While spring has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere, Uyghurs in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region are still waiting for their spring to arrive, when they will be delivered from the repression of China’s government. That’s the main sentiment expressed in a new online collection of 15 poems and short stories by writers with connections to East Turkistan, Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang. The Asian American Writers’ Workshop released “Spring Will Come: Writings from East Turkistan” on March 20, the eve of the Nowruz Festival, when Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in…
Day: April 8, 2023
No more fancy photo shoots, wedding veils or banquets in North Korean weddings
No more wedding photos of bride and groom clinking wine glasses. No wedding veils. No extravagant banquets or over-the-top flower arrangements. And no pictures of the bride lighting the groom’s cigarette. All those smack of anti-socialist attitudes, and don’t embrace traditional North Korean ideals, authorities in the country say. Instead, women should dress in traditional if colorful attire (men can wear Western suits), and weddings should be humble, “patriotic” affairs that are less wasteful as the country suffers chronic food and fuel shortages, sources in the country told Radio Free…
China simulates precision strikes on Taiwan
Editor’s note: This story was updated on April 9th. CHINA’S ARMED FORCES simulated “precision strikes” on Taiwan on April 9th in the second of three days of military drills around the island. The exercises follow a meeting between Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, and the speaker of America’s House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, in California on April 5th. China had promised “resolute counter-measures” if the meeting—the first between a speaker and a Taiwanese president on American soil—went ahead. Chinese state television reported that multiple units “carried out simulated joint precision strikes…
China launches war games around Taiwan
UPDATED at 8:15 a.m. ET on 2023-04-08 Seventy-one Chinese warplanes and nine ships were detected around Taiwan on Saturday, officials said, as Beijing launched three days of war games and patrols near the island after the Taiwanese president met with the U.S. house speaker in California. As of 4 p.m. (local time), 45 of the Chinese air force planes, which included J-10,J-11, J-16, and J-20 fighter-jets as well as H-6K bombers, had crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait – the de facto boundary between Taiwan and mainland China…