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Shenzhen at a Glance | Mixture of music along ancient silk road enchants SZ

1. Mixture of music along ancient silk road enchants SZ

Wu Man (2nd left front) plays the pipa with other folk artists. Liu Xudong

A concert by Wu Man, “The Silk Road Musicians and Huayin Shadow Puppet,” held at the Shenzhen Concert Hall on Friday, was probably the one most pertinent to the theme of the Shenzhen Belt and Road International Music Festival, as it presented music from the countries along the ancient Silk Road.

Pipa virtuoso and ethnomusicologist Wu collaborated with Uygur singer Senuber Tursun, Tajik Dutar master Sirojiddin Juraev and Italian Tamburello master Andrea Piccioni to perform famous folk songs, including “Joyous Pamirs” and “A Song of Kazakhstan.” Wu also played solo pieces “Dance of the Yi People” and “Sanliu.”

The performance received applause from the audience. “While I was watching the performance, it was like having a variety of delicacies from different cities along the Belt and Road,” said an audience member.

Wu said, “Different musical instruments have different personalities.” If the first half conveyed an image of a pretty lady dancing to gentle, lyrical tunes, the second half was a rock and roll band gleefully shouting and banging their way on primitive instruments.

The Huayin Shadow Puppet Band joined Wu to present classic pieces, including “Ancient Song of Central Shaanxi Plain” and “The Spirit of Han Dynasty.”

The concert ended with the shadow puppet show, “Three Heroes Fighting Against Lyu Bu,” adapted from the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” by Luo Guanzhong of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The puppet show was accompanied by Wu’s pipa tunes.

2. Work starts on multi-level parking lot

Construction of a fully automatic, multi-level parking facility funded by the city government kicked off Friday at Tongfuyu Industrial Zone in Shiyan Subdistrict, Bao’an District.

The facility will offer 180 parking spaces, including 60 spaces that provide an electric vehicle charging service.

Shenzhen was one of the cities chosen by the National Development and Reform Commission to pilot car park construction in March last year. In 2017, the city gave priority to the construction of multi-level, mechanical parking facilities. The parking facility in the industrial park is said to be the first fully automatic, mechanical and chargeable car parking facility in China.

The steel-structured facility will be built by Shenzhen Jianfa Intelligent Parking Co. Ltd. Drivers can retrieve their cars within 80 seconds.

One advantage of the multi-level parking facilities is that they save land. This facility can offer 180 parking spaces on land that normally accommodates 50 cars.

As the parking facility is Internet-based, drivers can check on their cars, make reservations and pay their parking fees on the app. It will be the first parking facility that is accessible via the city’s intelligent parking icloud platform.

The city unveiled a draft earlier last month offering subsidies to encourage private investment in the construction of multi-level, mechanical parking facilities in a move to save land and solve parking difficulties.

According to the draft, the government won’t charge land users additional fees if they build such multi-level parking facilities that do not increase the approved construction space.

With the increasing number of vehicles, the city is facing worsening parking difficulties, especially in old housing estates.

By the end of 2016, the number of vehicles registered in the city had reached 3.18 million, while the number of parking spaces available stood at 1 million.

The transport commission will expedite the construction of 20 mechanical parking facilities before the end of the year.


3. Online prostitution ring busted

Shenzhen police recently busted a prostitution organization operated via WeChat and arrested 349 suspects. A total of 32 million yuan (US$5.10 million) was confiscated.

In September 2017, the Ministry of Public Security sent a clue to the Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau, requiring it to investigate a group arranging for Chinese women to be prostitutes in Malaysia.

After a three-month investigation, the two suspected ringleaders, surnamed Li and Liu, were exposed. The ring had set up five WeChat groups for prostitution since 2015 and organized the crimes in Malaysia to evade punishment.

Through cooperation with Malaysian police, the task force from Shenzhen confirmed nine locations involved in the prostitution.

On Dec. 12, Li was caught by Malaysian police and at the same time, police in Guangdong, Hunan and Malaysia seized 349 suspects in a coordinated action. The ring leader, Liu, was caught in Hunan.

Li, 32, a native of Hunan, got into the pimping business by introducing women to work in Dongguan and Hong Kong. In 2015, Li conspired with Liu to set up a front company called Changsha Mingri Jinchen Science and Technology Co. Ltd. to cover up their crimes via WeChat.

Li and Liu controlled the online cash transactions of five WeChat accounts and developed an app for prostitution.

To evade punishment, they used bank cards opened by Malaysians in China to withdraw and transfer money.

In Malaysia, the ring members recruited prostitutes via WeChat and sent their information along with photos back to the company. The company even spent money to brand the prostitutes as movie stars and models for companies on fake websites and spread them online using Internet links.

The pimps, prostitutes and patrons conducting the transactions online didn’t know each other in real life.

Transaction records showed the ring had earned 100 million yuan since 2017.

4. Sports meet for autistic kids

Autistic children during a parent-child sports meet yesterday afternoon at Shenzhen Stadium in Futian District. Sponsored by 14 enterprises and agencies, the sports meet was one of a series of activities to be held during the autism-friendly week. Nearly 400 families with autistic children attended the sports meet. Sun Yuchen


5. High-paying jobs offered to jobseekers

Over 8,000 highly paid job vacancies will be offered to jobseekers at the 16th Conference on International Exchange of Professionals (CIEP) to be held April 14 and 15 in Shenzhen, according to sznews.com.

Several job fairs will be held during the CIEP this year. A job fair organized by zhaopin.com will invite well-known enterprises and public institutions in China to offer over 8,000 job vacancies to jobseekers, with an average annual salary of 250,000 yuan (US$39,825).

The job fair will be held April 14 in Hall 2 of the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center. Over 100 renowned enterprises, such as Ping An Group, China Resources Group, China Mobile, China Life Insurance, BYD, Panasonic and IKEA, will attend the job fair. The annual salaries for some of the jobs are over 1 million yuan.

Another job fair targeting college graduates will be held in Hall 2 of the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center on April 14. Over 500 companies will offer more than 20,000 job vacancies to jobseekers, while 90 percent of these jobs won’t require work experience.

6. Better tax services help boost development

A seminar on how to develop the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (Greater Bay Area) by further improving taxation and tax services was held yesterday in Bao’an District.

The seminar was jointly organized by the taxation authorities of Bao’an District and the Qianhai area of the China (Guangdong) Pilot Free Trade Zone and the Taxation Institute of Hong Kong. The curtain of the district’s 27th National Tax Awareness Month was raised at the same time.

“The eight-year reform of the district’s tax administration and collection has brought great convenience to taxpayers,” Xing Huaer, head of Bao’an’s local taxation bureau, told the seminar.

Xing was one of six representatives invited to talk about the reform and changes of tax regime and tax services taking place that are positively influencing the development of the Greater Bay Area.

“We have built more than 100 systems to intensify the risk control of tax collection, and provide accurate data and standards for taxation,” said Xing.

Xing also said that the bureau has provided 72 kinds of tax services that only require taxpayers’ presence in person in one place and without the need for a second visit. “Most of the district’s tax services are now provided online so most taxpayers can finish their declarations on the Internet,” he said.

Wong Shun-on, vice president of the Taxation Institute of Hong Kong, explained Hong Kong’s tax regime and illustrated the SAR’s efforts to improve its taxation.

The seminar also provided an opportunity for tax accountants from different companies to communicate with tax authorities in order to help those enterprises smoothly and efficiently contribute to the construction of the Greater Bay Area.


7. Man defrauded in intl. marriage

A migrant worker in Shenzhen might have fallen for an international marriage trap, as his Vietnamese wife ran away six months after they got married and turned out to have already been married with a daughter back in Vietnam, a Shenzhen TV program reported.

The man, surnamed Yan, was anxious to find a life partner two years ago, as he was in his late 30s and had no experience with romantic relationships. His aging parents, living in Henan Province, were also worried about their son’s marriage.

Yan happened to learn that a friend from his hometown had married a Vietnamese woman named Fangfang through an international marriage agency, so he went to ask for the friend’s help.

Yan’s friend, identified as Wang, and his wife agreed to help Yan find a woman in Vietnam and said they would not charge Yan a commission.

In July 2016, Yan was accompanied by the couple to the city in Vietnam where Fangfang’s family was living. The man met a woman, known as Xiaoqiu, who was only 23 years old.

Fangfang interpreted Yan’s intentions to Xiaoqiu and the young Vietnamese woman agreed to marry him on the spot, but she required that Yan first pay her family betrothal money.

Yan said he transferred 54,000 yuan (US$8,605) to Wang to help Xiaoqiu apply for a visa to China and other legal certificates to prove the woman was unmarried. He later gave Xiaoqiu’s family another dozen-thousand for the betrothal fee.

The man altogether spent 110,000 yuan to marry Xiaoqiu and the couple registered their marriage in China. Yan then left Shenzhen for Henan with his new wife.

Since Xiaoqiu was much younger than Yan, and came from a different country, he took extra care of his wife, but Xiaoqiu appeared to be quite “indifferent” about their life together.

One evening in March 2017, when Yan returned home, his wife was nowhere to be found. It appeared that she had also taken away all of the jewelry and clothing Yan bought for her.

The man later returned to Vietnam to look for his wife, but it turned out that the woman had already been married and had a 5- or 6-year-old daughter. Xiaoqiu’s family also told him that they had not received that much money from Wang.

According to Yan, Wang had also been defrauded by his Vietnamese wife, so he wanted to swindle Yan out of money.

However, Yan has not been able to contact Wang since then, and Fangfang, Wang’s wife, said they were no longer introducing Vietnamese women to marry Chinese men.

Whether the couple knew about Xiaoqiu’s marriage status before they were registered in China still needs to be evidenced, said a lawyer. If so, the couple would be accused of fraud.

Yan worries that he will also be charged with the crime of bigamy, as he and Xiaoqiu had registered legally to get married in China. According to the lawyer, Yan could lodge a lawsuit to ask the court to terminate his marriage with Xiaoqiu, and the Vietnamese Embassy would need to notify the other side.

If Xiaoqiu chooses to overlook the embassy’s notification and the court’s requirement, the marriage could be declared invalid by the Chinese court.

There have been many cases of Vietnamese women successfully marrying Chinese men via an agency’s introduction. Some agencies say the marriage is guaranteed for their Chinese clients because they are able to find Vietnamese women willing to marry Chinese people as long as the men are not physically handicapped.

However, the lawyer also cautioned that businesses involved in international marriage could be linked with scams or abduction.


211 detained

Police detained 211 people and impounded 1,613 unlicensed electric bikes and motorcycles in a citywide action Sunday. Among them, 104 violations were made by food and express delivery couriers.

Since March, 30 people have been killed in 121 accidents. Among them, 16 people were killed in 40 accidents involving e-bikes or motorbikes.

Guards detained

Three security guards with a karaoke club in Longhua District were detained for 15 days for attacking a Didi designated driver.

The driver, surnamed Pu, was waiting at the KTV entrance to drive his customer home in the wee hours of Friday when the security guards started trouble, as they thought Pu was blocking traffic. They beat Pu up.

Metro service

Metro Line 4 will shorten the interval of train departures to 2.5 minutes between Hongshan Station and Futian Station starting April 10.

The intervals between Qinghu and Hongshan will be shortened by 54 seconds during the rush hours on workdays. The first trains departing from Shangtang Station will be advanced by 10 minutes to 7:49 a.m.

11,160 school slots

Longhua District is providing 11,160 slots for students at six new public schools this fall to meet the huge demand for school placement due to the booming population in recent years.

The district built or renovated 22 public schools in the last five years. From 2018 to 2020, around 20 public schools will be built or renovated, providing more than 40,000 new slots in the near future.

Holiday trains

Shenzhen North Railway Station will add six pairs of trains to cities in eastern Guangdong for tomb sweepers between Thursday and Saturday, the Qingming Festival period.

The trains include D9742/1 and 9754/3 to Chaoshan, D9744/3 to Puning, as well as D9750/49, D9756/5 and D9758/7 to Lufeng. On the Guangzhou-Shenzhen line, it will add G9682/1 to Guangzhou and G9684/3 to Chenzhou in Hunan Province.

Car competition

The China Autonomous Car Grand Prix (CAC) will be held in Pingshan District this October, a news conference said Friday. The organizer, China Automobile and Motorcycle Sports Federation, will offer a 1-million-yuan (US$159,300) prize to the winner.

(Source: Shenzhen Daily, April 3, 2018)

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