Lab-grown meat

Customers who are fed up with traditional flavors of moon cakes such as mixed nuts and bean paste now have a new choice: synthetic* meat.

A week before the festival, moon cakes stuffed with mock meat made from plant protein went on sale on e-commerce platform Taobao. In less than three days, over half of the limited 3,000 boxes had been sold. The moon cakes came in a box of six, with each weighing 60 grams and having the Chinese character “zhen,” or “precious,” printed on top. They gave off a special fragrance after being baked.

Parenting class order

A Shanghai court has issued the country’s first mandatory* order for parenting education to a mother who twice abandoned her son.

He Cuiling, the alias of a migrant worker in Shanghai, was sentenced to three years in prison, with five years probation*, in February by the Changning District People’s Court for child abandonment. The court required her to receive mandatory parenting education during her probation. If she completes the order, her prison sentence will be suspended.

Disney resort

Visitors to the Shanghai Disney Resort can now take their own food into the park, and their bags will no longer be rummaged* through by security staff.

The new polices were introduced last week in the wake of widespread public ire against the resort’s previous ban on outside food, as well as complaints of rude staff behavior at security checkpoints. Visitors are now allowed to bring outside food and beverage items into the park for self-consumption, said Andrew Bolstein, senior vice president of operations at the Shanghai Disney Resort.

Swine fever vaccine

China has made another breakthrough in the development of an African swine fever vaccine, according to the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) on September 10.

Researchers from Harbin Veterinary Research Institute (HVRI) under the CAAS have screened out a live attenuated* vaccine strain with double gene deletion for African swine fever, which has been evaluated for safety and efficacy in a laboratory, said Bu Zhigao, director of the HVRI, at a meeting on the prevention of African swine fever. (SD-Agencies)