Thanks to China’s booming live-streaming platforms, the British cartoon character Peppa Pig became China’s internet darling—and not just with toddlers. The cute, chubby piglet has acquired a “gangster” vibe in China, after internet users portrayed the preschool show character wearing rapper-style gold necklaces, and smoking cigars.
One would-be protester skulked on the streets around the Westin Hotel in Beijing’s financial district until 3 am, heading back only when police had finished their searches. Another, Alex Li, carpooled part of the way from northern Harbin province to avoid police surveillance on public transport.
It took a while, but China’s #MeToo movement finally gained momentum this summer as women came forward to accuse prominent men—including journalists, charity organization leaders, and even a Buddhist monk—of sexual harassment. And now, it’s hitting the country’s tech industry.
This summer, medicines from China have led to two global recalls, posting a huge setback for a country that has been trying to restore consumer confidence in the safety of Chinese food and medicines after a deadly episode of infant formula adulteration a decade ago.
Airbnb wanted to let people “call the Great Wall of China home” for a night, but China had other ideas.
How deeply convinced investors are of the strength of China’s electric vehicle market? They’ve put hundreds of millions of dollars into EV startups that have yet to mass produce their vehicles.
China’s #MeToo movement keeps rolling on, with a famous Buddhist institution now accused of sexual harassment.
In many ways, Pinduoduo is an impressive Chinese tech startup. The three-year-old company, which offers an eponymous online shopping platform, raised about $1.6 billion in a US IPO last week, reaching a valuation of about $30 billion on its first day of trading.
For nearly two decades, one district has had a front-row seat to Hong Kong’s vibrant street culture, where on any given night, people could find buskers singing Cantonese opera and Cantopop, yogis performing acrobatic tricks, and Michael Jackson lookalikes busting a move. But that ended this weekend (July 29), as authorities have shut down a popular pedestrian thoroughfare in Mong Kok, one of the world’s densest neighborhoods.
Hanoi, Vietnam
In China, it’s rare for people to speak out about their rights—when they do, authorities, eager to maintain public order and security, are swift to shut it down, no matter what the cause.
Is Taiwan part of China? That’s a question China has been successfully forcing many major airlines around the world to say yes to over the past months. But some travel companies have escaped that pressure—for now.
Hong Kong just gave residents a peek into its new banknotes yesterday (July 24), but one of the bill designs is already being mocked for its resemblance to “hell money,” which Chinese people burn for their deceased loved ones.
Japan is currently battling a deadly heatwave, which has left 65 people dead and more than 22,000 hospitalized. The national weather agency declared the heatwave a natural disaster.
Ten years ago this month, the biggest food-safety scandal ever in China started to come to light as parents slowly discovered that their children might be drinking poisonous milk powder. Now, parents are fretting over the safety of the country’s vaccines.
The idea of looking at how animals live in a zoo is normal to us, but what if we let animals observe the way we live?
In China, one proverb tells the gist of how economic development happens in many poor and distant places: If you want to get rich, first build a road. The mountainous southwestern Guizhou province is a perfect example of that.
As illegal drug use continues to grow in China, police there have turned to a new weapon to combat the problem—analyzing sewage water to find traces of substances like methamphetamine (meth) and ketamine.
One of the most expensive movies ever made in China has been a spectacular failure on its very first weekend. Meanwhile, a movie made for just $15 million that opened the previous weekend is already among China’s highest-grossing movies ever.
A platform that wants China’s female factory workers to “scream” about their workplace troubles has been removed from one of China’s most prominent social media platforms.
China’s national soccer team didn’t make it into the World Cup, but one of its companies scored big-time. Vatti, a little-known oven maker based in the southern city of Zhongshan, raised eyebrows by promising product refunds if the team it sponsored won the tournament.
In late June 2008, urology doctor Zhang Wei treated four babies within 10 days—one just 10-months old—for kidney stones. It’s a condition that rarely occurs in children and can cause unbearable pain when it does. “This made me tremble as a doctor, I felt there might be a common reason behind these cases,” Zhang told a Chinese newspaper (link in Chinese) later.
In August 2015, deadly explosions ripped apart warehouses storing dangerous chemicals in the port city of Tianjin, China, killing over 160 people and forming a crater visible from space. After revelations that the company involved had been illegally operating for years thanks to its owners’ strong political ties, the government vowed to improve the nation’s lax safety standards and crack down on corruption. Chinese president Xi Jinping said authorities should learn the lessons paid for in blood.
In the race to put self-driving cars on the road, China and the US are neck and neck. Companies in both countries want to guard the technologies they’re developing, but that can be a challenge as rivals try to poach key engineers, often the gatekeepers of intellectual property.
