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Video: Austrian photographer stays put in Hangzhou

Austrian Dominik Derflinger has considered bidding farewell to Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, but his encounters with the city have been so amazing and fruitful that he has had second thought. “Hangzhou just wouldn’t let me go,” said the photographer who owns a media company in the city he calls his second home.

People: Peasant painter creates nostalgia

Xiong Qinghua, 40, is seen as a bit of a weirdo in his native village of Changhe in Hubei province. He taught himself oil painting at the age of 14, but hadn’t sold any work until 2010 when his highly expressive paintings went viral. People are amazed by the raw, unsophisticated style of Xiong’s brushwork. The complicated realities of the countryside in his works have aroused people’s nostalgia for the peaceful, idyllic rural life pace that is disappearing amid industrialization and urbanization.

Animal: Dafeng reserve’s elk population tops 3,200

It has been 30 years since 39 elks from the United Kingdom were brought to Dafeng, Jiangsu province. Their number has now topped 3,200, of which almost 300 are wild elks. That makes the Dafeng Milu Nature Reserve in Dafeng the biggest reserve in the world. The animals in Dafeng have been effectively protected, boosting the balance of the wetland ecosystem and its biodiversity.

Lifestyle: A look at the handsome men of ancient China

It is known that the definition of good-looking often varies with society and time. And in ancient China, the standard of handsome men also changed in different periods. There were two categories of handsome men: gentle and delicate and strong and robust. Both kinds enjoyed the same degree of popularity among ancient Chinese women before the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC).

List: Top 5 performing smartphones of July

The overall performance of mid-range Chinese smartphones has increased rapidly, overtaking some of the world’s popular devices. AnTuTu, a domestic smartphone performance review company recently released a research list demonstrating the performance of exist- ing smartphones on the market in July. Visit our website to read about the top five on the list.