Major films and TV dramas from 2021

Set during the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (抗美援朝) (1950-53), the film costs 1.3 billion yuan becoming the most expensive of its kind in China; it centers on a heroic company of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) army, reflecting CPV soldiers’ iron will and great spirit to safeguard the then newly founded People’s Republic of China. By Nov. 24, its overall box office surpassed (超过) 5.69 billion yuan, replacing Wolf Warrior 2 at the top of China’s all-time box office charts.

The Pioneer was released in over 710 IMAX theaters on July 1. As the first such biographical film to trace the revolutionary footprints of Li Dazhao, one of the key founders of Communist Party of China, this film focuses on Li Dazhao’s memories throughout his life, showing the selfless spirit of the struggle in Chinese Communists.

The 43-episode TV series The Age of Awakening, which became an instant hit in February, narrates how Chinese intellectuals and young people in the early 1900s struggled to save a nation with corruption (腐败) foreign aggression, and other setbacks, to form a communist party against all odds.

Set in the 1930s in Northeast China’s Harbin during the Japanese invasion, the film is the first attempt of director Zhang Yimou into another film type, which shows the scene of Communist Party special agents as they tested their intelligence against their enemies to complete a secret mission. It has received seven nominations (提名), including one for best film, at the 34th edition of Golden Rooster, China’s top film awards.

Li Hao, a 27-year-old wheelchair fencer, won Team China its first gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Optimistic and dedicated to sports despite losing his right leg at the age of 2, the gold medalist’s life story has touched Chinese netizens, inspiring them to give him the nickname “Sunshine Boy.”

During the match, Li defeated Ukrainian athlete Artem Manko 15-12 in the final competition of the men’s saber (佩剑) individual category A, which marked Li’s first public appearance in Paralympic Games. Li said he had never expected to win top honor, and he would have been satisfied with just entering the semifinals, or even better to win a silver or a bronze.

Behind Li’s light-hearted mentality is the athlete’s hard work and dedication to his sport. Before the Tokyo Paralympics, he was seen spending most of his days preparing for the Games and appeared to be “addictive” during practices. He was described by his roommate Yan Qing as a person with strong self-discipline. “If one of his moves is not up to his standard, then he will repeat practicing it over and over again,” Yan told media.

However, the very serious athlete has a different side outside of practice. In everyday life, Li is an optimistic young man with a cheerful personality who can light up the dull social atmosphere and make people laugh.

After a photo of Li showing a bright smile while holding his medal began making the rounds on social media, Chinese netizens began calling him a “Sunshine Boy,” saying that they hope his optimistic mentality can encourage more disabled people to pursue their dreams. “Even though I’m visually impaired, I’m encouraged by him as he proves that we disabled people are not flawed, but just special, and we are capable too. His performance proves that we can win over the fate, we are capable in coping with life struggles, sometimes even more capable than people who never taste life’s bitterness.” Zhu Jin, a sports fan who is also disabled, told the Global Times.

Chewing a sugar-free gum daily reduced premature births in a large study in Malawi, Africa. The new findings were inspired by relevant past research on oral (口腔的) health. The gum contains xylitol (木糖醇)— a chemical that can boost oral health — in place of regular sugar.

Among women who chewed the xylitol gum, 549 out of 4, 349 pregnancies, or 12.6 percent, delivered babies early, researchers reported February 3 at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s Annual Pregnancy Meeting. That’s a 24 percent reduction compared with the group who didn’t receive the gum. Among those women, 878 out of 5, 321 pregnancies, or 16.5 percent, of the babies were born before 37 weeks. The oral health of gum users also improved. About 4,000 of the women had an initial tooth exam and a later checkup. The women who chewed the gum had less tooth disease, a condition in which the tissue surrounding the teeth becomes infected, compared with those who didn’t get the chewing gum.

“The findings are very encouraging,” says Kim Boggess, a medicine specialist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “The researchers are approaching a very complex problem in a low-resource area by trying to use a low-tech, easily applied way. It would take more research to see if this could work in other settings,” she says.

Babies born early can have complications (并发症) that damage their lungs, nerve development and more, with long-term health risks, and they are more likely to die in their first year of life than average babies.

The team also wants to track the nerve development of the children born early and those born on time. “No matter how simple the method may be, we are still glad to make a difference in somebody’s life,” says the team leader Kjersti Aagaard, a medicine specialist at Texas Children’s Hospital, “and digging into the reason why chewing the xylitol gum has such benefits deserves our further commitment.”

Whether you call them feral pigs, boar, swine, hogs, or even razorbacks, wild pigs are one of the most damaging invasive species on Earth, and they’re infamous for damaging agriculture and native wildlife.

A big reason they’re so harmful is that they uproot soil at vast scales, like tractors ploughing a field. Our new research, published recently, is the first to calculate the global extent of this and its effects on carbon emissions.

Our findings were horrible. We discovered the total area of soil uprooted by wild pigs is likely the same area as Switzerland. This releases 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year the same as one million cars. The majority of these emissions occur in Oceania. A huge portion of Earth’s carbon is stored in soil, so releasing even a small part of this into the atmosphere can have a huge impact on climate change.

It’s estimated that wild pigs destroy more than US$74 million worth of crops and grass each year in Australia, and more than US $270 million in just 12 states in the USA. Wild pigs have also been found to directly threaten 672 vertebrates (脊椎动物) and plant species across 54 different countries. This includes Australian ground frogs, tree frogs and multiple orchid species which are imperiled, as pigs destroy their habitats and hunt them for food.

Their geographic range is expected to expand in the coming decades, suggesting their threats to food security and biodiversity will likely worsen. But here, let’s focus on their contribution to global emissions.

One such study was conducted for three years in hardwood forests of Switzerland. The researchers found wild pigs caused soil carbon emissions to increase by around 23% per year. Similarly, a study in the Jigong Mountains National Nature Reserve in China found soil emissions increased by more than 70% per year in places disturbed by wild pigs.