Factories, mines, and other enterprises were badly disrupted as workers quit their jobs. At the Pingtingshan colliery in Honan province, for example, when more than seven thousand miners left for Peking, the output of coal declined.

Much education and experience is required for proper identification of bird species.

The doing of an act which might not lawfully be done, is nugatory, ineffective and vacuitous.

Shenyang is a sprawling industrial and financial center, the largest city in northeastern China, with a reputation as the region’s crime capital. The city was overrun with violent gangs and controlled by corrupt public officials who were regularly purged by the government in Beijing, only to be replaced by new ones. The developers Hongwei knew in Shenyang were all gangsters, and when they weren't making shady deals, they were spending their nights in private gambling parlors.