Canada, U.S. shadow Chinese research ships in the Arctic as concern grows over Snow Dragons' presence

A man from southern China travelled 3,000 kilometres to search for his pen pal from 24 years ago, stirring nostalgia among many for their own youth pen pals. Li Zhicong, around 40, hails from the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and has been working in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, for over a decade. Recently, he journeyed 3,000 km to Inner Mongolia in northern China to find his pen pal “Ice Rain,” who wrote him a letter 24 years ago. In 2002, when he was a third-year junior secondary school...

“Women hold up half the sky.” This iconic quote attributed to Mao Zedong has been central to Beijing’s messaging about gender equality for decades. It was not just a slogan. After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, the Communist Party passed a Marriage Law that banned arranged marriages, abolished foot-binding and encouraged women to enter education and the workplace. But the party’s stance on where women belong has shifted over the decades, according to a new study. To gauge the...

When a shot rang out at the Debsirin Nonthaburi School on the outskirts of Bangkok on Friday morning, 14-year-old Khim and her classmates peered over a balcony to see if the noise had come from a construction site. But more loud bangs followed, until a teacher ushered them all into a classroom, checked a messaging group and confirmed to the now terrified students: there was an active shooter in their building. “I heard multiple gunshots and felt like ‌we weren’t going to survive,” Khim, who...