Barbara Demick’s most recent book is Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town. She is a former correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and served as Bureau Chief in Seoul and in Beijing. She is also the author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.
On Wednesday, North Korea claimed that it had tested a hydrogen bomb, bringing to four the number of nuclear weapons it has set off on its own territory since 2006. The act drew international condemnation, prompting us to ask: What’s different this time? Does condemnation of the test from China, North Korea’s greatest ally, matter? Shouldn’t the U.S. and China, or China and South Korea, or China and Japan, use nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula as an issue over which to stand united?
Tseng Po-yu walks along the narrow sidewalks made dim by the overhead awnings, between the bank of parked motorbikes on one side and the one-room shops and restaurants on the other. Wearing the brightly colored vest of a Taiwanese candidate for public office, into these shops and restaurants she ventures, bowing to the customers and shopkeepers, offering each person a packet of Kleenex with her photograph on it and explaining that she, a member of the Green Party in New Taipei City’s 11th district, would appreciate their vote for national legislature.
In Yanji, a trade hub between the two countries, desks and tables swayed and people were evacuated from buildings.
Chinese President Xi Jinping rounded off 2015 by posting his first message on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, in the form of a new year’s greeting to the People’s Liberation Army. His post received 52,000 comments, mostly fawning messages of support featuring thumbs-up and smiling emoticons. This short message symbolizes the official taming of Weibo, whose early promise as a freewheeling platform for criticism and debate has been choked off by censorship, intimidation, a raft of new legislation, and a virtual army of commentators, known as the “fifty-cent party,” paid to influence online opinion.
Playing an aging gangster railing against the “little punks” who kidnapped his son in Beijing, Feng Xiaogang gives a solid performance as the title character of Mr. Six: a gravel-throated vigilante shaken when his go-it-alone rescue effort puts him on a collision course with a world that’s much bigger and more complex than the one he’s used to.
Huang Gui-Li, a campaign worker for the Minkuotang party, shows some holiday cheer on Christmas day as he prepares to distribute material to elementary students about holiday spirit written by Hsinchu County parliament candidate Qiu Jing-Ya in Zhubei City, Taiwan.
Wanda aims to be a global entertainment giant, buying the No. 2 U.S. cinema chain AMC for $2.6B in 2012.
The 37 meter gold-colored giant sits in farmland near the center of a deadly 1950s famine resulting from Mao's policies.
