East China’s Zhejiang province has seen rapid advances and significant transformation in several areas over the last 10 years, according to a top provincial official.

Zhejiang’s gross domestic product reached over 7.35 trillion yuan ($1.06 trillion) in 2021, ranking fourth among provincial-level regions in China. Its per capita GDP topped 113,000 yuan, marking an average annual increase of 7.1 percent in the past decade, Yuan Jiajun, Party secretary of Zhejiang, said on Tuesday at a news conference in Hangzhou, the provincial capital.

The income of Zhejiang’s urban and rural residents more than doubled during the period, Yuan said. Last year, the per capita disposable income of urban residents and rural residents stood at 68,487 yuan and 35,247 yuan, respectively.

Zhejiang’s urbanization rate grew in the past 10 years from 63.2 percent to 72.7 percent, and the income ratio between urban and rural residents decreased from 2.37 to 1.94, he said.

In May last year, Zhejiang became a demonstration zone for common prosperity, characterized by a more equal distribution of wealth among its residents. For several years, the province has been making efforts for balanced development between its more developed coastal areas and poorer mountainous areas.

Currently, 30.6 percent of households in Zhejiang have an annual disposable income of 200,000 to 600,000 yuan, a common indicator of middle-income families. The figure is expected to increase to 45 percent by 2025.

Zhejiang’s robust and high-quality development has been driven by strong growth in its digital economy, particularly in the past five years, Yuan said. The province’s digital economy accounted for 48.6 percent of its total GDP last year.

“Reform is always the key,” Yuan said at the news conference. A series of measures to streamline the administrative processes, dubbed the “At Most, One Visit” campaign, has further improved Zhejiang’s governance and business environment, and the ongoing digital reform will inject more vitality into its overall development.

The total number of market entities in Zhejiang currently stands at 9.06 million, up 7.3 percent year-on-year, according to provincial statistics published on Monday. This means one in every seven Zhejiang residents is now a business owner.

The province’s natural environment has also seen steady progress, and public satisfaction with the environment has risen for 10 consecutive years.

People in Zhejiang now have easier access to medical care and public education, Yuan said. “After 10 years of improvement and progress, the people of Zhejiang are now living a more prosperous, happy and meaningful life.”

Programmers from Alibaba invent a translator system for better communication with visually impaired people. Screenshot of Qianjiang Evening News

Braille is a writing system for visually impaired people to communicate with other people. However, Braille is difficult for ordinary people to recognize through eyes. When the teachers at schools for the blind try to check students’ work, they always need to spend lots of time reading. In this case, Braille is inefficient, tiring for eyes, and may, in return, undermine their study effects.

After learning about the difficulty of teachers at the school for the blind, a programmer team from Alibaba Company in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, came up with the idea of developing a translator system to turn Braille into Chinese characters quickly. “With this translator, we can easily see what the students wrote and know what they have done well and what they haven’t so that we can help the students study effectively,” said Zhang Xinhua, a Chinese teacher in a school for the visually impaired in Zhejiang. Over a year, the programmer team has overcome lots of technical difficulties and kept improving the system’s recognition accuracy. They hoped that more people who could not read Braille would also be able to communicate with the visually impaired people, understand their lives, and give the vulnerable group more warmth and care.

Since 2010, Alibaba has begun to provide many special products for their visually impaired clients, such as launching the braille medicine box and developing the technique of online shopping by listening to the merchandise’s description. And various methods are still under research to make their lives more convenient.

As one of the first batch of the National Famous Historical and Cultural Cities, Hangzhou has three world cultural heritage sites, namely, West Lake Cultural Landscape, China Grand Canal (Hangzhou Section) and the Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City. It has been the mission of all generations of Hangzhou people to inherit and protect the historical and cultural heritages of the city. On the fourth session of the Standing Committee of the 14th Municipal People’s Congress held yesterday, Regulations for the Protection of Hangzhou as a Famous Historical and Cultural Cities (Draft) was brought up for deliberation. This was the first legislation for the city-based protection of history and culture in Hangzhou.

Centered on the protection of the famous historical and cultural city, coordination between cultural heritage conservation and development of modern society, and activation and utilization of historical buildings, the Regulations (Draft) can set forth provisions on aspects of “what to protect”, “who to protect” and “how to protect”. It defines that the objects under the protection include the traditional layout of the historical blocks and traditional architectures with historical features, clarifies the specific duties of the departments of the municipal government at all levels and specifies the scheme for listing the objects under the protection and plan implementation.

In addition to the protection, there are also detailed regulations on the activation and utilization of historical buildings and traditional architectures with traditional features. Also, market mechanisms will be introduced to encourage private capital to participate in the protection and utilization.

Wu Yibing of China celebrates after defeating Nikoloz Basilashvili of Georgia during the men’s singles first round on the first day of the 2022 US Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Monday in New York City. Xinhua

Wu Yibing on Monday became the first male tennis player from China in 63 years to win a Grand Slam tennis match with a victory at the US Open on Monday.

The 22-year-old qualifier upset No 31 seed Nikoloz Basilashvili 6-3, 6-4, 6-0. He blasted nine aces in his 31 winners past his Georgian opponent in the match at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens.

“It’s happy and exciting but still more matches to come,” Wu told atptour.com.

“The third set, I don’t know if he was hurting or something, I just tried to make all the balls and tried to stay in the game, not thinking about winning or losing.

“That’s why I guess I didn’t show much emotion. I feel pretty calm,” he said.

Wu was grateful to be back at the US Open.

“I’m happy to be back here playing here in a major event since 2017, when I won here. It’s pretty special for me, but I’m just trying to play my tennis, show the people or myself that I still can play,” Wu said. “It’s been a tough few years for me. I really suffered from injuries and COVID in China. It seems like I can still play a little bit of tennis.

“I’m happy about what I did here. I love the people here, the crowd,” Wu said. “Many Chinese people came to support, I love it.”

Wu had played his way into the field through the qualifying tournament, joining countryman and fellow qualifier Zhang Zhizhen as the first Chinese men in the US Open main draw since the open era began in 1968.

Wu was almost joined in the second round by Zhang, China’s top-ranked player, but the 25-year-old was beaten by Tim van Rijthoven of the Netherlands, who saved seven match points in the third set to seal a 3-6 6-7, 7-6, 6-1, 6-4 victory.

“We are both pushing Chinese men’s tennis levels, and we’re still young. … I think we’re going to get to the Top 100,” Wu added.

Wu, who made it through three qualifying matches, now can walk in the footsteps of China’s Fu Chi Mei, who beat Ron Barnes in the first round of the 1959 Wimbledon Championships in England.

Wu is also the first Chinese man to win a US Open singles match since Cheng Guy did it in 1935.

Wu entered the US Open in good form, having won two ATP Challenger titles back to back. He also has soared in the rankings, moving from 1,869 in March to a career-high 174 now.

He was the world’s No 1 junior and clinched the boys’ singles and doubles titles at Flushing Meadows in 2017 to become the first Chinese male to win a Grand Slam title of any kind.

But it has not been an easy path for the prodigy, as he did not play from March 2019 to January 2022 due to injuries to his elbow, which required back, shoulder and wrist surgeries.

“I don’t really like to talk about those injuries in too (much) detail because every player has injuries,” Wu had told the ATP website. “The mental strength that you have to go through the pain is part of the game.”

Wu next faces Portuguese qualifier Nuno Borges, who defeated American wildcard Ben Shelton, on Wednesday.

Hangzhou has recently introduced the green wave band where vehicles driven at specific speed on designated traffic routes will hit green light at every crossing, thus realizing non-stop travel via signal light control.

Though the green wave band enables the speedier and more efficient transportation, it is subjected to limited conditions of Hangzhou. Signal light control is applicable only under ideal vehicle speed and pedestrian flow and is subjected to the impact of such factors as pedestrians crossing streets and buses entering and leaving the bus station in the actual situation.

Now, green wave bands are seen throughout Hangzhou, and most are short-distance green wave bands in the space of 3-5 crossings, to enhance travel efficiency while guaranteeing safety. Hangzhou has provided multiple green wave band schemes at different time intervals and in different directions to effectively relieve traffic pressure in rush hours.

The Nantong-Suzhou-Jiaxing-Ningbo high-speed railway has been signed into effect and will start construction this year.

The trains will be able to run at speeds of up to 350km/h on the 310-kilometer-long railway, which will not go through Hangzhou but is connected to the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway via a special line, cutting the travel time from Hangzhou to Suzhou to less than an hour.