BEIJING ? China's donation of school buses to tiny Macedonia has touched off derision online, where Chinese have called the gift ill-considered given their country's poor safety record and a recent crash that killed 19 preschoolers.
The Chinese government's gift of 23 buses was made Friday at a ceremony in Macedonia's capital.
The Macedonian government said in a statement on its website that each bus has 35 seats, meets all safety requirements and will be used for students primarily in rural areas. An accompanying photo showed three yellow buses with the red-and-yellow Chinese and Macedonian flags painted on the side.
News of the donation ignited a torrent of criticism, with 500,000 comments posted by Monday to China's most popular Twitter-like micro-blog service run by Sina Corp. Many asked how could China make the donation to a foreign country when Chinese schools contend with shoddy transport?
Zhang Ming, a politics professor at Renmin University, suggested the donation was a betrayal to the Chinese people.
"One does not have to go through exams to get qualifications (to be a traitor). When one climbs up there and becomes a big official, one will have them," he wrote.
Zheng Yuanjie, a children's literature writer who is often sarcastic in his postings, wrote on Sina Weibo that the foreign ministry had donated the buses to Macedonia in order to "urge local governments to give decent buses to schools" in China.
As many pointed out, the donation comes less than two weeks after the death of the 19 preschoolers drew a harsh spotlight to the condition of Chinese school buses and chronic underfunding of school systems. The 19 children died when a minivan-turned-school bus crammed with 64 people crashed into a truck.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promised Sunday that new rules on school bus safety would be drafted within a month and said central and local governments will bear the cost of bringing buses up to standard.
The fracas shows how the authoritarian government gets out of step with popular sentiment, and, while that has not mattered in past decades, the government can come across as looking foolish in the Internet era.
While the statement from the Chinese Embassy in Macedonia was still available online Monday, a similar statement had been removed from the website of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Global Times newspaper said in a commentary Monday that the rhetoric of public criticism had become stronger and "sometimes even aggressive" in recent years. "Although it is hard to say whether each of these criticisms are reasonable and appropriate, the government needs to learn how to live with it," it said. "Some 'disturbance' from the public is not bad to the government" as it is necessary for quality governance," it said.
On Saturday, a school bus carrying 39 people in Liaoning province rolled over, injuring 35 students, including two 7-year-old girls with serious head injuries, the China Daily reported.
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If you thought you'd timed everything perfectly but found yourself with an overcooked and dried out turkey anyway, this tip from the folks at CHOW can help. All you need is a pot of warm chicken stock standing by to rescue your bird. Your guests will never know the difference. 
Rock-star contributor 
Indefinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. Few would argue the truth of this statement in physical terms, but most believe that economic growth is immune to such a claim, because?the story goes?economics can be decoupled from physical throughput via efficiency improvements, transformative technology/innovation, and increased activity in low-resource-use ?service? industries. All of these things happen, and are real. But I argue in a series of blog posts on Do the Math that these notions, too, have limits. I also explore what this means for the concept of sustainability.
A kid may really want a pony?more than anything in the world. A wise parent might suggest that the kid first try to take care of a gerbil, figuring this is five times easier than managing a pony. If the kid demonstrates that he or she can feed the gerbil, clean its cage, and keep it healthy, then the parent may graduate to a more demanding kitten. Next would be a puppy, requiring greater responsibility. If that?s successful, it may be time for a goat?now requiring the kid (not to be confused with the young goat) to manage a paddock. If this works out, it?s finally time for a pony.