In today's newsletter, Ginger River Review collaborated with Yu Oughta Know to invite you for a five-question quiz related to major headlines in China in the first half of 2022.
Lynn Q. Yu is the author behind Yu Oughta Know (YOK), a Substack ideal for people looking to study trivia, stay on top of world affairs, or keep abreast of the youth. Lynn emails out five current events questions every morning, along with hip happenings on Pop Culture Fridays. See a quiz article named Chef Curry with the Shot on YOK. Subscribe if you like it!
Here are your questions:
1. What city in China experienced a "closed-off management" to test about 24 million people for COVID-19 this spring guided by the “dynamic zero-COVID” policy?
2. What is China's GDP growth target for 2022, which was set by the government work report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang during the “two sessions”?
3. What celebrity has taken the internet by storm in China this spring and sparked a fitness wave with his workout livestream on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok? He is a singer and exercises with the fast-paced tunes of his friend Jay Chou's works.
4. On June 5, China launched the crewed spaceship Shenzhou-14, sending three astronauts to its space station for a six-month mission. What is the name of China's Space Station? It was a major setting for the 2013 film Gravity and had a track on the soundtrack of the same name.
5. What is the name of China's third aircraft carrier which was launched in June? It shares a name with a province bordering the Taiwan Strait.
Answers
1.Between March 28 and April 5, SHANGHAI, the megacity with a population of over 24 million, was split into two parts to enforce temporary closed-off management to hunt down possible COVID-19 infections.
On May 31, Shanghai announced it would fully restore normal life starting on June 1, with the overall risk of COVID-19 contained. Shanghai Daily, an English-language newspaper, has produced a five-part "Away From Home" video series recording the ups and downs of Shanghai's lockdown. The video series has been well-received on Chinese social media and provided an opportunity for people to better understand each other's lives in the past two months.
2. China has set its economic growth target at around 5.5 PERCENT in 2022 as the country's national lawmakers and political advisors gathered in Beijing to map out development priorities for this year.
"It represents a medium-high rate of growth given our large economic aggregate, and demonstrates our ability to move proactively," said Premier Li Keqiang as he delivered the government work report to the national legislature.
On July 15, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that the GDP of the world's second-largest economy expanded 2.5 percent in the first half of this year. In Q2, the economy grew 0.4 percent. Due to the complex international environment and the impact of the COVID-19 outbreaks at home, downward pressure on the economy increased in Q2.
3. The 49-year-old singer LIU GENGHONG, aka Will Liu, enjoyed an extra spike in popularity this spring after branching out into online fitness. In the videos, he often works out to the fast-paced tunes of his friend Jay Chou's Compendium of Materia Medica, among other songs. Now his Douyin account has rocketed to 73 million followers and 120 million likes, igniting people's interest in indoor exercise.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak began in 2020, downloads of fitness apps have soared in China, indicative of the growing popularity of online fitness. As an alternative to people gathering together to keep fit, the phenomenon is also helpful for epidemic prevention purposes.
4. The Chinese Space Station is named TIANGONG, "Heavenly Palace." It is designed to be a versatile space lab, capable of accommodating 25 experiment cabinets for scientific exploration. The trio of Shenzhou-14 will cooperate with the ground team to complete the assembly and construction of the Tiangong space station, developing it from a single-module structure into a national space laboratory with three modules.
In the film Gravity, after the debris hits the Explorer Shuttle, Kowalski mentions the "Chinese Station", later revealed to be Tiangong. Throughout the film, Tiangong was seen as a speck in the distance, roughly 100 miles from the International Space Station or mentioned as the only station containing a Shenzhou capsule which would allow them to get home. After Sandra Bullock’s character reached Tiangong by way of a fire extinguisher, she entered the abandoned station as it was quickly losing altitude and entered the atmosphere.
5. China launched its third aircraft carrier, the FUJIAN, in Shanghai on June 17. The carrier, named after Fujian Province, was completely designed and built by China. It is China's first domestically-made carrier that uses catapults. With a full-load displacement of more than 80,000 tonnes, the carrier is equipped with electromagnetic catapults and arresting devices.
China names its aircraft carriers after its coastal provinces, with Liaoning in the northeast and Shandong in the east. Fujian, in the southeast, is the closest province to Taiwan, separated by a strait that is fewer than 80 miles (128 kilometers) wide at its narrowest point.
Did you get all the right answers? Feel free to leave a comment to tell me how many questions you answered correctly. Click the like button at the end of this newsletter if you like this form of news quiz.
Other major headlines in China in the first half of 2022 include the Beijing Winter Olympics, the shackled woman case in Fengxian, the crash of the China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft, and the violent criminal case in Tangshan.
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