Society

Chinese people angered at the authorities’ handling of the coronavirus outbreak are trying to speak their minds online by obfuscating their messages.  Social media posts composed of dashes and dots as well as out-of-order words have cropped up on the Chinese internet after the death of Dr Li Wenliang. The doctor was chided by Chinese police in December for alerting others to a possible outbreak. His death from the virus has become a symbol of the Chinese government’s botched response to early reports of the disease now known as Covid-19. “The epidemic exposed the harm caused by censorship of speech to the people and the country,” Shu Song, a California-based Chinese developer who created a w

Armed robbers stole 600 rolls of toilet paper from outside a Hong Kong supermarket on Monday, as panic buying over the spread of the coronavirus showed little signs of easing. Three masked men stole the toilet paper wrapped in about 50 packets, worth about $206, from a delivery man outside a Wellcome store in Mong Kok at around 6am on Monday. Police said one of the men was armed with two knives. Two people, aged 49 and 54, had been arrested by midday on Monday, and the police said they were hunting down three more people thought to be aged between 20 and 30. The stolen toilet rolls were found in a guest house in the same district, not far from where it was taken.  The incident followed week

Streets across China are left deserted amid the spread of the coronavirus and government curbs on travel. Check out the gallery of photos taken by Reuters for the rare sight of empty streets in Beijing and Shanghai.

In the 1930s, Western newspapers were in the habit of portraying Macau as a haven of pirates, scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells, gambling the days away and smoking opium by night. Maurice Dekobra, a bestselling French writer of the inter­war years, had a hit with his 1938 novel, Macao, enfer du jeu (Macao, Gambling Hell), which became an equally sensationalist film. Lacking Peking’s bohemianism, Shanghai’s modernity or Hong Kong’s dynamism, Macau sat in the South China Sea, fanning itself in the heat, a decaying relic of the diminished Portuguese empire. The economy was hurting thanks to the British Royal Navy’s suppression of piracy and smuggling. Officially, it was good news, but not for Maca

The march of the coronavirus has shown little signs of stopping. The virus has sickened at least 64,440 people and killed 1,380 worldwide since the outbreak was first reported in late December. But while the disease’s footprint has spread to over 24 countries, its toll has been concentrated in mainland China, where all except 3 deaths have been reported. For many people living in the heart of the epidemic, fending off the virus remains a priority. As whole cities are sealed off and public transportation shut down, millions of people have no choice but to stay home, wondering how much more damage the coronavirus will cause before it ends – if it ends. Their experience is almost without preced

Imagine, after enjoying the hotels and gambling in Macau, driving across a bridge for just over one mile and visiting ... Germany.  In the coming years, travelers may be able to replicate this experience thanks to a replica German city being built in southern China near the world’s biggest gambling hub. But the coronavirus outbreak has put a halt to the project, an interruption that the owners hope will only be temporary.  Hong Kong-listed developer TFG International is spending $229 million to build the project known as Hengqin German City on an island south of Zhuhai in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The island is connected to Macau by the 1.1 mile Lotus Bridge. The city will

Isolated, and sometimes shunned, the central Chinese province of Hubei is the ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak. It accounts for some 74% of more than 43,000 people sickened globally by a disease that causes fever and cough and, in severe cases, pneumonia or death. For those who have contracted the coronavirus, they wake each day hoping it’s their turn for treatment in a public health system inundated by patients and staffed with exhausted doctors and nurses. For healthy families, staying home has become the best defense. Every outside contact seems potentially deadly. About one in 20 people who tested positive for the virus in the provincial capital of Wuhan has died. Every outdoor tr

Should you ever encounter a tiger in Hong Kong, run downhill. The big cat’s front legs are shorter than its hind limbs, its descent will be awkward and give you the edge as you escape. But since the last sightings of the South China tiger in Hong Kong were in the 1970s, that’s unlikely to be necessary. Villagers minding livestock or cutting grass on hillsides, however, would likely have grown up heeding that advice passed down from older generations. Author and graphic designer John Saeki learned about this from a friend whose mother is an elderly villager in Hong Kong’s northeastern New Territories. His friend’s mother had once seen a partially devoured calf, presumably the result of a tige

Heavy snow piled up in Beijing this week. With people told to stay indoors to contain the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese capital turned into an eerily quiet place blanketed in white.

In a New York subway station, a Chinese woman was punched and called “diseased.” In Rome, the director of a music conservatory asked all “Oriental” students not to come to class. In France, a newspaper front page featured an Asian woman under the headline, “Yellow Alert.” Accounts of xenophobic abuse against Chinese people and other East Asians have mounted in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, which has spread to over 20 countries since it was first reported in China in December. But as the virus has killed more than 500 people and sickened over 28,000, mostly in China, Chinese and Asian communities abroad have become casualties of worsening racial discrimination. Asian diaspora members