Every day Li Yizhong translates and puts into brief perspective the headlines of the Shanghai Morning Post's daily newspaper, Shanghai's largest morning newspaper

Top Story

After a total of 106 H1N1 infected pupils were found in Hunan and Gansu province, the Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau has decided to act quickly yesterday ahead of the new school year. Students in all of Shanghai’s elementary and middle schools will receive a mandatory check-up. Also, mass gathering will be banned for a week. After twenty years, I can still picture kids sitting at their desks, quietly waiting for the check up and speculating who is sick.

I wonder if they find more cases of the H1N1 as we hit autumn - the peak season for respiratory diseases, will PRC’s 60th birthday celebration still go on?

Other Headlines Today

• The A-share market fell, actually it’s more like crashed in August. But I guess being in China for that long, you have already learned to read the ups and downs of the market from the face of your Ayi. I believe there is a Warren Buffet in all of us.

• Somewhere, someone submitted a request to change how people should write 44 Chinese characters differently to the State Council of the People's Republic of China. That's one of the most stupid ideas I have ever heard. The changes to each character are barely noticeable, and who will pay for changing all the text books and dictionary? So far, the results on most online polls show that 80 to 90 percent of the participants are against changing the characters. Beside, who is the State Council to decide how people write Chinese.