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The restaurant’s green roof, orange paneling and ornate red doors stand out on the quiet lakefront business strip.

Pema Tseden’s swan song about the fate of a snow leopard imprisoned by a vengeful farmer gains new layers of political meaning following the director’s death
Tibetan film-maker Pema Tseden died of heart failure last year at the age of 53, just months after completing this movie; his health was almost certainly weakened by rough treatment from Chinese police in where he was prevented from retrieving his luggage, and the ensuing row escalated when police officers became involved and Tseden ended up in hospital. This ugly and possibly tragic event must surely have influenced Tseden’s final film, which mixes satirical comedy and social commentary and an enigmatic Zen reverie of innocence and experience. The fact that Tseden did die also alters the film’s meaning.
A TV crew is seen making its way in a four-wheel drive across the vast Tibetan plateau to where a monk has told them a furious farmer is keeping a snow leopard – a nationally protected animal – illegally penned up, and intending to kill it in revenge for killing nine of his lambs. The monk is riding along with the crew; he is nicknamed “Snow Leopard” because he himself was radicalised into his vocation as a young man by rescuing another snow leopard – or, who knows, perhaps this very same one – from his farming family who had strung the animal up, intending to whip it to death.

New York City, New York – AsAmNews recently hosted glass ceiling-breaker Connie Chung, who was the first Asian American and second woman to anchor a major network broadcast, in conversation with veteran New York journalist and AsAmNews contributor Ti-Hua Chang.

Case marks first time a trans person has successfully challenged use of such conversion practices in country
A transgender woman in China has won a record amount of compensation from a hospital that subjected her to several sessions of electroshock conversion practices without her consent.
Changli county people’s court in Qinhuangdao, a city in Hebei, approved a 60,000 yuan (£6,552) award to Ling’er, a 28-year-old performance artist who was recorded male at birth but identifies as a woman. LGBTQ+ activists described the award, approved on 31 October, as a victory for trans rights in China.

Jimmy Lai, who is charged with national security offenses, testified that his newspaper “carried a torch to the reality” of people’s desire for freedom in the city.

Thinktank’s report says Beijing has emerged from Covid-induced lull with a ‘more competitive, politically targeted model’ of engagement in the region
China has renewed efforts to curry favour in Pacific island nations, a new report has found, after charting a “resurgence” in Beijing-backed aid and infrastructure funding.
Over the past decade, China has lavished billions of dollars on Pacific island nations, part of ongoing efforts to build influence in and its allies.

President-elect Donald J. Trump is assembling a team of aides bent on confrontation with China. But he also has advisers who do business there, including Elon Musk.

For more than a decade, Chinese students have flocked to the United States, drawn by the prestige of an overseas education and the glamor of the American Dream. But that’s changing now – and recent ...

Investigators gather evidence at two Baltic sites while Danish navy is shadowing Chinese cargo ship
Swedish police investigating the believed sabotage of two fibre-optic undersea cables in the Baltic Sea have said a Chinese ship off the coast of Denmark was “of interest” as Danish officials said its navy was shadowing a Chinese-registered cargo ship.
The ship, identified by Denmark as the Yi Peng 3, passed the two cables on Sunday and Monday about the time it is believed they were severed in a suspected malicious attack. The ship has been shadowed by a Danish navy vessel since it was located in waters between Sweden and Denmark.

Both American political parties want to limit Chinese EV imports. Some thoughts on a rare point of agreement between Presidents Biden and Trump.

Detained pro-democracy activist spoke for first time about charges against him under Hong Kong national security law
Jimmy Lai, the detained pro-democracy activist and media mogul who is the target of Hong Kong’s most high-profile national security case, . For the first time since he was detained in December 2020, Lai spoke publicly about the charges against him, for which he faces spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Four years after his arrest, the seemed older and not as strong as he used to be. His first words – swearing an oath on the Bible – were delivered hoarsely.

Documentary film-maker Nanfu Wang found difficulties while following an activist in Cuba for her revealing, and timely, new film Night is Not Eternal
“I don’t believe in America being the beacon of democracy,” says the documentary film-maker Nanfu Wang. “America sliding into autocracy is not something that is unimaginable.”
Terms such as democracy and autocracy have been thrown around a lot since the re-election of Donald Trump as US president. But Wang speaks with unusual authority on this subject. She was born in China and lived under its authoritarian regime until 2011 when, aged 26, she moved to the US because of its promise of democracy and freedom.