Editor's Note:

On December 13, the tenth national memorial day for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, The Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression held a memorial ceremony to mourn the 300,000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre. University students and teachers in Beijing attended the ceremony, conveying their condolences. (Photo: Li Hao/GT)

The Chinese civilization is the key to keeping people across the Taiwan Straits connected despite certain secessionists political bodies are trying to deny it, Chinese scholars and analysts have stated.

The secessionist forces on the island of Taiwan, led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities, have continued to pursue an acrimonious path in the development of cross-Straits ties and provocation of the Chinese mainland. This has resulted in the stunting of many aspects of the cross-Straits cooperation and dialogue.

Ji Bin, a senior official with the All-China Federation of Taiwan Compatriots, said that despite the DPP authorities' attempts to undermine the importance of traditional culture on the island, Chinese culture is still the foundation that connects compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits.

"The national reunification we are pursuing is not only a reunification on paper, but more importantly, a spiritual unity of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits," Ji said at the 9th Forum on Chinese Culture, an annual event hosted by Peking University where over 150 scholars and experts from both sides of the Taiwan Straits gathered.

He also emphasized that the inclusivity of Chinese civilization is the linchpin to achieving a high-quality form of reunification.

"The achievement of this goal cannot be separated from transforming Chinese culture into a spiritual bond for cultural exchanges, and placing Chinese cultural identity at the spiritual core to construct a cross-Straits community of shared destiny," Ji said. Several high-profile cultural exhibitions, led by a 2011 showing of Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, a masterpiece by Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) artist Huang Gongwang, at the Palace Museum in Taipei, have been tremendously popular.
The piece, burnt into two pieces in 1650 during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was separated during the civil war in the mid-20th century, with one part remaining on the Chinese mainland, which underlines the shared cultural heritage between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits, said Feng Ming-chu, former chief of the Palace Museum in Taipei.

"We are all the inheritors of Chinese culture, which is so profound that it is worth our efforts to promote, as it is shared by the two sides of the Taiwan Straits," Feng told the Global Times.

She also noted that the continued inheritance of Chinese culture by both the island of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland underscores an intrinsic connection between the two sides.

"Nobody could erase the fact that we are sharing the same culture," Feng noted.

Wang Zaixi, vice president of the National Society of Taiwan Studies, highlighted the pivotal role that cultural integration has played in the perpetual rise and fall of the Chinese nation over five millennia.

"One of the major reasons why the Chinese nation has been divided and reunited over the last 5,000 years and has always maintained a great unity is the strong cohesion, and centripetal and inspirational power of Chinese culture," Wang said.

Speaking the same language

Yok Mu-ming, former chairman of the New Party in Taiwan, said that the enduring nature of Chinese culture is a testament to the profound value placed by the Chinese people on family.

"The resilience of the Chinese nation lies in its ability to coalesce in the face of external challenges, reinforcing its unity and strength," he told reporters.

Ho Hui-li, an expert on culture from Taiwan at Tianjin University, brought attention to the practical cultural symbols that could bridge the gap between the two sides.

She advocated for the effective utilization of cultural icons such as Mazu within the island of Taiwan.

Mazu culture, which also holds influence in the southeastern coastal regions of the Chinese mainland, promotes a spirit of volunteerism and selfless dedication, according to Ho.

"For people who don't know much about Mazu, excluding the religious perspective, we can interpret her role as a role model for volunteering, which is equally understandable for both sides of the Taiwan Straits," Ho told the Global Times.

Ho believes that this cultural commonality could serve as a foundation for communication and collaboration between the two sides, noting that "we can work on whether people in Taiwan could volunteer to participate in the mainland rural revitalization activities, an act that would add personal value to their held beliefs as an expression of pure goodwill to each other."

Embracing the future

Chang Ching, a senior research fellow with the Society for Strategic Studies in Taiwan, called for the integration of cutting-edge technologies in promoting Chinese culture among the young generation.

"It could be used as a tool to strengthen Chinese education. We can't reject an information society, nor can we reject AI, which has already entered our lives," Chang said.

"If we can master it and turn it into a tool for cultural innovation and inheritance, I think the future is boundless."

The prevailing sentiment at the forum was that cultural understanding and collaboration hold the key to fostering unity and preventing conflicts.

Chi Chun-Chen, a professor with Ming Chuan University in Taiwan, stressed the importance of continuing to strengthen communication among the youth to reduce misunderstandings, break down stereotypes, and foster genuine connections.

He argued that fostering youth exchanges has become even more critical at a time when secessionists are intensifying their separatist campaigns.

"Youth exchanges must be strengthened as it is a prolific way to strengthen communication and reduce misunderstandings," Chi said, emphasizing that "it's even more important when there are people blatantly advocating for Taiwan secessionism."

"The journey toward peaceful reunification may be long and challenging, but through cultural integration and understanding, the people on both sides can strive toward a harmonious and united future," Chi said.

Editor's Note:

Recently, the US' Department of Defense (DOD) announced an $800 million military aid package to Ukraine, which will include cluster munitions, sparking widespread condemnation from the international community. Cluster munitions are a type of explosive ordnance that can be launched from airplanes, missiles, or cannons, and can contain hundreds of submunitions, which are dispersed over a large area aerially, causing casualties and damage in a wider area. What's even more alarming is that if these bombs land on wet and soft ground, a significant portion of them can become "duds." The "duds" did not explode initially, but will explode later when subjected to external forces or environmental changes.

The US has used cluster bombs multiple times in wars. During the Vietnam War, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were heavily targeted with cluster bombs. Several decades later, the specter of cluster bombs still looms over these three countries. Civilians face unknown dangers, and economic development is constrained. What is even more terrifying is that the local populations have and might continue to be stuck in this state of uncertainty and perpetual danger for decades.
Ho Van Lai, 26, lost both his legs and right arm when he was only 10 years old due to cluster munitions. One day in June 2000, while playing with his two cousins near his home in Quang Tri Province in Vietnam, his cousins found what appeared to be a tennis-ball-sized "toy," but it turned out to be a cluster bomb. The bomb exploded after it was touched, killing his cousin and seriously injuring Ho, according to Project Renew, an NGO in Vietnam. Ho's family home was next to a US military base occupied by American soldiers and where weapons were stored from 1966 to 1972.

Ho's horrific is just an example of the fate shared by a large number of people who continue to suffer through the nightmare of undetonated cluster bombs. Public reports showed that the cluster bombs in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were mostly left behind by the US military during the Vietnam War.

According to the Lao National Regulatory Authority for Unexploded Ordnance (UXO), between 1964 and 1973, over 270 million cluster munitions were dropped by US warplanes in Laos, with approximately one-third of them failing to detonate.

These bombs have posed a significant safety hazard to the local population since the end of the war. Some 80 percent of the people in Laos rely on agriculture, but it is too dangerous for them to farm, Reuters reported.

Laos, which neighbors Vietnam, was not directly involved in the Vietnam War. However, it was subjected to intense bombing by the US military. Analysts noted that on the one hand, it was because Vietnam's territory is long and narrow, and the central region, which saw heavy fighting, lacked strategic depth. As a result, some combatants would seek refuge in neighboring Laos. Moreover, North Vietnamese forces would utilize Laos' dense jungles to transport weapons and ammunition, creating a hidden supply line known as the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" along the Laos-Vietnam border.

Between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped over 2 million tons of bombs on Laos, a number roughly equivalent to the country's population at the time. This staggering quantity of bombs dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War surpassed the combined total dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II. Consequently, Laos holds the unfortunate distinction of being the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. The covert nature of this conflict was intentional, as the CIA sought to disrupt communist supply routes between Laos and Vietnam, read a CNN report.

The bombing campaign was conducted in secrecy, only coming to light through a congressional hearing in 1971 and subsequent media reports. However, the true extent of the devastation caused by this "secret war" in Laos remains largely unknown to the American public, read the report.

From 1965 to 1973, the US dropped some 230,516 bombs on 113,716 sites in Cambodia, according to Yale University. Analysts pointed out that many of the bombs did not explode and are scattered in the border areas of Cambodia, causing great harm to the local environment and development. Local media reported that the affected area in the country due to cluster bombs is about 700 square kilometers.

For decades, farmers in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia have suffered frequent accidentally triggered explosions while working on the land. Construction teams also unintentionally detonated bombs left in the ground while building foundations or repairing roads. Moreover, many children mistook bombs for toys and touched them out of curiosity, resulting in casualties and fatalities. Tragedies related to cluster bombs continue to occur in these three countries.

Farming on the battlefield

Analysts noted that in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, all predominantly agrarian, are the countries that were most affected by the legacy of American bombs.

On one hand, the constantly looming threat of detonating bombs poses a huge safety hazard. Farming is like going to war, and farmers live under constant fear of accidental detonations. On the other hand, the bombs contain highly dangerous and polluting chemicals, causing severe contamination of the local soil and water. This environmental damage is difficult to address in the short term. The dilemma faced by these areas is that clearing unexploded bombs requires a significant amount of manpower and resources, which comes at a huge cost. The prerequisite for this is economic development, which in turn relies on a stable environment. This creates a "deadlock" and is an important reason for the persistent poverty in these countries decades after the war.

During the Vietnam War, many cities in Vietnam also suffered from heavy bombing. To this day, these cities are still plagued with cluster bomb contamination, which has had a serious impact on people's lives and economic development.

Public reports in 2018 revealed that Vietnam has 61,000 square kilometers of bomb-contaminated land, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the total land area. In addition, the water bodies and soil of the Mekong Delta and Red River Delta have also been affected by pollution, which has had a huge impact on Vietnam's economic development.

The high-risk profession of bomb disposal has evolved in Laos, born out of the need to dispose of unexploded American bombs. As the locals often self-deprecatingly say, "Thanks to the US, we are so poor that all we have left are bombs," and "while others rely on mountains for survival, we rely on bombs for survival." The fragments of exploded bomb casings and unexploded bombs are prized by bomb disposal workers. Most of the metal materials from the bomb disposal cottage industry flow into processing plants in Vietnam and are turned into steel needed by the construction industry. According to reports, the price of a pound of bomb scrap metal is 10 cents. Larger bomb casings can be sold for as much as $30 to $40, which is a considerable income for the locals.

Some locals upcycle the materials into chairs and tables made from bomb casings. Some people even use simple equipment to melt bomb body steel and make spoons and other utensils, which are also popular in markets across the country.

There is no doubt that engaging in bomb disposal is a dangerous profession, with occasional reports emerging of practitioners being killed, injured, or maimed by explosions. Relying on scavengers driven by economic need to clear abandoned bombs is also an ironic move for local governments fueled by helplessness, an approach that cannot solve the problem of environmental pollution caused by ammunition debris in soil and water bodies.

Thousands of years to dispose

In fact, in recent years, many countries have established specialized agencies or relied on non-governmental organizations to clean up "war remnants" such as cluster bombs and landmines.

Some Western countries have also established charitable organizations which deploy explosive ordnance experts to Southeast Asia to support bomb clearance efforts. However, compared with the massive amount of unexploded bombs, the support from these organizations is like a drop in the bucket. Many locals have criticized the US, the country which is responsible for deploying the bombs, for not taking enough remedial actions at the national level, which is extremely irresponsible.

According to reports from the Khmer Times, Cambodia needs at least $700 million to clear the remaining cluster bombs in the border areas. Reports showed that since the 1970s, Cambodia has recorded more than 64,000 civilians killed or injuries from leftover undetonated cluster bombs or landmines. To this day, there are still reports of at least one munitions-related accident almost every week.

Meanwhile, despite the Vietnam War having ended several decades ago, many people in Laos are still working every day to search for and dispose of the bombs left behind by the US.

Relevant international organizations are highly concerned about the issue of clearing leftover bombs in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, but they are not optimistic about the short-term progress of the clearance work.

In the book Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos, the author points out that the bombs dropped by the US during the Vietnam War, which cost $17 million per day, now require a huge amount of money to clear safely and counter their impact and environmental damage. Laos spent $61 million between 1993 and 2012. At this rate, it would take thousands of years to completely clear the "harvest" of American bombs.

"The most famous classic novel of China, A Journey to the West, as a matter of fact, is one of the few that have been translated and dubbed using Greenlandic voices for our national broadcasting TV. This shows that even though we are very far away from each other, we can build a bridge and a common future with mutual understanding and efforts," said Vivian Motzfeldt, Greenlandic minister for statehood and foreign affairs, at the official opening of the Greenlandic Representation on Monday at the Royal Danish Embassy in Beijing.  

The reception was attended by the Danish Ambassador to China Thomas Østrup Møller, Greenlandic Minister for Statehood and Foreign Affairs Vivian Motzfeldt, head of the Greenland Representation in Beijing Jacob Isbosethsen, as well as other ministers and ambassadors. 

"Royal Greenland has been present in Qingdao for 20 years now. Other companies, like Polar Seafood have also contributed a lot in exports and trade with China," Motzfeldt said. 

She expressed her gratitude to the Chinese government and the Chinese People's Institute for Foreign Affairs for the cooperation between Greenland and China. 

In addition, the Danish Embassy held an insightful seminar on tourism on Tuesday at the Greenland Representation in Beijing. 

In her opening speech at the event, Motzfeldt emphasized the importance of tourism to the Greenlandic economy. 

"The Government of Greenland has invested a lot in a new tourism policy and strategy. The Parliament and Government have decided to expand the runways and build three new airports in Nuuk, Ilulissat, and Qagortoq," she told the Global Times. 

Air Greenland CEO Jacob Nitter Sørensen, head of Visa and Consular Affairs at the Royal Danish Embassy Charlotte Duelund, Polar Club 66 Co Ltd director Joe Chan, and other guests also introduced Greenlandic gastronomy, beautiful Arctic Circle, and other practical travel tips. 

West invests heavily in weapons, but very little in global development. Cartoon:Carlos Latuff

Chinese scientists and their international partners have learned more about the moon after studies and research into lunar soil samples from the Chang'e-5 (CE-5) mission. In the two latest discoveries, researchers found hints of a new source of water on the moon for future explorers and revealed the activities of young basalt on the moon.   

The Chang'e-5 mission brought 1,731 grams of lunar minerals back to Earth. The landing site in the Northeastern Oceanus Procellarum basin of the moon was considered to have one of the youngest basalt units on the lunar surface with rich heat-generating elements such as uranium, thorium and potassium.

In a report published in Nature on Monday, Chinese researchers and their partners in the UK report the abundance, hydrogen isotope composition and core-to-rim variations of water measured in 32 impact glass beads extracted from lunar soil returned by the Chang'e-5 mission. 

Impact glass beads are major components of lunar soil. But the water inventory of impact glass beads has not yet been investigated in detail, despite these glassy beads being potential candidates for playing a significant role in a lunar surface water cycle. To investigate this possibility, scientists carried out a systematic characterization of the petrography, major element composition, Raman characteristics, water abundance and hydrogen isotope composition on the impact glass beads returned by the CE5 mission, aiming to identify and characterize the missing water reservoir on the moon's surface.

Scientists estimate that the amount of water hosted by impact glass beads in lunar soils may reach up to 270 trillion kilograms. "Our direct measurements of this surface reservoir of lunar water show that impact glass beads can store substantial quantities of solar wind-derived water on the moon and suggest that impact glass beads may be water reservoirs on other airless bodies," according to the report.

Hui Hejiu, a professor at Nanjing University, told the media that in the future deep space exploration by human beings, impact glass beads may be used as a candidate water source to provide supplies when the efficiency of collecting glass beads and extracting water is high.

In another report published by Astrophysical Journal Letters in early March, Chinese scientists said they combined Fe and Mg isotope analyses with a comprehensive study of petrology and mineralogy on two CE-5 basalt clasts, the Global Times learned from the Nanjing-based Purple Mountain Observatory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  

CE-5 basalts are the most evolved basalts to date on the moon. 

"Our new Fe-Mg isotope data indicate that the young CE-5 mare basalts possess a hybrid mantle cumulate source that incorporates both early- and late-stage LMO cumulates, which may play an important role in the generation of the late lunar volcanism," read the article.

As China experiences post-COVID summer tourism peak, 74.9 percent of respondents have encountered difficulties in making reservations for main attractions or venues, according to a recent survey which interviewed 1,501 participants, revealing that the challenges of reserving scenic spots and their limited operating hours have inconvenienced many parents and children during their travel. 

During the survey, 61.4 percent of the respondents suggested that some attractions and venues should extend operating hours. To enhance the comfort of summer travel, 59.0 percent of the respondents recommended choosing off-peak periods to take a holiday.

The heat of the summer tourism market in 2023 is expected to surpass that of the same period in 2019, according to media reports. During the months of July and August when students are on summer break, the number of domestic tourist trips is expected to reach 1.331 billion, accounting for 20.18 percent of the total annual domestic tourism, according to a forecast model published by the China Tourism Academy.

As the main consumers in the summer tourism market, the significant growth of student and family traveler segments represents a crucial indicator of the resurgence of the peak season activity over the summer months. 

Huangshan Mountain in East China's Anhui Province announced on August 21 that the number of tourists received by the scenic area this year has exceeded 3 million, 60 days ahead of 2019 to break this threshold, and it is also the earliest year in the history of Huangshan Scenic Area to cross the 3 million people market.

At Shanghai Disney Resort, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city, the waiting time for several rides exceeds 60 minutes, and some even reaches about 240 minutes, according to media reports.

Data revealed that the two age groups of under 18 and 34-43 years old accounted for the highest proportion of tourists, adding up to more than 50 percent, of which children accounted for 10 percent.

"It was impossible to secure tickets for the popular museums and science centers. We had to change our strategy and only managed to secure tickets for a few niche museums," said a mother who brought her children to Beijing for summer vacation.

In addition to the difficulty of making reservations for attractions, the survey also revealed that 71.8 percent of respondents felt crowded, experienced long queue. About 69.0 percent of participants perceived a rise in prices during the peak travel season, leading to increased expenses. Moreover, 63.0 percent of those surveyed expressed concern about the hot weather, with a risk of heatstroke.

"Almost every scenic spot in Beijing is full of people, and this summer is particularly hot, which impacts the experience," a visitor to Beijing said, adding that summer nights are a good time to visit, but many scenic spots and venues still provide services according to the original business hours, which makes it difficult for tourists.

In order to improve the tourist experience, some popular sites in Beijing have extended their opening hours on the premise of ensuring safety and service quality, and eligible tourist spots have opened night shows and increased night tours.

The Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau announced earlier that in order to meet the needs of visitors during the summer vacation, 46 museums in Beijing will cancel the policy of closing on Mondays until August 31, allowing visitors to visit museums every day.

Additionally, museums in Beijing are proactively adapting their reservation systems based on the number of tourists, exhibition content, and demands of audiences. They are also actively exploring flexible extended opening hours tailored to the tourism experience and visitor needs, all in the pursuit of enhancing the enjoyment of these venues.

Prime numbers, divisible only by 1 and themselves, hate to repeat themselves. They prefer not to mimic the final digit of the preceding prime, mathematicians have discovered.

“It is really, really bizarre,” says Stanford University postdoctoral researcher Robert Lemke Oliver, who, with Stanford number theorist Kannan Soundararajan, discovered this unusual prime predilection. “We are still trying to understand what is at the heart of this,” Lemke Oliver says.

Generally speaking, primes are thought to behave much like random numbers. So whenever some kind of order is revealed, it gives mathematicians pause.
“Any regularity you can show about primes is beguiling, because there may lurk there some new structure,” says number theorist Barry Mazur of Harvard University. “Revealing some bit of architecture where we thought there was none may lead to inroads into the structure of the mathematics.”

Once primes get into the double digits, they must end in either a 1, 3, 7 or 9. Mathematicians have long known that there are roughly the same number of primes ending with each digit; each appears as the final number about 25 percent of the time. The prime number theorem in arithmetic progressions proved this distribution about 100 years ago, and the still unsolved Riemann hypothesis predicts that the rates rapidly approach 25 percent. This property has been tested for many millions of primes, says Soundararajan.

And without any reason to think otherwise, mathematicians just assumed that the distribution of those final digits was basically random. So given a prime that ends in 1, the odds that the next prime ends in 1, 3, 7 or 9 should be roughly equal.

“If there’s no interaction between primes, that’s what you would expect,” says Soundararajan. “But in fact, something funny happens.”
Despite each final digit appearing roughly the same amount of the time, there’s a bias in the order in which these final digits appear. A prime that ends in 7, for example, is far less likely to be followed by a prime that also ends in 7 than a prime that ends in 9, 3 or 1.

The discovery of the final digit bias has “no conceivable practical use,” says Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the University of Montreal and University College London. “The point is the wonder of the discovery.”

The peculiar pattern had been noted previously by two separate teams of researchers, but the Stanford duo is the first to articulate a mathematical explanation for the pattern, which they posted online March 11 at arXiv.org. When the researchers crunched the numbers, their predictions based on the hypotheses fit the results remarkably, says Granville, who calls the work “rigorous, refined and delicate.”

You might think this “anti-sameness” bias follows naturally from the order of numbers. After all, 67 is followed by 71, which is followed by 73. But this explanation doesn’t fit the data, says Lemke Oliver, who ran computer calculations out to 400 billion primes.“The bias is way too large,” he says. What’s more, the bias isn’t equal for the nonrepeating final digits. So among the first hundred million primes, for example, a prime that ends in 3 is followed by a prime that ends in 9 about 7.5 million times, whereas it is followed by a prime that ends in 1 about 6 million times. A final 3 is followed by a final 3 a mere 4.4 million times.

Yet as the number of primes approaches infinity, the bias slowly disappears. This restoration of seeming randomness makes sense mathematically, but the slow rate at which the bias disappears is notable.

“It would almost be perverse if it didn’t even out,” says Lemke Oliver. “It would bother me a little.”

An amber collector in Germany has spotted the ancient remains of a beetle never before seen in the fossil record.

Two itty-bitty specimens, entombed in amber since the middle Eocene epoch some 54.5 million to 37 million years ago, represent a new species of Jacobson’s beetle, researchers report online March 28 in the Journal of Paleontology. The beetles, Derolathrus groehni, are, like their modern relatives, about as long as the width of a grain of rice.

MicroCT scans and other images revealed narrow bodies, a shiny brown exterior and two wispy featherlike wings protruding from the hindquarters, angled like the blades of a helicopter. The fossils look just like today’s Jacobson’s beetles, says study coauthor Chenyang Cai of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Fringed, eyelashlike wings may have helped the beetles ride the wind, eventually spreading to far-flung regions of the world — from western Russia (a big source of Baltic amber) to distant habitats in Fiji, Sri Lanka and even Alabama, where Jacobson’s beetles have been spotted recently.