East China copes with Typhoon Ampil as it hits

Ampil, the tenth typhoon this year, made landfall on Chongming island in Shanghai at 12:30 p.m. yesterday with winds of up to 28 meters per second near its eye, the municipal meteorological observatory said. The typhoon was moving northwestward but waning in strength, the observatory said. Chongming island, 45 km east of downtown Shanghai, is situated at the mouth of the Yangtze River. Shanghai municipal flood control headquarters said it relocated more than 190,000 people, called over 1,600 ships back to port and reinforced 46,000 trees citywide.

Two ‘comfort women’ speak out

A pair of sisters, both in their 90s, from central China’s Hunan province, have come forward to speak out about their experiences as comfort women and their suffering at the hand of Japanese soldiers during World War II. According to Xinhua, staff of “The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders” came across the sisters when visiting Yueyang city in Hunan. The elder sister, Peng Renshou, 94, told them she was captured and taken to a comfort station in the autumn of 1939 when she was only 14. After being raped repeatedly, a Japanese soldier cut open her belly. She survived but was unable to have children. The other sister, Peng Zhuying, 90, said she lost her eyesight as a victim of Japanese germ warfare at the age of nine in 1938. She was then abducted, became a comfort woman and was abused regularly. She was also unable to have children.

Eyesight concerns most Chinese parents: survey

A survey has found that 91.6 percent of Chinese parents are concerned about their children’s eye health, China Youth Daily has reported. Of the 1,951 parents of primary and junior middle school students surveyed a further 72.7 percent said their kids were myopic, 32.8 percent of whom were moderately myopic (300 to 600 diopters) and 5.4 percent severely myopic (600 diopters and above). The survey revealed that incorrect sitting posture (62.7 percent), reading books with eyes too close to the book (54 percent) and frequently playing with computers and mobile phones (53.7 percent) were the top three factors parents believed were causing problems. Too much homework and lack of outdoor activity were also blamed, Cui Hongping, a Shanghai ophthalmologist, told the paper.