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Young turn to parents in getting a foot on property ladder, support grows for GM food and university helps everyone at 'free supermarket'.

Home, sweet home

Some 33 per cent of young people living in Beijing say owning property is pivotal to happiness, while 61.6 percent link happiness to property somehow. The survey was jointly released by the Beijing Youth League and Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Young people tend to turn to their parents for financial help to buy an apartment, with 90.2 percent of respondents saying they would do so, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

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Publicity shy

Not everyone enjoys publicity. Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun says the budget smartphone maker is overhyped and has become the talk of the tech world, the opposite of what he wanted. Lei played down Xiaomi's increasing role as an industry heavyweight in an interview with Portrait magazine, saying the company functions like a street eatery with himself as the vendor who both cooks and serves every customer. Lei added that the company will not go public just yet to avoid overexposure. Xiaomi sold 18.7 million smartphones last year and sets its bottom line at 40 million this year.

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Taste is tops

Zhang Laiwu, deputy minister of science and technology, said taste decides what he eats, not the food's genetic makeup, becoming the second senior official to voice confidence in genetically modified (GM) food within days. Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said at a press conference last week that he eats GM food, especially soybean oil. Addressing public concerns over the safety of GM food, Zhang said food technology can both pose challenges and shed light on food supply, China News Service reported.

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Free for all

Students at Hebei Foreign Studies University can take whatever they like for free at an on-campus "supermarket", China News Service reported. Originally a place where teachers and students shared unwanted items, donated goods became increasingly plentiful and the "free supermarket" was created. During the past eight years more than 20,000 items have been donated, benefiting about 10,000 students.

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Authorities probe rape suspicions

A woman in Nanjing could not remember what she did for 10 hours after her colleague gave her a bottle of an unknown liquid to drink, Jiangnan Times reported on Tuesday. The police are investigating the case after the woman's family raised suspicions that she was raped by her colleague in a hotel.

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Driver found dead after minor mishap

A driver died for unexplained reasons after his car scratched a Mercedes Benz in Deyang, West China Metropolis Daily reported. After his car scratched the red Mercedes parked on the side of the road, the driver did not get out of his car. Police were later called and found that the driver had died.

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Patient's grandson assaults doctor

A man was fined 500 yuan ($82) and given seven days' detention for beating a doctor, West China Metropolis Daily reported. On Saturday, Xu Qing, 32, accompanied his grandmother, 89, to the Mianzhu People's Hospital. When the grandmother vomited and couldn't talk, physician Zeng Lingfu asked her to undergo a CT scan. Xu beat Zeng when results showed there was nothing apparently wrong with the women's brain.

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Quick thinking helps nab robbers

A hotel waitress foiled a robbery by tricking two men into believing romance was in the air, Qianjiang Evening News reported on Tuesday. She offered the two men, who approached her with the intention of robbing her at around 10 pm on March 7, 1,000 yuan ($163) and her smartphone. She flirted with them and obtained their phone numbers, which were later used by authorities to track them down.

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