ENJOY SCIENCE: Primary school students do experiments with the instruction of college students in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on August 3 (ZHAO TINGTING)

Squirrels' efforts

In March 2011, waves of misinformation and panic swept through China after news of radioactive leaks at Japan's tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant was released. Rumors warning of plumes of radioactive vapor floating across the Sea of Japan did the rounds. Shoppers cleared shelves of iodized salt, believing it would protect them against exposure to radiation.

"You should take 99.4 mg of iodine within 24 hours to alleviate the effects of radiation. Each 1 kg of salt contains a maximum of 30 mg of iodine, which means you have to take about 3.3 kg salt every day. This is obviously impossible," cautioned a post on Sina Weibo, a twitter-like micro-blogging service in China, which tried to calm the panic.

The post came from the Science Squirrels Club, a group founded in April 2008 by Ji Xiaohua, who is better known by his pen name Ji Shisan, with the purpose of spreading information on science and technology in a more interesting and accessible way.

Having graduated from the Shanghai-based Fudan University in 2007 with a doctoral degree in neurobiology, Ji became a freelance science writer instead of staying in school or labs as a researcher, as many Ph.D. students do. He wrote science columns for more than 10 media outlets at a time.

"I fled campus because I didn't like the research environment. Science is great and cool when we are enjoying the comforts we get from new technology. But working in a lab is very boring. Some people find the monotony comforting, but I want to do something more interesting with my life," Ji said.

In 2008, Ji moved from Shanghai to Beijing and started a blog together with 10 people with similar interests. "I called upon a group of young science writers. They were very talented and fully aware of the advantages of the website. They all maintain a good reputation in the media and on the Internet, and many have had a significant influence on their followers," Ji said.

The blog was listed as one of the winners of the Best of Global Chinese Blogs in 2008. The citation said, "They (the authors) write on everything from roses to spaceships, covering almost all the themes in science, and the authors always make topics interesting and academically correct."

As the blog grew more popular, Ji and his co-founders decided to set up an online science club, which they named the Science Squirrels Club.

"Let science be popular, this is my dream. I want science to become something like music, film and sports, getting out of the ivory tower and walking into our daily life, turning into a common topic at the dinner table and in travel," Ji said.

The logo of the club is a squirrel eating a pinecone with its tail forming a question mark. The co-founders view the pinecone as representative of science: delicious on the inside, but a hard nut to crack.

The club's first book was published shortly after it was founded. Titled When Colorful Voice Tastes Sweet, it consists of 54 popular science articles collected from thousands of submissions by the Science Squirrel Club members over the past three years.

"To show the beauty of science with beautiful words is the main purpose of the club," Ji said.

At the end of 2010, Ji launched a website, Guokr.com, with the same purpose. "Guokr.com in Chinese means nutshell. Our purpose is to crack the nutshell and offer the tasty fruits of science to more people."

The club and the website have gained popularity among young people in big cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. "They often hold some lectures or activities on weekends and holidays which are very interesting and I enjoy science much more," said Yang Minmo, a journalism major from the Renmin University of China in Beijing. "Before encountering the club, I wasn't a fan of science and technology. I thought they were boring and too complicated."

However, a netizen self-proclaimed Mondora wasn't so convinced by the club's efforts. On Douban.com, a website popular among young people, Mondora posted a message saying, "I really dislike the Science Squirrels Club and Guokr.com." More than 100 people have expressed similar opinions.

"I still can't understand a lot of their articles. The articles are still full of technical jargon and I think some of the writers can't even write basic articles," wrote a netizen, Monkeywii.

"Of course we have some problems," Ji said. "The financial pressure is mounting and the biggest problem is a shortage of writers. There is no money to hire more and volunteers are leaving."

"It makes you desperate when you dream big but nobody is around to help. But the Science Squirrels Club is a long-term project, and we are still on the right path," Ji said. "After all, science is all about the possibilities."