Thank God it's Friday!

Two weeks ago, Ma Ling asked her friends what was a good place to have chat after work in Beijing.Nearly half of them told her that she should try a restaurant called T.G.I. Friday's, which is on the Third Ring     

Statutory Warnings

There are hospitals,and then there are Beijing hospitals.My first brush with the medical profession in China was actuated by an emer- gency of sorts,when my girlfriend collapsed and blacked out briefly as she exited from the toilet of an Indian restaurant (the food was not the culprit,not this time).Flustered Chinese waiters revived her with water,but she awoke to sharp,crippling pain in the lower abdomen.I called our landlady,and bless her sweet overflowing Chinese heart, she arrived within minutes and escorted us to the nearest hospital.     

Social Expectations in China

I remember the scene vividly:Late last year,I was eating lunch with a Chinese friend who was obviously upset.When I met her at the gate of the student canteen,she tried her best to make small talk,but something was clearly wrong.Her head hung low,her eyes were glued to the floor,and she     

Commemorating sa ：Blessiugs from Grandma

The Dong are a polytheistic people; they might worship a tree, a huge rock, a water well, a bridge... Most important of all, however, they worship as the highest deity their ancestor, Sa, the name meaning ＂Grandma who first established a Dong village.＂ Every Dong village has an altar devoted to Sa and worshiping Sa is the most solemn religious activity in the life of Dong people. The Sa Festival is also called Grandma Festival. Legend has it that Grandma led fellow villagers in fighting against invaders and defending the village. After her death, the Dongs built an altar and ancestral temple to her memory in their village, and every year they hold sacrificial activities to celebrate the Sa Festival.     

New Home,New Hope

正For six years,every time the neighbors asked Zhang Yi where her son was, Zhang would force a smile and say her son was abroad. But Zhang knows her son will never come back as he died of a heart attack at the age of 23.After his death,Zhang cut all her connections to her co-workers and friends and moved from Beijing's downtown to the sub-     

UNITED WE WIN

Wei Shanshan,who lives in Jianghan District in Wuhan,received a call saying there was a package for her from Kyoto,Japan.It was the 26th day of the sealing off of the city in Hubei Province,central China,which is the epicenter of the novel coronavirus disease(COVID-19)outbreak.On her way to fetch the package at the gate of her community,Wei thought to herself,maybe it is from a friend studying in Japan.But she was not sure because her friend studies in Tokyo,not Kyoto.     

Capital and Home to Newcomers

WHEN Xu Yongling firststepped off the trainfrom Henan at BeijingRailway Station in1992, she was a wide-eyed 18-year-old with a temporary resi-dence permit. The prospect of finding ajob in the capital seemed as electrifyingas the city lights."I was thrilled to be in Beijing, butbecause I was an outsider, work washard to find," she recalls. Today, 31-year-old Xu Yongling is a mother, andthe interior decor company she startedwith her husband is starting to prosper.She is amazed at how vastl…     

Six Poems

Helen Snow passed away on January 11, 1997To commemorate this old friend of the Chinesepeople, we publish six of her poems and the intro-duction to these poems by Chinese poet Zhu Ziqi.These poems and the following article were firstpublished in the magazine Poem inJanurary,1993. From Lu Cui's letter,Helen cameto know that her poems were published and shehappily wrote to Lu Cui and Zhu Ziqi, express-ing her thanks to them. She said that this was thefirst time that her poems were translated into Chi-nese and published in a Chinese magazine, andthis was also the first time that she got remunera-tion for her poems in China. With the remunera-tion Lu Cui bought two silk blouses for her andasked a friend to bring them to her.     

Inspirational Journey

Artists from across Europe and Asia ventured into the remote Chinese countryside to seek inspiration from the Miao Ethnic group "I've never been to Asia before and everything is strange and wonderful:supermarkets and shopping mails,even the air- port seemed exotic!"wrote Ula Sickle,a choreographer from Poland on her blog under the name"chopstick diaries."Ula was one of the 18 foreign and domestic artists participating in a cultural exchange project called the Pointe to Point: Asia-Europe Dance Forum.It aims to empower aspiring young artists from Asia and Europe to reflect upon their views of     

Liao Xiaoyi：Greening the Lifestyle

LAST October, 55-year-old Liao Xiaoyi was listed one of Time Magazine＇s Heroes of the Environment 2009. This was not the first time she received an award. In 2000 she became China＇s first individual winner of the Sophie Prize, aka the Nobel Prize for the environment. A year later, she won top environmental laurels in Australia - the Banksia International Environmental Award. In 2008, the Global Citizen Award was presented to her by former president Bill Clinton. It was also in that year that she was invited to be an environmental consultant to the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee.     

How Big a Mother＇s Heart Can Be

WHEN 69-year-old Anipa Alimahong was selected as one of the Ten People of 2009 Who Moved China earlier this year, her family decided to throw her a grand feast. But it is the understanding of her 19 children, particularly the 10 without blood ties to her, that there is nothing they could ever do to fully repay the love their mother and father have lavished on them for the past 40 years.     

A Woman Drug Trafficker:“I Could Not Live Till Today, If Not for...”

What about a convicted criminal when he or she is ill? Let it run its own course or extend a humanitarian hand? The case of Deng Jinhua furnished an example. Deng Jinhua, 37, was born in Linquan County, Anhui Province. On 26 January 2000, She was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for drug trafficking by the People's Court of Wenling City, Zhejiang Province. She suffers from recurrent epilepsy. While she was serving her term, the disease often recurred. But, instead of seeing her suffer, the prison wardens extended a warm help to her while making great efforts to make her repent. The following are excerpts from her confession in the prison:     

WHO'S NEXT?

正China’s private entrepreneurs struggle to hand their companies over to the second generation This is the second time Zuo Ying has been called back to China to help with her father’s business,Zongshen Industrial Group based in Chongqing in southwest China.     

中国祠祀建筑群——晋祠

Jinci was called as the Tem-ple of the Emperor of Shanxi and it was built to memorize Ji Yu, the first emperor of Shanxi in the an-cient time who was the second son of the Emperor Zhou Wu and the brother of the Emperor Zhou Cheng. Ji Yu was the prince in Tang and people called him as the Uncle of the Emperor then the temple was called as Tangshuyu Temple (Shu means uncle). The temple was enlarged during Tian-bao Period of Northern Qi Dynasty (550 A.C.-559 A.C.) and changed the name …     

A Woman Drug Trafficker:“I Could Not Live Till Today, If Not for...”

What about a convicted criminal when he or she is ill? Let it run its own course or extend a humanitarian hand? The case of Deng Jinhua furnished an example. Deng Jinhua, 37, was born in Linquan County, Anhui Province. On 26 January 2000, She was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for drug trafficking by the People's Court of Wenling City, Zhejiang Province. She suffers from recurrent epilepsy. While she was serving her term, the disease often recurred. But, instead of seeing her suffer, the prison wardens extended a warm help to her while making great efforts to make her repent.     

The Kindness of a Chinese Immigrant

ON September 10, 2002 Mary He was thirty thousand meters above the Pacific Ocean, en route from Vancouver to Beijing. But the Chinese capital was not her final destination. Chinese-born Mary He, who now lives in Canada, took a 4-hour connecting flight to Urumqi, and then another 2-hour flight to Kashi in western China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. She spent the third day of her journey on a coach, traveling for more than 10 hours across the Gobi desert to Hotan. There, she continued her 30-year search for a Uygur boy named Ircken.     

Hill Dwellers Climb Cultural Mountain——Miao people record their identity and history in eco-museum

Instead of running away, she stood to attention with arms akimbo and gave a serious smile. The giant wooden basket on her back almost made her fall as she tried to straighten her body. When I raised the camera, Yang Jiaxiu was walking along a narrow, muddy mountain path in a virgin fir forest, carrying about 50 kilograms of water. She twisted her body to pour the water into a large tank when she finally arrived at her house. Then the Miao woman put down the     

Fu Ying： Cultural Bridge

AT the beginning of 2010, Fu Ying, Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom, learned of her new mission to take effect January 4, 2010. A promotion would make her vice minister of foreign affairs, the second female in China ever to take the post. The first one was appointed over 30 years ago.     

Tian Jiaxin: Bring China to the World with Music

正FROM a little girl who cried at her first concert to a performer on the international stage,Tian Jiaxin,by realizing her musical dream,is making the world hear China.On April 28,the"French Spirit"concert was held at the National Theatre for the Performing Arts to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sino-French diplomatic relations.The French maestro Philippe Entremont and his Chinese student Tian Jiaxin brought the concert to its peak with their free-flowing performance of Mozart’s piano concerto.Although they had collaborated before,it was the fi rst time Tian performed with her French     

Exchanges

In her speech at the opening ceremony of the China-Russia Youth Year of Friendship Exchanges at St. Petersburg State Uni- versity on March 28, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong spoke of the progress and changes in China＇s society, commending the development of bilateral ties. Liu called on young people to con- tribute to friendly ties between the two countries.