Zhejiang Sci-Tech University opens Linping campus

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An aerial view of the new campus of Zhejiang Sci-tech University in Linping district, Hangzhou. [Photo/Zhejiang Daily]

The Zhejiang Sci-tech University opened its Shishang College in Linping district, Hangzhou on Aug 29.

The college, also known as Zhejiang Sci-tech University Linping, is the first university in the district.

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An aerial view of Zhejiang Sci-tech University, Linping. [Photo/Zhejiang Daily]

The campus spans over 300,000 square meters and will accommodate 8,000 students and teachers from five existing colleges: School of Fashion Design & Engineering, School of Art and Design, School of Art and Design, Shi Liangcai School of Journalism and Communication, Law School, and Fashion Design College of Istituto Marangoni.

Founded in 1897, Zhejiang Sci-tech University is now home to 20 colleges and schools. It has also cooperated with 155 institutes from 46 countries and regions to promote international education.

Address: 8 Kangtai Road, Linping district, Hangzhou

Hangzhou among top 10 Chinese cities in the robotic industry

An engineer fine-tunes an industrial robot in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on Jan 16, 2022. [Photo by Long Wei/For China Daily]

The 12th China International Robotics Summit kicked off in Wuhu, Anhui province on Friday, attracting over 600 enterprises, and scientific research institutions.

The summit aims to promote the robotic industry for clustering development and building new ecology.

Based on the robotic listed companies’ number and output value, industrial park’s number, winning number of the Capek Prize, robotic downstream market, supporting policies, and talent training, the summit announced the top 10 cities which have a strong comprehensive strength in robotic industry.

Hangzhou, capital of East China’s Zhejiang province, ranked seventh on the list.

Alibaba ranks the second most valuable Chinese brand

With a value of $204.38 billion, tech giant Tencent takes the crown as the most valuable brand in China, according to the 2022 Kantar BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Chinese Brands ranking.

Alibaba, a tech giant based in Hangzhou, capital of East China’s Zhejiang province which was valued at $137.03 billion, came in second place, followed by alcohol brand Moutai ($108.49 billion) and short video app Douyin ($43.48 billion).

This year, the total value of the top 100 Chinese brands surpassed the monumental $1 trillion mark for a second successive year, reaching $1.24 trillion.

A total of 12 newcomers made it onto the Chinese brand rankings this year, led by lifestyle-focused social platform Xiaohongshu and intelligent speech and AI technology company iFLYTEK.

Fuchun River night gala kicks off

[Photo/Facebook account: Hangzhoufeel]

The night gala themed around the Fuchun River Landscape kicked off in Tonglu with a series of wonderful activities such as distinctive performances and intangible cultural heritage project display and performance on August 29.

It is to celebrate and promote the Qiantang River Poem Cultural Heritage Ecological Reserve cooperated by Tonglu county, Fuyang district and Jiande city.

Natural spectacle Qiantang Tidal Bore to wow Hangzhou spectators

The spectacle ushers in the best time of the year for sightseeing with the advent of the Mid-Autumn Festival on Oct 1, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]

Though East China’s Hangzhou has gone through an unprecedented hot summer this year with less rainfall, the water flow of the Qiantang River, the city’s mother river, was only slightly affected and will continue to present the annual natural spectacle known as the Qiantang Tidal Bore.

As the period around the 18th day of the eighth lunar month, which falls on Sept 13 this year, is the best time to watch Qiantang River’s tidal bores, the Hangzhou Hydrology and Water Resources Monitoring Center has estimated the maximum tide height this year to be around 1.4 meters and recommends people come to witness it.

Xiaoshan Tide Watching City and Qibao village are the best sites to watch back-flow bores, which are created by bores strongly crashing against the levee and producing waves which are even higher than the levee.

Xiasha Bridge, Hangzhou City Balcony, and Nanxing Bridge are the best sites to watch one-line bores, which are most magnificent when watching from the sky with waves rolling forward at the same speed to form one long and straight line.

Qiantang River usually enters its tidal bore period in the seventh lunar month. There are more than 700 tides in the river every year, most of which are medium-sized or small. Big tides come at the beginning and end of each lunar month.

The Qiantang River, the Amazon River in South America, and the Ganges River in South Asia are known as the “the world’s three strong tide rivers”.

The effect of the moon, the sun and other celestial bodies on the sea water causes the tide. The horn shape of Hangzhou Bay and the huge sandbar at the mouth of the bay make the tides of the Qiantang River especially spectacular.

Zhejiang holds regular meeting on economic stability and quality improvement

Yuan Jiajun speaks and emphasizes the importance of hard work and efficient action to consolidate the momentum of economic stabilization and recovery

Wang Hao presides over the meeting; Huang Jianfa is present

On the afternoon of the 29th, the province held a regular working meeting on economic stabilization and quality improvement in Hangzhou. Yuan Jiajun, Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, emphasized the necessity to implement the instructions of General Secretary Xi Jinping on the “three major events”, and the spirit of the Provincial Party Congress. He also emphasized the importance of economic stability and quality improvement, production security, reform, hard work and efficient actions, so as to ensure that the economy operates within a reasonable range, that the overall social situation is safe and stable. He said we must make more contributions to the overall situation of the country with Zhejiang’s stability and progress, and take practical actions to meet the Party’s 20th National Congress.

Wang Hao, deputy secretary of the provincial party committee and governor, presided over the meeting, and Huang Jianfa and other leaders at or above the deputy provincial level were present. The person in charge of the Provincial Development and Reform Commission reported on the economic operation, and showed the city and county (city, district) indicators. The Secretary-General of the Provincial Government and the leaders of the Provincial Department of Economy and Information Technology, the Provincial Department of Construction, the Provincial Department of Commerce, the Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security, and the Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission reported the progress of the relevant work. The leaders of Ningbo City, Shangcheng District and Jiangshan City made speeches. The meeting clarified the goals for September.

Yuan Jiajun fully affirmed the achievements of the past month, and further analyzed the current economic problems and the shortcomings in the present actions. He emphasized that the more severe the situation is, the more we must stay awake in our actions, and do our things well. We must take reform as our driving force, improve our ability and solve problems creatively. We must stimulate the initiative and fighting spirit of enterprises and the whole society, make concerted efforts to overcome difficulties and assume our leading responsibility.

Yuan Jiajun said we must “fight a battle and go further”, and rely on the power of science and technology to improve our capacity for regional epidemic prevention and control. We must reverse the downward trend of the service industry as soon as possible, and effectively promote the stable and healthy development of the real estate market. We must go all out to smooth the circulation and stabilize the industry, stabilize and solidify the chains in a coordinative way, and promote the efficient operation of logistics. We must better promote the implementation of policies, vigorously expand the investment structure,

pay close attention to the projects under construction, and optimize the “horse racing” mechanism. We must take multiple measures to stabilize foreign trade, foreign investment and consumption, do everything possible to optimize the factors, and focus on solving problems such as energy supply and price reduction, and financing for small, medium and micro enterprises. We must do our best to stabilize employment and benefit people’s livelihood, tap employment potential, promote employment growth, and expand income-increasing channels, so as to ensure the basic bottom line and eliminate risks.

Wang Hao emphasized that we must accurately analyze the shortcomings in economic operation, enhance the awareness and the ability of reform, and overcome difficulties with innovation, so as to promote stable economic progress and quality. We must implement the supervision feedback from the State Council and the service working group on stabilizing the economic market, make full use of policy-based financial tools, and go all out to promote the construction of major projects. We must strengthen our service awareness and service capacity, deepen digital reform, reduce taxes and fees, stabilize employment, optimize supervision, and create a market-oriented, legal-oriented international business environment.

The meeting was held in the form of video conference to all cities, counties (cities, districts), and the heads of relevant provincial departments participated in the main venue.

Programers invent a translator system for better communication with visually impaired people

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.

Flying discs soar in popularity among all ages

Trending sport goes viral for social aspect, less physical contact, fun competition, aiming for bigger market share

When a group of college students started their flying disc business back in 2008 in China, few of them could imagine the then little-known sport would have such a big popularity spurt across the country this summer, or that their company would grow to become among the best-of-class in China.

Flying discs are known throughout most of the world by the registered trademarked name “Frisbee”.It is a recreational and competitive sport that originated in the US and is now increasingly finding favor among Chinese consumers.

“It was a very niche market and we founded it merely based on the enthusiasm towards the sport rather than the idea of making a bunch of money. Luckily, the sport developed so rapidly in the past decade and saw a popularity boom this year. We are eyeing over 100 percent in revenue growth by the year-end to reach about 100 million yuan ($14.49 million) despite uncertainties from the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Xu Yingfeng, founder and CEO of Yikun Discs, headquartered in Hangzhou and Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

As of mid-August, players posted over 510,000 customer reviews about playing the sport on Xiaohongshu, a major lifestyle-sharing platform in China, and the activity became a trending topic several times on social media platforms like Weibo and Douyin. The posts, using vivid descriptions, well-taken pictures and videos, as well as a large number of interactive comments, went viral and soon spread to other platforms.

Posters and followers used words like happy, trendy, interesting, competitive, free, fat-burning, exciting and cool to describe the sport.

A research institute under media agency 36kr said flying disc games now surpass skateboarding, cycling and other sports to become one of the most popular sports among young people, with about 60 percent of people surveyed saying they tend to make new friends and expand their social circles through playing the game.

According to the Chinese Flying Disc Administrative Committee, about 500,000 people in China participated in flying disc sports last year, creating a market value surpassing 80 million yuan. Data from Tianyancha, a Chinese corporate information provider, showed that over 120 companies whose businesses are related to the sport are registered in China as of June.

Beijing-based 32-year-old Cheng Jin is a fan of flying disc games. “It’s getting hard to make new friends at my age when all of my time is spent either on work or the family. Playing it is a good way to expand my social circle as my friends engaged in the game would invite their friends. The more, the merrier.”

“In addition, the sport is quite easy, so I don’t need to spend a lot of time and energy learning about the rules or the skills to enjoy it. It is also quite safe to play as the sport barely requires physical contact,” she said.

The report said about 47 percent of the post-90s generation surveyed said they are interested in the sport, which is the highest proportion among all age groups. Roughly 44 percent of the post-85 generation surveyed showed interest in the sport, and 27 percent of the post-00s generation surveyed liked to play flying disc sports.

Expanding to all age groups, a recent report by iiMedia Research showed about 81.2 percent of the 1,442 respondents surveyed have participated in flying disc games. Among them, 50.8 percent of people have played it for one and a half years, while 26.1 percent of people have played for half a year.

Involving social interactions, less physical contact and high customer stickiness are key factors that the iiMedia report attributes to the game’s increasing popularity in China.

The number of people who participated in flying disc sports twice a week accounted for the largest proportion, reaching 42.8 percent. Among them, 61 percent said they spent about 60 minutes in each round of a game, according to iiMedia Research.

With the sport gaining increasing popularity in China, the sport is demonstrating higher commercial value.

“Not only are customers willing to spend money on regular sports equipment like discs, gloves, shoes and other equipment, they are also spending money on clubs and competitions and will even pay big money to hire professional photographers to take photos for social media posts,” Xu said.

The 36kr report said that young people’s average annual spending on the trendy sport is more than 6,500 yuan, and 10 percent of young people surveyed spend an average of 10,000 yuan on the sport every year.

“I spent about 30 yuan on my first disc. Just a few weeks later I changed it to a fancier one which cost me about 150 yuan. When I first started playing the sport, my friends and I would find random grassy areas, but now we tend to rent a football pitch that costs about 2,000 yuan for two hours. Sometimes we even hire professional photographers for better photos for our social media posts,” Cheng said.

According to iiMedia Research, the growing popularity of the sport also promotes the development of related industries with a market value totaling 86.77 billion yuan. It estimates that the scale of the flying disc and related industries in China will continue to grow, and the growth rate will accelerate in the next six years.

“Although it seems like the sport gained sudden popularity this year, it’s a result of many years of efforts from those in the industry. The situation was quite different just about a decade ago, which was also the first few years when we started the business. At that time, we had no market and lacked professionals and sufficient funding. Not a lot of people even knew about the game. They thought it was for pets,” Xu said.

“Many people persuaded us not to get into the business because there was barely a market for it, and not doing it seemed to be a rational choice for me. My parents also had concerns as it was such a niche market, not to mention I had to quit a decent job at a bank to start the flying disc business,” he said.

The first step Xu and the other co-founders took to run their business was to innovate discs and send their products to professional players, teams and clubs for reviews for further improvements.

“At that time, good discs on the market were imported from Western countries like the United States. We wanted to make our own products and we succeeded in it. Now our products are even sold to the US and the United Kingdom,” Xu said.

Last year, Yikun’s export of discs surged nearly 200 percent year-on-year and came close to 50 million yuan, accounting for over 80 percent of the company’s total revenue, which stood at about 60 million yuan.

The company’s products also won the most recognition among domestic consumers. About 49.7 percent of consumers surveyed knew about Yikun’s products, followed by Decathlon which was 41.5 percent, according to the iiMedia report.

The next step was to figure out ways to promote the sport to a wider range of players. Xu and his colleagues made efforts to introduce the sport to schools, camps, tourist agencies and clubs, and made attempts to hold professional competitions.

“In the past decade, there were a growing number of clubs, camping organizers and sports teams from colleges to promote the flying disc sport to a wider range of audiences. Today, the sport is seen not only in colleges but also in parks, playgrounds and even in elderly gatherings. Discussions about the sport have also spread from blogs to different forms of social media platforms like short and long video sharing platforms,” Xu said.

Ge Yue, co-founder of the Starry Woods Camp in Chongqing, introduced the sport to the camp she managed back in 2017.

“Back then, I was a project manager at another educational camping company. Children love the sport as they can run, throw, catch, or avoid discs with many other kids. It is a highly interactive sport that involves both boys and girls but is very less likely to see confrontations or conflicts during a game. It is also easy for us to start a flying disc game as it has no specific requirements on places or judges. All you need to do is to find a playground,” she said.

The increasing popularity of the activity has drawn attention of the government. In 2019, the Asia Oceanic Ultimate and Guts Championships was held in Shanghai with government support, marking the first time that China held a global-level competition in the sport.

In July, the General Administration of Sport announced China’s first flying disc tournament starting in August, with a series of competitions being held in cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, and the final competition to be held in May next year.

“With flying disc officially becoming an option in physical education classes for elementary and middle schools, we are confident that the sport will have a bigger market going forward. We are lucky to witness the sport’s development in the past few years and to tap the growing consumer demand,” Xu said.

Hangzhou makes the first legislation on the famous historical and cultural city

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 gives China a victory at US Open

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.