Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).

NPC special: transparency, obfuscation and the Dianchi Lake: ME OLD CHINA visits the legislative sessions and ends up getting an audience with Yunnan officials eager to present their spin on the water issue:

COVERING the latest session of the National People's Congress this week, your correspondent has been assailed and buttonholed and generally inconvenienced by countless Chinese journalists anxious to hear us confirm how "open and transparent" the "media environment" had become in the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games, thereby bolstering the uplifting narrative of progress, enrichment and enlightenment that the central government has sought to foist on the local press.

...After a while, of course, cordoned off from the delegates by the organizers and surrounded by sweating deadline-wary hacks anxious to be let loose, I began to tire of all the attention, and told at least one local journalist that things were much better when the proceedings were held behind closed doors, because at least in that case we wouldn't be expected to report on them. But then I received an unexpected phone call.

Yunnan still hopes to dam Nu River: From GoKunming.com:

Little more than two months after the announcement that Tiger Leaping Gorge will not be dammed, plans for damming the Nu River (怒江) in western Yunnan near the border with Myanmar may become the focus of the next battle between Yunnan officials and environmentalists and scientists.

A plan to dam the upper reaches of the Nu, known as the Salween River after flowing out of Yunnan into Myanmar, was originally suspended in 2004 by Premier Wen Jiabao.

The heroic Englishman China will never forget: James MacManus profiles George Aylwin Hogg in Ocean Devil: The Life and Legend of George Hogg; an excerpt appears in The Sunday Times:

[I]n 1942 he became headmaster of a CIC school in the remote mountain town of Shuang-shipu.

Here, at the crossroads of the Tsin-gling mountains in Shanxi province, he found his destiny.

At 27, Hogg was the head of a school that, even by the chaotic standards of China at that time, presented huge problems. Three brick classrooms stood on a steep and bleak hillside. There had been seven headmasters in 18 months. There were no books or writing materials. The kitchen was bare. There were no beds. The boys were covered in scabies, malnourished and lice-infested.

"A film inspired by the story, The Children of Huang Shi, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Chow Yun Fat,...and Michelle Yeoh...will be released in the UK later following a US opening in May."

Solar energy firms leave waste behind in China: Is additional pollution the price China pays for green technology? Ariana Eunjung Cha reports for the Washington Post:

Because of the environmental hazard, polysilicon companies in the developed world recycle the compound, putting it back into the production process. But the high investment costs and time, not to mention the enormous energy consumption required for heating the substance to more than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit for the recycling, have discouraged many factories in China from doing the same. Like Luoyang Zhonggui, other solar plants in China have not installed technology to prevent pollutants from getting into the environment or have not brought those systems fully online, industry sources say.

Wahaha rejects Danone proposal: Wahaha, the Chinese beverage company that has been engaged in an unpleasantly public dispute with French joint-venture partner Danone, has rejected that company's latest proposal for mending the rift. The People's Daily reports:

Chinese beverage giant Wahaha Group has rejected a new cooperation plan put forward by French food group Danone, saying the ongoing peace negotiation is hard to continue, Wahaha said on Sunday.

Danone proposed the two companies merge all their businesses toform a new company that will eventually be listed on the A-share market. Danone and Wahaha will each hold 40 percent of shares in the new company, leaving the remaining 20 percent as public shares.

Danone wants to ensure at least 50 billion yuan (6.9 billion U.S. dollars) in market value if its shares in the new company are lower than 40 percent, said Zong Qinghou, board chairman of the Hangzhou-based Wahaha Group.

'But those proposals and conditions are groundless, and we cannot possibly accept them,' he said on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's parliament.