Worldcrunch
In China, “Fashion Grandmothers” on Douyin are redefining aging, blending style, storytelling, and social media stardom. Retirees in elegant cheongsams and trendy outfits are challenging stereotypes, attracting millions of young followers, and turning old age into the latest cultural trend.
Updated Aug. 1, 2024 at 1 p.m. On this day in 1966, a group of Red Guard factions clashed with the local authorities and army units in the city of Wuhan during China’s Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards, consisting primarily of students and young activists, had been encouraged by Mao Zedong to challenge and disrupt […]
If Chinese food is a link to the homeland, then so is Chinese literature. Two Chinese immigrants in Europe have found a way to connect themselves and others to their culture by setting up spaces where people can buy or borrow Chinese paperbacks.
The credit giant becomes only the second player after American Express to be allowed to set up a bank card-clearing RMB operation in mainland China.
There is no doubt that the old museums in Europe and America bear deep imprints of the colonial era; in a mirror image, “protecting treasures” has become a transcendental reference for the new China.
A new melodrama broadcast in China about sexual assault in the workplace is a sign that some difficult questions are being addressed, but that serious taboos remain in Chinese society and public life.
Forget about Cantonese fried rice and spring rolls, new-look Chinese restaurants have been multiplying in Paris. They attract French people with increasingly diverse tastes… and a growing number of Chinese tourists.
While other major economies are taking steps to tighten credit, China is acting to cheapen it, in order to revive its economic activity and help big firms repay their debts. But will it fuel global inflation, or worse, stagflation?
Though Beijing is not likely to launch any overt operation right away, experts predict it’s most likely to try to force Taiwan’s reunification between 2025 and 2030. This would almost certainly prompt a U.S. response.
At the heart of Beijing’s health diplomacy, traditional Chinese medicine accounts for nearly 30% of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry’s turnover, and anyone who criticizes it could be punished.
Welcome to Friday, where new proof is revealed of China’s long-range missile silos, India surpasses 400,000 COVID deaths, and we meet the youngest chess grandmaster ever. El Espectador also looks at how the popular Hass avocado is threatening Colombia’s ecosystems and causing water shortages in areas once dominated by coffee bean cultivation. • China is […]
As Carrefour gets ready to sell a majority of its operations in China, lessons can be learned from the history of the French retail giant’s choices over the years.
Chinese students visiting Chile’s universities are eager to learn Spanish but reluctant to adopt its socio-cultural habits. How much does the language gap different identities?
BEIJING — It’s that time of a year again when an ever growing number of Chinese students are leaving to study abroad. These young people attract a lot of attention, often envied by their peers around them. Labeled as the “Fu-er-dai”, meaning “the second-generation rich brats,” some live a “luxurious and decadent life” overseas, while […]
More than just a vehicle to communicate, language expresses and helps construct identity. As such, it has the power to inspire and unite people — but language can also be a source of division, or an impediment to peace between groups already in conflict. From squabbles over things like spelling and pronunciation, to minority groups […]
A chilly bit of ‘wealth flaunting’ in time for the Chinese New Year.
NEW DELHI — The impact of the 19th Communist Party of China congress and affirmation of President Xi Jinping as China’s ‘most powerful” leader in decades matters for India — especially on the ‘Tibet Issue,” which also intersects with longstanding conflicts over the Chinese-Indian border. Tibetan leader Dalai Lama’s well-known desire to return home has taken on new urgency, following this November 23 statement: “The past is past, Tibetans want to stay with China,” he said. These words carry a serious political overtone, coming as it does immediately after the 19th party congress and amid the current Doklam border standoff […]
Brutal evictions of poor migrants in Beijing’s outskirts are part of a long history of cynical control of the populace.
-Analysis- BEIJING — Two weeks ago, a preschool in Shanghai was exposed for abusing toddlers. One young child was brutally thrown around the floor, while another was forced to eat spicy mustard. Then, last week, a kindergarten in Beijing run by the Red, Yellow and Blue (RYB) Education company, was found to have been injecting […]
PARIS — What if the very different Chinese approach on debt held the key to a solution for the crisis of public finances in the West. In Europe and North America, the notion of a contract holds a central role: Whoever borrows money has to pay back, no matters the circumstances. Chinese people instead tend […]
Bling and style are barriers that the Chinese-owned, Swedish-based company may not be able to overcome.
-OpEd- BEIJING — Many Chinese films are awful. Who is to blame for this objective fact? An audience typically praises a film when they think it’s good and complain when it isn’t. Yet Feng Xiaogang, a famous Chinese film director, was lambasted at the recent Shanghai Films Festival for the following statement: “The reason why […]
BEIJING — Dream or nightmare? Chinese moviegoers will now see for themselves. Starting July 1, the anniversary the Chinese Communist Party, and through its 19th national congress in the fall, all Chinese cinemas are obliged by the government to show a propaganda film,The Glory and the Dream — Our Chinese Dream. The short video is […]
Trade with Asia will be all the more important for Latin American countries once President Obama leaves office.
Amid more and more incidents of bullying in China, schools and the legal system appear to be doing very little to stop it.
BEIJING — President Xi Jinping is now be turning his attention to China’s so-called “black households,” those without an official family registry document, who are thus barred from obtaining legal proof of identity. But China will need more than Xi’s good will to solve the problem, which ultimately can be traced in large part back […]
Combining kung fu with soccer? This was a fantasy depicted in Stephen Chow’s 2001 martial arts comedy film Shaolin Soccer. But now, in Henan province, home of the Shaolin Temple famous for its superhuman martial-arts monks, we are set to see a real-life attempt to kick some life into Chinese soccer by applying the methods […]
VANCOUVER — James Hankle, a software engineer in his 50s sporting bluejeans and a Green Party T-shirt, is explaining his fix for Vancouver’s runaway property prices when he’s interrupted by an eavesdropping passer-by: “Stop allowing people from China to buy our houses and leave them vacant,” she says and walks away. Despite British Columbia’s aversion to pipelines and affection for pot, housing affordability has pushed both aside as the No. 1 issue raised by area residents in the run-up to Canada’s election this month. It’s not completely surprising given that Vancouver has become North America’s most expensive city. Surging purchase […]
A mini boom in Chinese-language studies has hit Cambodia, which not only trades with mainland China but also counts many ethnic Chinese among its business leaders.
BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to India this month was the perfect opportunity to watch the “dance of the dragon with the elephant.” This visit was extremely important to both nations. China, in the face of its difficult diplomatic predicament in the South China Sea and the East China Sea as well […]
Presented as a peaceful power for the past decade, China is now seen as a potential military aggressor by many. Amid the tug of economic and political interests, China keeps rising.
BEIJING — On June 27, after days of uncertainty and rumors, 1,260 Chinese workers who had been trapped in northern Iraq’s war-torn Saladin province were finally evacuated and transferred to Baghdad. Just like the 2011 emergency pullout of Chinese nationals from Libya and the recent evacuation of others in the anti-Chinese protests in Vietnam, this […]
Two full decades after its previous version was voted in, the country’s newly amended environmental protection was cited for its toughness. But the challenge is in the execution.
With the intention to stop the ‘corruption’ of the Chinese language, authorities in Beijing have been taking aim at everything from the NBA and MBAs, to iPhones and WiFi.
KASHGAR — The Matang nut cake and skewered kawap (mutton), an ancient Kingdom reduced to ruins in a desert, and the simple imagery of folk singing and dancing: These are the stereotypes most Han Chinese have of the Uyghur people. It made sense for me to travel to find out more in their native land, […]
BEIJING — There is a career crisis in China’s judiciary, and it’s especially acute here in the capital. First the numbers. According to statistics obtained by Li Yuanfang, a National People’s Congress member, of the 2,053 judges recruited in Beijing between 2008 and 2012, 348 have since resigned. That’s 16.9% of new recruits leaving their […]
China’s notorious re-education-through-labor system, abbreviated as laojiao in Chinese, has come into the spotlight with the recent reform announcement by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. The system was born out of the “Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries” and the “Anti-Rightist Movement” of the Mao era. It was designed to eradicate opposition elements after […]
-Commentary- In the southern province of Guangxi, a pregnant woman was recently shot dead by a drunken policeman. After the incident, the local government proposed to compensate the victim’s family with 700,000 RMB ($115,000), which included damages for the deceased and child support for the victim’s two children. This was done on the grounds that […]