Caroline Kwok

China built more than 2,480mi of railway in 2020, according to Chinese state media reports. The report broadcast on December 26 said that half of the new rail lines built were for high-speed trains.  

A 470-meter-long zip line that for more than two decades was part of the daily commute for villagers of Yingge village in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan is being “retired.”  The cableway was the main transport for about 2,000 villagers to attend school, go to work and seek medical treatment. But since a bridge was built just a few hundred meters away in 2018, the zip line has been less vital, and now is being converted to a new role as tourist attraction for visitors who want a thrilling journey high above the Jinsha (Yangtze) River.   

In China’s northwestern Qinghai province, a wild snow leopard was recently filmed in the Sanjiangyuan National Park. In the same nature reserve, a pair of cubs were seen waiting patiently for their mother to return with food. As winter arrives, the big cats have also been sighted in other locations including Gansu, Shaanxi and China’s southwestern Sichuan province.  

People in the city of Genhe in China’s far northern Inner Mongolia autonomous region were awed by unusual light beams appearing in the night sky on  November 28, 2020. Known as “light pillars”, they are a rare optical illusion caused by falling ice crystals that reflect off light on the ground.   

Chen Rui says when she discovered a Burberry jacket she did not recall buying was the moment she knew she had to bring in experts to manage her overflowing luxury wardrobe. The Beijing resident is not the only affluent Chinese shopper running out of closet space after they engaged in online spending sprees during the Covid-19 pandemic.

China's first deep-space antenna array system has been put into use at the Kashgar satellite monitoring station in western China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Four antenna dishes, each measuring about 115ft in diameter, form the newly commissioned system. The array has already been put to work supporting the Mars exploration mission of the Chinese probe Tianwen-1.   

An English construction worker has found a valuable Chinese artifact initially thought to be a “teapot” while clearing out family belongings from a garage during lockdowns to fight the spread of Covid-19. The 51-year-old from Derbyshire in the UK said he was about to send the item to a charity shop before discovering it was an 18th-century imperial wine ewer. It fetched a life-changing sum at an auction this week. 

Statues depicting Taiwan’s former leader Chiang Kai-shek continue to generate controversy. Chiang fled to Taiwan after his Nationalist troops lost a civil war on the Chinese mainland to Communist forces in 1949. While some revere him for his anti-communist stance, others recall Chiang’s brutal imposition of martial law and purge of thousands of opponents. More than 70 years later, there is intense debate about Chiang’s legacy, as statues are being removed under a law meant to address issues of the island’s authoritarian past.   

The coronavirus pandemic has directly threatened the survival of one of Taiwan's best-known cultural scenes, the night market. Some hawker stalls at the Ningxia Night Market in Taipei are finding a way to stay in business by teaming up with food delivery services.

As deaths from the coronavirus mount in New York City, a temporary field hospital has been built in Central Park to help ease the burden on local hospitals. Covid-19 cases continue to surge in the city, with the death toll surpassing 900 on Monday, March 30. Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has estimated that about 200,000 Americans could die from the pandemic. US President Donald Trump has extended stay-at-home guidelines for the nation to the end of April.