On Monday, a worker in Beijing dropped dead while delivering bottled water. The cause of death: heat stroke.

When the credit crisis rocked the world in 2008, many political leaders and prominent economists in the United States and Europe argued with great fervor and conviction for the need to address the global imbalance, which they considered to be the root cause of the financial calamity that pushed the world into a recession.

The massive joint military drill by the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK), which began Sunday in the Sea of Japan, is intended to show off its mighty power.

Long queues are not a feature of Shanghai's Expo Garden alone. Just a few days ago one was seen in Pudong's Lujiazui financial area. Thousands of people, most of them young, waited in a hundreds of meters long queue in front of a new Apple store, the first in Shanghai.

What is wrong with us Chinese, I wondered recently.