After being held in India for 54 years, Chinese veteran Wang Qi was ready to make his long-awaited trip back home on Saturday.

According to the Chinese embassy in India, 77-year-old Wang had left his home in central India’s Madhya Pradesh and arrived in New Delhi on Friday afternoon.

He was eager to return to hometown in Shaanxi province and would start the journey as early as Saturday, said the embassy.

In 1963, Wang, a Chinese army surveyor, got lost, crossed the border and was captured by Indian authorities. He was moved from one jail to another for nearly seven years

When he was finally released in 1969, police escorted him to the remote village of Tirodi in Madhya Pradesh and told him to start a life there. He married a local woman, and they had three children and grandchildren.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Monday that China had been “pushing India” to complete procedures to return the veteran. In 2013, the Chinese embassy in India issued him a 10-year Chinese passport and a living allowance every year since then, Lu said.

Vikas Swarup, the Indian External Affairs Ministry’s spokesman, said on Thursday, “The ministry is helping Wang and his family members－including his son Vishnu Wang, daughter Anita Wankhede, daughter-in-law Neha Wang and grandson Khanak Wang－to visit China to meet his extended family.”

“We are working with the Chinese embassy in Delhi and the Indian embassy in Beijing to ensure that all formalities are completed and arrangements are in place,” he said.

A China Central Television report on Friday said that Wang is eager to taste noodles, a local specialty in Shaanxi, after arriving home.

Wang’s plight was highlighted last month in a special report by the BBC.

On Feb 4, Luo Zhaohui, China’s ambassador to India, spoke by telephone with Wang and expressed sympathy over his suffering over the years. Yan Xiaoce, a counselor at the Chinese embassy in India, visited Wang’s village on the same day, according to the embassy.

Liu Shurong, another Chinese veteran, underwent the same plight as Wang and lives in the same village. But Liu said he had no intention to return to China because he no longer has family there, the embassy said.

A fire broke out on Friday inside a Hong Kong underground train near a busy station, with at least 17 people being injured and a man being detained after claiming that he has set fire with a Molotov cocktail.

The fire broke out at around 7:00 local time inside an underground train crossing the Vitoria Harbor for the busy Tsim Sha Tsui station, forcing the train to stop at the station and all the passengers to be evacuated, public broadcaster RTHK reported.

Footages from social media show flame and smoke from inside the train and several people burned.

The injured, two of whom in severe condition, were sent to nearby hospitals.

A man at the age of around 60 claimed that he set the fire with a Molotov cocktail. The police has detained the man and has been investigating his motive,a police officer told media outside the station, which has been temporarily closed.

The counter-terrorism response unit has been deployed at the scene.

Self-proclaimed “qigong master” Wang Lin, who was facing several criminal charges, has died in a hospital in east China’s Jiangxi Province following an illness.

Wang died from multiple organ failure from ANCA-related vasculitis and peripheral neuritis on Friday afternoon, said Fuzhou City Intermediate People’s Court.

The man, who claimed to be a master of qigong, a traditional martial art combined with meditation, came to public attention in 2013 when images of him posing for pictures with celebrities and stories of his supposed “supernatural powers” like conjuring snakes from thin air were posted on the Internet.

He was detained by police in July 2015 on the charge of illegal detention. In November last year, Fuzhou City People’s Procuratorate filed a public lawsuit to the court, accusing Wang of illegal detention, fraud, illegal possession of a gun and bribery.

Because of his illness, Wang was allowed out on bail and his trial postponed in January while the trials of other defendants in the case continued.

Despite Wang’s death, the court said it would issue a verdict on his case.

Lu Qiong accepts the exclusive interview of CIIC.[Photo/China.org.cn]

The Key Tasks for State Administration of Cultural Heritage in 2017 has recently been released on the official website of State Administration of Cultural Heritage. It elaborates on the 32 steering instructions and specific measures to be exercised for strengthening the protection of cultural relics, promoting popular accessibility to the results of heritage protection and exploring approaches to the protective utilization of cultural relics in six areas for the year 2017. Among them, “enlivening cultural relics” is particularly eye-catching to the present reporter.

Promoting popularization of Chinese civilization by joint efforts of “Big Vs” via “Internet+”

Back in 2015, official accounts of museums including “Palace Museum,” “Shaanxi History Museum” and “Sichuan Guanghan Sanxingdui Museum” appeared in social media circles one after another. Those official accounts quickly rose to fame. “China Cultural Heritage,” the official microblog account of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, went so far as to win the prize of “2016 Top 10 Influential Topics of Government Affairs Microblogs.”

During the holiday season for primary and secondary school students in the summer of 2016, “China Cultural Heritage” organized a romantic event—Appointment with Museums. The event was enthusiastically disseminated, attracting a readership of nearly 700 million, a figure demonstrating the strong social influence of museums as an important front for the construction of the public cultural service system.

“We are justified in being culturally self-confident, since we have such a broad mass base. Enhancing cultural self-confidence should be rooted in the soil of excellent traditional Chinese culture,” said Lu Qiong, deputy director of the Department of Policies and Laws, State Administration of Heritage. It proved that “Appointment with the Museum” was a successful action.

Probably because of the favorable results of Internet dissemination, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued at the end of 2016, The Three-Year Action Plan for “Internet+ Chinese Civilization,” turning the down-to-earth Internet dissemination into a macroscopic steering opinion.

According to the Action Plan, the Internet will be drawn on to seek alternative approaches for the inheritance, innovation and development of traditional Chinese culture and for exploration and expansion of the unique historical and artistic significances of cultural relics – enabling them to tell their own stories.

In fact, the concept of “enlivening cultural relics” has been put to practice in more fronts including the “Internet+.” Development of creative products is another “tonic” for giving life to cultural relics and bringing them closer to the people.

In the past year, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage selected 92 museums as pilot units for developing a series of eye-catching products. Lu Qiong told reporters that at Dunhuang International Cultural Expo in September 2016, a scarf printed with Dunhuang fresco instantly became popular among visitors, many of whom were full of praise for the elegant item capable of telling its own story.

Making cultural relics tell their own stories by staging exhibitions in Hong Kong and New York

As the relationship between the preservation of cultural relics and the promotion of social and economic development becomes closer, the cultural relics of China are keen to tell their stories not only to the people of the Chinese mainland.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong SAR to China and to support the “Asia Cultural Co-operation Forum” to be held in Hong Kong SAR in late November 2017, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage will hold an exhibition of Silk Road Heritage at the Hong Kong Museum of History, in collaboration with the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) of Hong Kong SAR.

Focusing on “Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an–Tianshan Corridor,” is a program inscribed in the World Heritage list. Thanks to the joint efforts of China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the exhibition will draw on existing research and exhibitions and will be the first of its kind after the successful inscription of the program. It is expected to offer a sumptuous cultural feast for Hong Kong people.

In addition, to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the normalization of Sino–US relations, 31 heritage collection units from 13 provinces (cities) will display 283 pieces of cultural relics witnessing “the civilization of the Qin and Han dynasties” in 164 sets at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, starting late March, 2017.

It is said that the exhibition will retell the stories of the classic period of Chinese civilization in the Qin and Han dynasties, exploring the formation of “Chinese culture” while focusing on the Silk Road connecting ancient China to the West and the Maritime Silk Road spanning South and Southeast Asia. It is expected to inspire scholars from home and abroad and deepen the knowledge of China by the Western public.

“Heritage work means protection, conservation and inheritance of public valuable resources. It is everyone’s obligation. Common support from all walks of life is needed to make it a success.” Lu Qiong told the reporter.

A 64-year-old man suspected of attempting to set a fire died on Jan. 19, 2017, while in custody at a detention center in Xinning Police Bureau, Hunan Province, the local police confirmed on Feb. 8.

According to the police, the suspect Xu Yunbo, died from a combination of respiratory and adrenal failures, electrolyte disturbance, alcoholic liver cirrhosis and ascetic fluid.

But Xu Hongmei, Xu’s daughter, was skeptical of the official declaration.

“My father could not live a life by himself. He was unable to control himself and spoke ambiguously. But the police insisted that he confessed to attempting to set a fire, ,”Xu said.

Insisting on his father’s innocence, Xu obtained a forensic examination about 20 days after his detention, from which her father was confirmed to have a mental illness. This illness can mislead him indistinguishing between right and wrong.

He was still held in custody after this judicial evaluation.

According to his daughter, Xu was admitted to hospital on Nov. 16, 2016, with 14 broken ribs, almost three months after his detainment. But he was sent back to the detention center only one month after being hospitalized which infuriated Xu’ family, who believed that he had not yet fully recovered.

Xu did not return to hospital until Jan. 18, after he experienced fatal symptoms caused by the complications of his health condition.

The post-mortem exam is underway and the result is expected to be announced in due course.

According to the local police bureau, the posthumous issues of Xu should proceed in line with the regulations on the death of people in police custody, a legal framework mandated by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Civil Affairs.