On Sunday five soldiers were killed by suspected militants in a bomb attack in Yala, a neighbouring province.

BBC: Militants killed in southern Thailand attack

On Monday around 60 school girls were taken ill with similar symptoms in a neighbouring province, Parwan, the scene of another such incident in April.

BBC: Pupils boycott Afghanistan school

It quoted a woman from neighbouring Sichuan Province saying that the railway would cut her costs of doing business in Shigatse by half.

ECONOMIST: Everyone else is worried

Neighbouring Zhejiang province, a big export-manufacturing base, says 70% of foreign firms there are already unionised.

ECONOMIST: China's unions

Since there is already a world-class speed-skating rink in the neighbouring province of Alberta, the Richmond rink was designed to be converted into a multipurpose community centre after the festivities conclude.

ECONOMIST: The 2010 Winter Olympics

About 250km (150 miles) to the north, in neighbouring Shanxi province, in Pingdong, a much poorer village, 250 people live along battered dirt roads, and try to grow wheat, corn, soyabeans and winter melon on the dry, rocky mountain land.

ECONOMIST: Farmers pay the price for decades of wasteful water use

Her 61-year-old sister, on the other hand, still lives in the neighbouring province of Hebei, where she collects a meagre pension of 80 yuan a month.

ECONOMIST: China is beginning to face up to its pension problems

The story begins in 1992, when an army unit from Lanzhou in neighbouring Gansu province, drilling with state permission, made a decent oil find in Jingbian county.

ECONOMIST: In rural China, a private oil boom became a state-owned one