Hubei University students desperate for a taste of home cooking have set up their own shared-kitchen on campus, the Beijing News reports.

The facility was the brain child of Yang Haibei, a senior student, who yearned for the cuisine of his hometown, so invested 20,000 yuan (USD 3000) in May this year to buy cooking utensils and materials.

“I missed the flavors of my hometown Tangshan, but there was no such food in the school canteen. After chatting with my hometown friends, I had the idea of running a shared kitchen at the college,” said Yang.

At the moment, the kitchen is open to students attending all the universities in the city of Wuhan. Users have to book ahead, prepare their own vegetables, and pay 10 yuan (USD 1.50) to use the kitchen to cook their own food, which just about covers the running costs. Recently there’s been a surge in the numbers using the facility, although it is still operating at a loss.

Yang Haibei has now been joined by two business partners who help with the management and promotion of the service.

The students use the sharing kitchen especially when celebrating birthdays, couples have dates, or roommates have parties.

“Students love cooking crawfish the most. One portion of crawfish in the market in Wuhan is over 200 yuan, but it only costs 60 yuan to buy uncooked crawfish, and then 10 yuan to use the kitchen to make the dish themselves,” said Yang Haibei.

“The kitchen works well. Most students don’t know how to cook and the kitchen provides students with an opportunity to experience cooking,” Yang added.

Yang is planning to take his shared-kitchen idea to other universities in Wuhan, and is now in discussions with relevant departments.

Yang says young people should show the spirit of innovation and keep up with the times. He says it’s been a great experience so far, and that he’s learned a lot in the process.

The death toll from the powerful Jiuzhaigou earthquake has risen to 25, authorities said on Saturday.

The 7.0-magnitude quake struck Jiuzhaigou county in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on Tuesday night.

Twenty-one victims have been already identified.

Days of torrential rain forced 48,000 residents to evacuate in central China’s Hunan Province, authorities said Sunday.

Heavy rain had battered the northern part of the province since Friday, disrupting the lives of 200,000 people in 62 townships in counties including Pingjiang, Yueyang and Fenghuang, said a statement issued by the provincial flood control and disaster relief headquarters.

As of 6 p.m. Sunday, 413 houses had been destroyed and 10,600 hectares of crops had been damaged in the province, said the statement.

According to the local weather forecast department, heavy rain is also expected on Monday and Tuesday.

Female giant panda Sijia celebrated her 11th birthday Saturday, one year after she and her playmate Youyou moved to their new home in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.

About 1,500 visitors joined in Saturday’s celebration. Sijia enjoyed a rose-shaped ice cake at the ski resort of Yabuli, thousands of kilometers from their home in Sichuan Province.

Sijia and Youyou moved to Yabuli last July. Of all of China’s pandas, the two live the furthest north. Pandas in Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland are 1,200 km further north, but the climate there is much less harsh.

Wei Rongping, scientist with the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, said the resettlement of the pair was an attempt to expand the range of the species and could help researchers better understand the living conditions of pandas at high latitudes.

“The pair has adapted well to the local climate,” said Yan Hongbin, who feeds the pandas. Last December, the pair enjoyed their first winter and played cheerfully outdoors when a blizzard dumped 40 cm of snow o the ski resort of Yabuli.

Pandas were downgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in September last year thanks to continued efforts to protect the species by Chinese scientists.

But the number of pandas living in the wild is still fewer than 2,000 and around 400 lived in captivity as of the end of 2013, according to data from China’s State Forestry Administration.

A Chinese woman forced into front-line brothels for Japanese troops during World War II died on Saturday, bringing the number of surviving “comfort women,” a euphemism for sex slaves, to only 14 on the Chinese mainland.

Huang Youliang died at the age of 90 at her home in Yidui Village in China’s southern island province of Hainan.

In October 1941, 15-year-old Huang was raped when the Japanese troops invaded her hometown. She was later put into a brothel and forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers for two years.

In July 2001, Huang and seven other “comfort women” sued the Japanese government, demanding an apology, but the Japanese court repeatedly rejected their appeals over the past decade, claiming that individuals have no right to sue the state.

Women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II were called “comfort women.” Research shows some 400,000 women in Asia were forced to be “comfort women” for the Japanese army during World War II, nearly half of whom were Chinese.

However, the Japanese government has refused to acknowledge legal responsibility for the “comfort women” issue so far.

Efforts by a total of 24 Chinese “comfort women” to sue the Japanese government in four cases since 1995 all failed. Huang is also the last victim to have sued the Japanese government over sex slavery on the Chinese mainland, according to Su Zhiliang, director of a research center on comfort women under the Humanities and Communication College of Shanghai Normal University.