Society

It took years – and a move to New Zealand – before Cui Le felt ready to tell his story. Cui was working as a linguistics lecturer at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in the southern Chinese province of Guangzhou when he publicly identified as gay in 2015. In August of that year a student named Qiubai, at Sun Yat-sen University, sued the Chinese education ministry over textbooks that described homosexuality as a “disease.” The school counselor informed Qiubai’s parents of her sexuality and they, in turn, took her to the hospital for an examination. Cui, along with the rest of the country’s LGBT community, was outraged. Until that moment he had remained silent, fearful that being g

Every Tuesday and Thursday, China Trends takes the pulse of the Chinese social media to keep you in the loop of what the world’s biggest internet population is talking about. A lesbian wedding A wedding of two women has caught the eyes of many Chinese internet users this week.  Although online support for LGBT rights appears on the rise, the government does not recognize same-sex marriage. Chinese authorities often censor depictions of homosexuality in films and television. That’s why the wedding photos of a dancer who goes by the name Shui Yue went viral on social media.  Shui Yue, whose name literally translates to “water moon,” is not a household name. She’s known as an apprentice of a f

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Inkstone Index features a single, illuminating number that helps you make sense of China. 3.6 percentage points: the gap between the ability for rural and urban Chinese youth to access the internet. Young people in rural China are catching up with their city counterparts when it comes to going online. About 94% of urban Chinese youth have access to the internet, compared to 90.3% of rural youth, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, a government agency. The difference of 3.6 percentage points shrank from last year’s number of 5.4 percentage points, the center said in a report on internet access for people between the age of 6 and 18. China s

Chinese students studying abroad have taken advantage of the freedoms they have outside China to voice their political views. In February, Hong Kong political activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law were invited to speak at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The event outraged some international students from mainland China. Inkstone joined them as they organized a protest on campus.

Stanley Ho, the patriarch of Asia’s largest casino empire and a man whose very name is synonymous with Macau’s rise to become the world’s gambling capital, has died. He was 98.  Here are seven things to know about the man: He helped build a gambling hub bigger than Las Vegas from the ground up Stanley Ho’s life will forever be tied to Macau, where he fled during the Second World War with only HK$10 – or about $33 in today’s money – in his pocket.  Then a Portuguese territory, Macau was neutral in the Pacific War, in keeping with Portugal’s neutrality throughout the world war.  Ho got his start in business by working for the Macau Cooperative Company, then the largest company in the territor

Millions of Chinese citizens living abroad watched in distress as the coronavirus pandemic plunged their home country into crisis early this year, holding their breath until the virus was wrangled under control last month.  But even as life slowly returns to normal in China, the strict measures that helped the country contain Covid-19 are preventing some overseas Chinese from going home. Despite their willingness to pay for expensive flights and endure a two-week quarantine in a hotel, some Chinese citizens abroad are effectively blocked from returning home owing to China’s strict limits on the number of inbound flights.  The tough measures have triggered a collective outrage among the mostl

A man who was kidnapped as a child has been reunited with his parents after 32 years, bringing an end to one of China’s most notorious abduction cases. Mao Yin was two in 1988 when he disappeared in Xian, the capital of the northern province of Shaanxi, and was sold to another family who raised him as their own son. Mao, who was renamed Gu Ningning by his adoptive parents, was reunited with his mother and father – Li Jingzhi and Mao Zhenjing – on Monday at a press conference organized by the police and shown live on the state broadcaster CCTV. Mao, who now runs a home decoration business, was tracked down in early May by Xian police. They used facial recognition technology to analyze old ch

In a case that has thrown a spotlight on China’s age of consent laws, a businessman has denied accusations that he assaulted a 14-year-old girl and described the relationship as romantic. The alleged victim, who is now 18, told Chinese media outlets South Reviews and Thepaper.cn in April that the man, who adopted her in 2015, sexually assaulted her over the course of more than three years. She said the assault first took place when she was 14 years old. Lawyers say the businessman, Bao Yuming, may be able to defend himself by asserting the alleged sex was consensual. The case is being investigated by police in the eastern city of Yantai, where Bao lives.  In a response to South Reviews, Bao

Police in Vancouver say the man suspected of targeting Asian women wearing face masks in a racist incident on a bus has died of an apparent drug overdose. The death was announced on Wednesday, a day after Metro Vancouver Transit Police had asked the public for help in identifying the suspect in the April 15 incident. “The suspect was a 48-year-old man from Vancouver with no fixed address who was well known to police,” Constable Mike Yake said. “We learned that the suspect had passed away from an apparent drug overdose approximately one week after this incident.” Yake thanked the media and the public for their help in identifying the man believed to have been involved in what he called a “di

According to Metro Vancouver Transit Police, the unidentified man boarded a downtown bus on April 15 – then immediately turned his attention to two Asian women, both wearing face masks. “Go back to your country; that’s where it all started,” he told the pair, according to a police request for public assistance issued on Tuesday.  Police say the man then attacked a third woman who came to the pair’s defense, kicking her, wrestling her to the floor of the bus and ripping out a clump of hair. Three days before that attack, a different man was captured on surveillance footage strolling through Vancouver. He veers towards a small Asian woman wearing a hoodie. She glances up before the man punche