemic in February. He decided the time was ripe to get into the business of making medical face masks. He bought a machine, even though it was not designed to make masks, and modified it to fit his needs.  The company is now producing 40,000 to 50,000 masks a day. But the manufacturer said he’s afraid to invest more as the mask market in China is “chaotic.” He declined to be named. Mask making has become a booming industry in China as countries around the world scramble to source supplies of personal protective equipment, both for civilians and for

Two officials in the Chinese city of Wuhan were fired and another was under investigation after government staff used a garbage truck to ship a consignment of pork for human consumption, local authorities said. The government has largely controlled food supplies since Wuhan, the city in central Hubei province at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, was locked down in late January. Residents were outraged when the pork they bought from government stores arrived in the vehicle on Wednesday. The meat, packed in plastic bags containing 1,000 portions, was tipped onto the ground and then handed out to customers, according to residents who complained about tainted food on Weibo, China’s Twit

Wenzhou and Rome may be 5,800 miles apart, but public anxiety about the coronavirus is the same in both places. This is especially true for the thousands of businesspeople from the eastern Chinese coastal city, who have moved to the Italian capital in the last few decades and established one of the biggest Chinese communities in the country. About 100,000 people from Wenzhou, and another 100,000 from nearby Qingtian county, live in Italy, according to official Chinese data, with Milan also hosting a sizable Chinese community. But many are considering their short- and long-term future as Italy reels from the coronavirus epidemic, which has killed more than 148 people and infected roughly 3,85

A number of coronavirus patients in China have tested positive for infection after being cleared, according to official figures.  (Where did the coronavirus come from? How to prevent infections? Here’s what we’ve learned so far about the coronavirus.) Medical experts say it is unlikely they were infected twice and have warned against releasing people from hospital prematurely. As of Thursday, the virus have infected more than 80,000 people in mainland China, of whom more than 50,000 had been released from hospital, official data showed. They were released after getting a negative result in a reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test – the most commonly used test for infectio

Jiang Junsheng has already pulped over a ton of garlic, turning the unwanted crop into fertilizer, but he still has to figure out how to dispose of nearly 5.5 tons of sweet potatoes, cabbages and other vegetables at his organic farm in central China. Jiang has tried halving prices for his top-quality goods, but there has been almost no interest in the products in the last month because the coronavirus forced transportation networks to a grinding halt. “In normal years, I would have sold $5,720 worth of vegetables in the three weeks after the Lunar New Year holiday. This year, it’s nearly zero,” the 39-year-old farmer said from his fields in the central province of Henan. Jiang uses an organ

Ding Yaqing, a lawyer in the southern mainland Chinese city of Guangzhou, just could not understand it when she saw images of people panic buying toilet paper over the border in Hong Kong because of the coronavirus outbreak. “I saw [on the news] that Hong Kong people are stockpiling toilet paper,” Ding said. “But why? How could Hong Kong ever run out?” In Haizhu district where Ding lives, the supermarkets and convenience stores are well stocked with the bathroom necessity, and there are fewer shoppers around because of measures to control the spread of the virus. For Ding, who has been working from home like many people in mainland China and Hong Kong amid the outbreak, running out of toile

The last thing Shanghai man Tony Qian expected while walking with his wife on grassland below the 28-floor residential buildings of their community was to be hit by a falling piece of dog excrement. And yet, as he looked up to see where the foul missile had come from, he saw a tissue fluttering to the ground which, on closer inspection, was stained with the same muck which had struck him on the shoulder. Qian was lucky. There have been numerous reports in recent years of critical injuries and deaths caused by people flinging dangerous items – including a bicycle, stroller and even a kitchen knife – from their high-rise windows. But his efforts to bring the poo perpetrator to justice went now

Pig farms in China are fighting a high-tech war with gangsters reportedly plotting to profit off a national pork crisis. A pig farm in northeastern China deployed anti-drone equipment following rumors that gangs were trying to spread African swine fever by airdropping the virus into farms. The goal was to scare farmers into selling their livestock at a discount. African swine fever poses no risk to human health but is fatal to pigs. The disease has reduced China’s hog herds by over 40% due to mass culls designed to stop further spreading of the disease. The Chinese authorities uncovered the use of anti-drone devices after a number of pilots complained about losing GPS signals while flying ov