Sichuan Province China

In a system with a centuries-long tradition of austere leaders laying down the law from behind their palace walls, China's response to its worst natural disaster in three decades has revealed a nation in the throes of political change. The China that emerged from the wreckage of Monday's magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Sichuan province looked surprisingly modern, flexible and if not democratic, at least open.

An activist who was investigating the role shoddy school construction played in the deaths of more than 5,000 children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake was given a three-year prison sentence Monday on charges of possessing state secrets. Huang Qi, 46, a veteran activist and blogger, is the most prominent of more than a dozen people who were arrested for demanding investigations into construction standards after the magnitude 7.9 temblor. Others included prominent artists, former teachers and parents who lost their only children in the earthquake.

DUJIANGYAN, China -- In a narrow alleyway, family and friends enjoyed a special dinner of fish, duck and pork as they watched Friday night's Olympic opening ceremony on television. They'd been waiting years for this night, but cast against a brutally trying few months, the celebration also serves as a welcome distraction. Ke Hong, clutching a bottle of wine, had been enjoying the night enough for all of China. His Olympic spirit, in fact, might have resulted in a headache the next morning.

DUJIANGYAN, China -- In a narrow alleyway, family and friends enjoyed a special dinner of fish, duck and pork as they watched Friday night's Olympic opening ceremony on television. They'd been waiting years for this night, but cast against a brutally trying few months, the celebration also serves as a welcome distraction. Ke Hong, clutching a bottle of wine, had been enjoying the night enough for all of China. His Olympic spirit, in fact, might have resulted in a headache the next morning.

An activist who was investigating the role shoddy school construction played in the deaths of more than 5,000 children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake was given a three-year prison sentence Monday on charges of possessing state secrets. Huang Qi, 46, a veteran activist and blogger, is the most prominent of more than a dozen people who were arrested for demanding investigations into construction standards after the magnitude 7.9 temblor. Others included prominent artists, former teachers and parents who lost their only children in the earthquake.

The fiery dishes spiked with Sichuan peppercorns began arriving on the table, but Tang Xiulan and her friends remained transfixed by a television screen above the restaurant's front door showing images of rescue efforts in their home province. The past week has provided the most they had seen or heard of Sichuan since they immigrated to the United States -- some a decade ago or more. Unlike Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, the cities of Sichuan are largely unheralded overseas.

China on Monday launched a new rocket with the ability to carry an eight-ton satellite into low-level Earth orbit, the official New China News Agency reported. The improved Long March 2 rocket, with four boosters, carried a dummy satellite and a small, experimental Pakistani satellite when it blasted off from the Xichang launch site in southwest China's Sichuan province. China entered the international satellite launching business in April when it sent aloft a U.S.

Twenty-six men have been sent to prison for killing and skinning giant pandas in China's southwestern Sichuan province, the China News Service said. The sentences ranged from three years to life. The agency said on Wednesday that the men killed six pandas, a protected species in China, and tried to smuggle their skins abroad for sale. They also skinned 16 pandas that had starved to death because of a shortage of the pandas' staple food, arrow bamboo.

WIMBLEDON, England -- As an exhilarating and surprising Wimbledon semifinalist, Zheng Jie will win at least 187,500 British pounds, which on Tuesday came to almost $374,000 -- about 20% of her $1.815 million in career earnings. Hailing from Chengdu, Sichuan province, China, the epicenter of the May 12 earthquake, she plans on giving an undetermined percentage of her winnings to earthquake relief. "Yeah, it's hard for me because in China, sometimes it's a different pressure," she said.

In a sign that China intends to develop great-power prestige in the coming decades, the government announced Tuesday that it plans to send astronauts into space by the year 2000. China will first develop the technology for a manned spacecraft and conduct practice launches with no astronauts aboard, the official New China News Agency reported, quoting a document released by the State Commission of Science and Technology. Then the manned flights will occur, the agency said.

In a system with a centuries-long tradition of austere leaders laying down the law from behind their palace walls, China's response to its worst natural disaster in three decades has revealed a nation in the throes of political change. The China that emerged from the wreckage of Monday's magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Sichuan province looked surprisingly modern, flexible and if not democratic, at least open.

The fiery dishes spiked with Sichuan peppercorns began arriving on the table, but Tang Xiulan and her friends remained transfixed by a television screen above the restaurant's front door showing images of rescue efforts in their home province. The past week has provided the most they had seen or heard of Sichuan since they immigrated to the United States -- some a decade ago or more. Unlike Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, the cities of Sichuan are largely unheralded overseas.

The recent discovery of a way to speed up bamboo flowering, hailed as the salvation of the giant panda, was a waste of effort, according to a Chinese expert who says inbreeding could be the end of the endangered animals. Indian researchers announced in March that they had developed a revolutionary process to cause bamboo, the panda's only food source, to flower and produce seeds decades earlier than its normal life cycle.

A cemetery official stopped a man with a three-foot-tall paper house from performing the centuries-old ritual of burning paper offerings at a relative's grave. "That's superstition!" the official snapped. The man pointed to countless other people burning incense and fake paper money at graves and protested, "But all of this is superstition."