1776 Challenge Cup

“1776 is a platform to reinvent the world by connecting the hottest startups with the resources they need to excel. From our Campus a few blocks from the White House, 1776 serves as a global hub for startups tackling major challenges in education, energy, health care, government, and other critical industries. 1776 startups receive mentorship, corporate connections, access to capital, media attention, and a pipeline of top talent—the raw materials critical for innovators to succeed.”

1776 has been successfully hosting many exciting events. One of them is Challenge Cup.

Interested in getting to know what Challenge Cup is about?

Click here. 

Largest cargo plane taking off

At 8 o’clock in the morning on 29th, Nov, the largest cargo plane in the world called AN-225 arrived at Shijiazhuang in China, ready to load streetcars and ship them to Turkey.

As China daily reported:

“The world’s largest cargo plane will carry two green-energy tram cars from Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, to Istanbul, making it the first air transport of high-quality, domestically built equipment of this scale to fly to Europe.

The AN-225, measuring 84 meters long with an 88.74-meter wingspan, arrived at the airport and waited on the parking apron for the loading of the two streetcars, each weighing about 20 metric tons, on Friday.

Compared to commercial planes, which have two engines, the AN-225 has six engines, allowing it to carry heavy loads, and can fly more than 15,000 km in a single flight.

Transporting the streetcars from China to Turkey by air is much more time-efficient compared with traditional means on the sea or by rail, but loading the massive cars was a laborious task.

Twenty-one employees from the AN-225’s owner and Ukrainian aircraft manufacturer Antonov installed two giant tracks to guide the 40-meter-long tram cars into the plane and worked from 8 am to about 6 pm on Friday to complete the loading process.

Inside the aircraft, the parallel tracks were fixed to the floor, and various other tethers were attached to keep the streetcars in place during the flight.

The occasion marks the seventh time the enormous cargo plane has landed at Shijiazhuang Zhengding International Airport since 2006. The airport is the only one in the country approved to land the AN-225 by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.”

 

How much is a letter worth of? 6.5 million!

In 2013 China Guardian fall auction, a letter written by Lu Xun, a very famous Chinese writer,  was bid at the price of 6.55 million Chinese Yuan, which is close to 1 million USD.

What is even more surprising is that this letter only contains around 200 Chinese characters, meaning that each character is worth of more than 30,000 Chinese Yuan, which is about 5000 USD.

Let us take a look what the letter is like:

Chinese third plenary-both challenges and opportunities in future.

The third plenary has always been one of the most important national conferences in China. During this conference, all the highest government leader gather together and discuss the future trend of China and publicize the results.

This conference always attracts the attention from all over the world especially big countries like USA.

During this year, what issues have been discussed? Or in which direction is China going to?

Please click China daily to link to a comprehensive report.

How much does it cost to marry someone?

China daily has reported a very interesting Chinese domestic news about an engagement. Let’s take a look.

“A man from Yiwu city brings more than 888,8888 yuan($1.5 million) in cash as part of his betrothal gifts for his bride’s family to their home in Pujiang, East China’s Zhengjiang province, Nov 12. The money weighs 102 kilograms, and his gifts also included wine, according to local tradition”

11.11-A big day in China business world.

During recent 2-3 years, 11th, November, which is greatly known in China as 11.11, has been shaped as a very big day. It is like Chinese “black friday”.

It is now the biggest online shopping day in the world and it is in China, not in the US.

11.11 is also known as “single day”. Before several years ago, it was mostly used to joke about those people who were single and then companies saw the business opportunity of this day and started to promote discounted goods for single people. Since it has become so profitable, all kinds of companies started to heavily promote on this day to various types of consumers no matter they are single or not.

The biggest platform that companies use to sell their products online is Alibaba, which is founded by Ma Yun, a living legend in China who has built up his empire from doing e-commerce and who has forecast the great e-commerce future in China.

This year, the “11.11 sale” started at 0 o’clock in 11.11, according to Alibaba’s real time data, after 55 seconds, the sales number has overpassed 100 million Chinese Yuan;  after 6 min and 7 seconds, the number has reached to 1 billion Chinese Yuan; 13 min 22 seconds, the number has reached to 2 billion Chinese Yuan. According to Ma Yun’s estimation, this year, the final 11.11 sales would reach to 30 billion Chinese Yuan in ONE day. It is amazing, isn’t it?

 

An ancient tomb was found during reconstruction in China

In Fuzhou, China, a lot of ancient bricks that were used to build tomb were found during reconstruction of an old neighborhood. After an archeology team’s excavation, a tomb that was built more than 1000 years ago was found. Along with the excavation, a lot of properties that used to belong to the owner were also taken out.

Here are some pictures:

explosions in China again

It seems that it is not quite peaceful in China recently. After the car-bomb suicide in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. There was another series of explosions in Taiyuan, Shanxi province again. So far, the explosions have already led to one death and multiple injures.

Here is the news from China daily:

“TAIYUAN — Explosions that left one person dead and eight injured on Wednesday morning in North China’s Shanxi province were caused by self-made bombs, local police said.

The blasts struck at around 7:40 am in front of the office building of the Shanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, on Yingze Street in the provincial capital of Taiyuan, according to the city’s public security bureau.

Eight explosive sounds were heard. An Explosive Ordnance Disposal team was dispatched to the scene while no other explosive was discovered.

The presence of steel beads and circuit boards found scattered at the scene by an initial investigation indicate the incident was caused by self-made bombs, according to police.

Traffic at the site has been resumed, and further investigation into the case is under way.”

Above pic shows a car window was hit through by the steel ball hidden in the bomb.

China has shot first HD picture of snow leopard

During afternoon on 3th, Nov, in Xinjiang, a journalist witnessed a snow leopard hunting wild goats. He instantly took out his camera and captured extremely precious pictures of wild snow leopard.

Before this series of pictures, all those snow leopard pictures were taken by infrared camera during night or taken after snow leopard was captured . In natural environment, none has taken any HD pics of snow leopard. This is the first time.

Snow leopard is even much more rare than panda. It is called “the king of snow mountain”. It is also the animal under first-class state protection in China and has been put in 《Red data animals》. Right now, the only existing snow leopards are mainly living in Tibet and Xinjiang.

Jimmy Kimmel is in trouble.

Early before, on the live show that Jimmy Kimmel hosted, he gathered a group of kids and hosted a “kid table” to comment on American current issues. When he asked a kid how to pay back the money that America owns to China, the kid said “kill everyone in China”. Later on, after this video was broadcasted, it evoked a huge dissatisfaction among Chinese people and American-Chinese people.

According to Time Entertainment:

“On Monday, protesters marched through the streets of San Francisco carrying pictures funnyman Jimmy Kimmel’s face — with a Hitler mustache drawn above his lip and a swastika by his side. More than 100 people, largely Asian Americans, were still fuming about a skit that aired on Kimmel’s late-night show earlier this month”

Click the link to see the full article about this incident.

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