“What I learnt when I was ‘taken away’ to an island quarantine facility in the middle of the night.”
China
Posted inEditor's Pick
Toxic Tiles
House renovations surged during the pandemic, when work-from-home policies took effect and people were looking for easy, inexpensive ways to upgrade their homes. Enter “luxury vinyl tile,” of which big-box stores like Home Depot sell massive quantities. But, as reported in The Intercept, this in-demand vinyl flooring is created from plastic made by Uyghur workers […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Dismantling of Hong Kong
“When I say I miss Hong Kong, what I mean is the city as I remember it between the years of 2014 and 2019.” Karen Cheung reflects on the transformation of her home city. It wasn’t only that we could not see our future a few years down the line — say, whether we could […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: Inside Shein’s Sudden Rise
Online fast-fashion giant Shein has grown dramatically and sells a massive volume of super-cheap, disposable clothing for budget-conscious teenagers. But the Chinese company has disclosed very little about its production, reports Vauhini Vara, that it’s hard to measure its environmental footprint. Lu, the University of Delaware professor, found that in a recent 12-month period, the […]
Posted inQuotes
Going into Starbucks to Order Butter Tea
“Pema wants to ask Jamal, Have you seen the news? But of course he hasn’t. He’s got other things to think about and now so does she.”
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Meet the Mystery Woman Who Mastered IBM’s 5,400-Character Chinese Typewriter
“Lois Lew operated the improbable, ill-fated machine with aplomb in presentations from Manhattan to Shanghai. 70-plus years later, she’s telling her story.”
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The Factories in the Camps
Forced labor on a vast scale is taking place inside Xinjiang’s detention centers.
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Returning the Gaze
“Uighurs in exile are fighting back against China’s techno-authoritarianism to locate their relatives who have been disappeared.”
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Nine Days in Wuhan, the Ground Zero of the Coronavirus Pandemic
“There’s no other country where the pandemic’s effects have been so concentrated in a single city.”
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Were They Lost Students or Inept Spies for China?
Two students from China, studying at the University of Michigan, travel to Florida during their winter break and find themselves in trouble after entering the Naval Air Station Key West, a major U.S. military facility.