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China

Chinese Man Scavenges Through Trash For 16 Years To Buy Wife Piano

THE WEST CHINA URBAN DAILY (China), CHINA TIMES (Taiwan)

Worldcrunch

YANSHI - Xie Guizhi came onto the stage to a burst of applause at a community concert in Yanshi City. The 58-year-old sat at the piano and played a well-known folk song called The Waves of Hong Lake, a so-called red song of China’s Cultural Revolution Era, and her own youth.

In the audience sat Wu Zheng, her husband, his eyes slowly filling with tears, the China Times reported.

Watching his wife’s fingers move across the piano, Wu Zheng couldn’t help recalling the past. Like tens of millions of other young and educated people during the Cultural Revolution, Wu Zheng was sent as a teenager far away to Xinjiang, in Western China.

Later he would meet Xie Guizhi, a pretty girl 11 years his junior, according to the West China Urban Daily.

After the Cultural Revolution era, they were not permitted to return to Shanghai, Wu's hometown, as government policy did not admit any population from the countryside. They were obliged to go to live in Xie’s hometown, Yanshi City in Henan Province. He worked as a clerk in the Cooperative and his wife worked in a factory -- they had two kids.

Sixteen years ago when Xie Guizhi inadvertently revealed her wish of owning a piano, Wu Zheng secretly vowed to make it happen. Ever since, day after day, year after year, he scavenged odds and ends out of dumpsters and rubbish bins, gradually putting aside money to purchase the longed-for piano.

The 69-year-old Wu told West China Urban Daily: “I want her to be healthy and happy. I want to listen to her piano, and keep her company and grow old together.”

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Society

Violence Against Women, The Patriarchy And Responsibility Of The Good Men Too

The femicide of Giulia Cecchettin has shaken Italy, and beyond. Argentine journalist Ignacio Pereyra looks at what lies behind femicides and why all men must take more responsibility.

photo of a young man holding a sign: Filippo isn't a monster, he's the healthy son of the patriarchy

A protester's sign referring to the alleged killer reads: Filippo isn't a monster, he's the healthy son of the patriarchy

Matteo Nardone/Pacific Press via ZUMA Press
Ignacio Pereyra

Updated Dec. 3, 2023 at 10:40 p.m.

-Essay-

ATHENS — Are you going to write about what happened in Italy?, Irene, my partner, asks me. I have no idea what she's talking about. She tells me: a case of femicide has shaken the country and has been causing a stir for two weeks.

As if the fact in itself were not enough, I ask what is different about this murder compared to the other 105 women murdered this year in Italy (or those that happen every day around the world).

For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.

We are talking about a country where the expression "fai l'uomo" (be a man) abounds, with a society so prone to drama and tragedy and so fond of crime stories as few others, where the expression "crime of passion" is still mistakenly overused.

In this context, the sister of the victim reacted in an unexpected way for a country where femicide is not a crime recognized in the penal code, contrary to what happens, for example, in almost all of Latin America.

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