Friday: Film Screening at TCG Nordica
TCG Nordica will have a free showing of "Inglorious Basterds" at 5pm today.

Friday: UK music night at Halfway House
There will be UK rock, pop, and dance from 8pm to 11pm tonight at Halfway House. Union Jack dress is encouraged and entry is free.

Friday: DJs at Uprock
This week's Friday night Uprock party features DJ Marty B and DJ Easy Lee starting tonight at 10pm. The entry fee is 15 yuan.

Saturday: Garage sale fundraiser at Kunming International Academy
The senior class of Kunming International Academy is holding a garage sale on Saturday from 10am to 4pm to help pay for its class trip. The sale will take place across from Swan Lake Restaurant in the same housing complex in which the academy is located.

Saturday: Folk music concert at TCG Nordica
The Fjellhaug music group from Oslo will perform Norwegian folk and other music at TCG Nordica at 8pm on Saturday. Entry is 10 yuan.

Saturday: Live music at Laba
The "Wild Youth" concert on Saturday at 8:30pm at Laba will feature Cat Scratch Fever (猫抓热), Cash Boys (现金男孩), and the all-female metal band Huatan (花旦). Entry is 20 yuan.

Saturday: Live music at On We Go
Artist Laoxie (老谢) will have a solo folk performance Saturday at 9pm at On We Go. The 15 yuan entry fee includes a free CD.

Saturday: Ladies night at Uprock
DJ Shonny and DD DJ will be playing the music at Uprock on Saturday. Entry to the 10pm event is free with a free whiskey and coke or gin and tonic for ladies before midnight.

A village near Baoshan is in shock after the arrest of a man who stands accused of murdering two children and eating their brains, allegedly to cure his epilepsy.

29-year-old Wang Zhaoxu (王朝旭), a resident of the village of Xianqi, is awaiting trial in a local detention center for the grisly murders of a three-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy earlier this year.

Another villager reportedly discovered Wang crouching over the boy's corpse in a field on January 23.

Zhang Huansheng told local media that when he approached Wang and the dead boy, Wang began shaking the child's body and said, "My child has passed out and I'm trying to wake him up. Baby, wake up, wake up."

Later that day after Wang's arrest, the girl's body was found in another part of the village. Both children's skulls were opened, their brains missing.

Wang was attempting to cure his severe epilepsy by eating a mixture of children's brains and earthworms, which is reportedly a local folk treatment for epilepsy.

The names of both victims are being withheld while the investigation continues.

The ongoing drought has depleted hydroelectric power generation to the point that Yunnan has temporarily stopped transmitting electricity to Guangdong province.

Yunnan's hydroelectric dams typically generate a surplus of electricity, which is sold to surrounding provinces and countries.

But this year during Chinese New Year, Guangdong actually donated 350 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to Yunnan, a role reversal for one of the larger consumers of Yunnan's hydroelectric power.

The dearth of precipitation in Yunnan since last year has caused hydroelectric stations across the province to run below capacity, while some are not operating at all, according to local media reports.

Overall, exports of Yunnan-generated electricity to Guangdong are down by 4.23 billion kilowatt-hours this year.

A government official familiar with the energy sector said that the government has made contingency plans that will force electricity-intensive industries to shut down if power supplies become too scarce.

Meteorologists are predicting that Yunnan will not receive significant amounts of precipitation until May at the earliest.

New York Times mistakes dwarf park employees for Clinton, Chilean president
Kunming theme park Dwarf Empire has been receiving increasing attention from foreign media, even spurring ethical debates, but it is now part of a gaffe which may be in the running for one of the bigger blunders made by the New York Times.

Earlier this month, the Times ran a photo of two female Dwarf Empire employees dressed as angels, with the incorrect caption "Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet".

The error, which has since been corrected, was initially caught by the Times' rival The Washington Post and gained wide attention after being noted in the popular blog Boing Boing.

Report: China, Bangladesh to build Kunming - Chittagong transport corridor
China and Bangladesh are set to agree on a plan to develop a transport corridor between Kunming and port city Chittagong this week, according to Indian media reports.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh will meet with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao this week seeking assistance for a US$8.7 billion deepwater port at Chittagong and accompanying rail and road links. Hasina arrives in Beijing tomorrow.

Also on the itinerary for Hasina's visit to China is a weekend stop in Kunming to examine the prospect of extending Yunnan's highway network into Bangladesh via Myanmar.

Indian media has taken interest in the development which, should it come to fruition, would be a significant Chinese foothold in the Bay of Bengal, which has traditionally been India's backyard.

In addition to its geostrategic ramifications, the transport corridor would make it easier for some goods shipped eastward to China to enter the mainland, avoiding the narrow Malacca Strait, home to pirates and US warships.

If rail links are built they would run through Myanmar and might eventually be part of the vast Eurasian rail network centered around Kunming that Beijing is currently promoting.

Kunming-Lhasa flights to resume this month
On March 28 China Eastern Airlines will resume flights from Kunming to Lhasa, Tibet, which were suspended in September of last year.

The daily flights will depart Kunming at 7:00 am and arrive in Lhasa at 10:35 after a stop in Zhongdian, according to the Beijing-based Global Times. Returning flights will retrace the same route and are scheduled to depart Lhasa at 11:25am and arrive in Kunming at 3:00pm.

Landlocked at the crossroads of China, Southeast Asia and South Asia, Kunming first gained international attention as the terminus of an ambitious French rail project connecting French Indochina with Yunnan.

Back then it might not have been difficult to imagine a pan-Asian rail network centered upon the city, but the turbulence of the 20th Century fragmented the continent, impeding the flow of people and goods across borders.

In recent decades relations among Asian countries have experienced a general thawing and once again, rail transport is bringing Kunming's crossroads status into international focus. But this time around it is high-speed rail rather than the locomotive that will drive Kunming's resurgence as a transport hub.

Within a decade, Kunming will be at the center of a high-speed rail network that extends westward across India and Pakistan to Iran, southward to Singapore on the South China Sea, eastward to Xiamen and Shanghai on the Chinese coast and northward to Chengdu – if Beijing has its way.

After India's decision last year to pull out of the plan to rebuild the Stilwell Road connecting northeast India with Kunming, it may be surprising to learn that Beijing and New Delhi are discussing a Chinese-built high-speed rail line crossing. The Hindu reports:


It appears that the long-planned rail network connecting Kunming with Singapore via cities in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia will also be a high-speed rail network, according to Chinese media.

Since beginning to develop its domestic high-speed rail network, China has begun to market its growing prowess in the industry to other countries. State-owned Chinese companies are already involved in projects in Venezuela and Turkey and Chinese companies plan on bidding for upcoming high-speed rail project tenders in the United States.

China recently announced its intention to build a high-speed rail link between Beijing and London. Chinese officials are predicting the completion of a China-built Eurasian high-speed rail network by as early as 2025.

On the domestic front, a new dedicated high-speed passenger line from Kunming to Shanghai is under construction and expected to be completed by 2015. The new route, which will run through provincial capitals Guiyang, Changsha, Nanchang and Hangzhou, will cut travel time from about 37 hours to around 10 hours.

Plans also exist to upgrade existing tracks between Kunming and Chengdu and build a new direct line to Chongqing that will deliver passengers from Kunming in about three hours instead of the current 19-plus hours.

Finally, construction commenced on a high-speed line from Kunming to Nanning last December. There has been some recent speculation that this line will eventually extend to Xiamen, and even Taiwan via tunnel.

China plans on having 42 high-speed rail lines by 2012, covering 13,000 kilometers, which would make it the world's largest rail network of its kind. The new lines will use China's homegrown high-speed rail system, which is a mix of foreign locomotive and carriage technology and domestically designed switching and control systems that is capable of speeds up to 350 km/hour (217 mph).

A girl in Chengdu sparked a "mass incident" this week when she appealed for a boyfriend on a campus message board at the University of Electronic Science and Technology. Potential suitors were to call out her name outside her apartment, but it seems she got more than she bargained for when over 1,000 guys turned up below her window; EastSouthWestNorth provides the details.

Southwest art: eCitiesChina has a post this week about the North Village Art District in Chengdu's suburban Xindu.

Although Peter Hessler has "postponed" his scheduled appearances at this year's China-based literary festivals, including the Chengdu Bookworm's Literary Festival, he wrote a long post about how snapping away with a digital camera has aided his writing, with examples from his new book, Country Driving.

It was Lei Feng day last week, and it seems like the man himself came back to life to talk about how to do good deeds in the 21st century. Danwei translates the micro-blog parodies. (Requires proxy.)

Finally, back to EastSouthWestNorth, which transcribes an interview with artist Ou Zhihang, a Guangzhou TV host who has won a prize at the World Press Photo (WPP) competition for his photography series depicting himself doing naked push-ups around China. The artist discloses how he manages to avoid arrest while photographing himself in front of Chinese landmarks and the locations of major social events as well as his motivations for his nude photography.

Friday: Movie screening at TCG Nordica
TCG Nordica will be showing the film "Das Weisse Band" (The White Ribbon) by filmmaker Michael Haneke tonight at 5pm. Entry to the screening is free.

Friday: DJs at Uprock
DJs Mong and Yosof will be presiding tonight at Uprock. The free music starts at 10pm.

Saturday: Live music at Laowo Bar
Metal band Ensay (扣弦乐队) will perform at Laowo Bar on Saturday at 9:30pm. Tickets cost 25 yuan.

Saturday: "Cock Rock" at The Hump Bar
The music will start at 10pm on Saturday at The Hump Bar.

Sunday: Brunch at Sandra's
Sandra's is holding a Sunday brunch from 11am to 4pm. The 85 yuan spread includes cheeses, meats, homemade bread, Swedish cinnamon rolls, German apple pancakes, pizza and bloody Marys. Call 15825267010 for reservations.

Crime boss invokes coal mining alibi
Alleged Kunming gang leader Shen Chao (沈超) started his criminal trial yesterday in a Kunming court along with 32 other members of his gang, according to a Kunming Information Hub report.

Shen stands accused of committing a number of serious crimes between 2006 and 2009, including organizing illegal gambling, leading a criminal gang, possession of an illegal firearm, and murder.

The story quotes Shen as denying the crimes by explaining that he was, "too busy investing in coal mines in Zhaotong to commit the crimes."

The trial is expected to conclude today.

Kunming bombards clouds with no result
Kunming meteorologists fired 40 cloud seeding rockets from March 9 to 10 in an attempt to draw rainfall from the clouds covering the city earlier this week.

A Kunming Information Hub article on the operation reports that a light drizzle did fall in some areas around the city, but that the maximum recorded rainfall was just 0.7 millimeters.

As Yunnan's worst drought on record intensifies, government officials are under increasing pressure to appear to be taking action to address the widespread water shortages, crop failures, and wildfires that have been a result of the drought.

According to the article, as of March 9, 3,326 rockets and 3,019 shells had been fired in cloud seeding operations in southwestern China. There has been no mention of what substances are being used, although silver iodide is widely used around the world.

Kunming has an average annual rainfall of 1,040 millimeters, but the total for 2009 was just 571 millimeters.

Water management official commits suicide
The drought in Yunnan appears to have claimed its first fatality – Chinese media is reporting that a water management official in Lufeng county jumped from his office window on March 3, apparently due to mounting work pressures.

In addition to dealing with the drought, Lufeng water management bureau director Li Jianrong (李建荣) was also coping with the aftermath of a magnitude 5.1 earthquake that struck the area on February 25.

Li's colleagues told reporters that he was facing enormous work pressure from addressing both the drought and the earthquake.