Innehållsförteckning för Vol.66/No.3 från Beijing Review

Entering the first weeks of 2023, Chinese society seems to be rapidly restoring its vigor and vitality. Crowds are everywhere, whether in shopping malls, restaurants or theme parks. As the Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, approaches, the annual travel rush is expected to be made up of roughly 2.1 billion passenger trips, reaching 70 percent of the 2019 levels. But at the same time, hospitals across the country are still operating at full capacity and funeral parlors, especially those in the northern regions that are in the midst of the cold winter, have had to reduce the time and scale of each funeral due to the obvious increase in the number of deaths. These are a reminder that the pandemic is not over. All of this is occurring in…

Every time muralist Liu Zhicheng, better known as Liu Xiaobei, paints a wall in his hometown in Yongsheng County, Yunnan Province in southwest China, he captures the entire creative process on camera. The good-humored 27-year-old is often seen talking to curious villagers about his murals, donning paint-stained clothing and a distinctive white hat—his assortment of painting tools at hand. He paints from sunrise to sunset, sometimes burning the midnight oil, driven by a passion so intense it filters through his every brushstroke. Liu posts his painting practices on Chinese social media, having amassed over 1 million subscribers and over 8 million views across several of the country’s most popular platforms, including youth-oriented video streaming giant Bilibili and the ubiquitous Douyin, or China’s TikTok. Mainstream media outlets such as Xinhua News…

Passengers wait in line to board a train at the Tianjin West Railway Station in Tianjin Municipality on January 7, the first day of the Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival) travel rush, also known as chunyun in Chinese. The travel rush sees many Chinese return to their hometowns to reunite with their families for the Chinese New Year, which falls on January 22 this year. This year’s rush will last 40 days and is the first since China adjusted its pandemic control policies in late 2022. The number of passenger trips during this period is expected to surge 99.5 percent from the same period last year to reach nearly 2.1 billion, according to official estimations.…

BELGIUM Revelers pose in costumes ahead of the annual New Year’s Dive in Ostend on January 7. Diving into the North Sea is seen as a refreshing and healthy way to begin the new year UGANDA People examine the wreckage of a bus on the Kampala-Gulu Highway on January 6. The bus crashed into a stationary truck that day, killing at least 16 people UNITED STATES People visit the booth of Chinese appliance and electronics brand Hisense at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 6 BENIN Voters check the electoral list at a polling station in Abomey on January 8, the day the country held parliamentary elections BRAZIL Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro gather near Brazil’s Congress building in Brasília on January 8. Some protesters stormed…

Warm hugs, joyful tears, flowers… these are all common sights during family reunions at Chinese New Year or Spring Festival, which will fall on January 22 this year. Nevertheless, rather than being confined to celebrations at home, hugs, tears and flowers will be common sights at airports around the nation during the upcoming holiday, with an influx of inbound travelers set to arrive after China lifted its three-year-long COVID-19 travel restrictions on January 8. At around 10:30 a.m. on that day, Beijing Capital International Airport welcomed the first group of cross-border travelers from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region—291 passengers on board Cathy Pacific flight CX334. Song Jiarong, a 23-year-old Beijing native working in Hong Kong, said she was happy to be one of the first inbound passengers arriving after the…

Since 2017, 55-year-old Li Ruiying has been the only doctor at the clinic in Erdaohe Village in northern suburban Beijing, where she has been stationed since 1999. The clinic is like a beacon for villagers with Li ready to provide medication and treatment at any time. Erdaohe is in Taishitun Town, Miyun District. According to Li, a native of Miyun, the village is home to around 300 residents, many of whom are seniors. Unlike doctors in hospitals who hone their craft in specific disciplines, Li treats villagers who come in with all sorts of minor ailments. In the previous two years, the clinic usually received about a dozen people per day, Li said. Recently, she noticed a rise in patient numbers. “The number of people who contract COVID-19 has increased.…

A Winter’s Tale Tourists enjoy a horse-drawn sleigh ride in Beiji Village of Mohe, Heilongjiang Province, on January 10. Known as “China’s North Pole,” Mohe has an annual ice and snow period of up to eight months, with the lowest temperature reaching minus 50 degrees Celsius. Weather Forecasting Accuracy The China Meteorological Administration announced on January 9 it would focus on improving the accuracy of its weather forecasting in 2023. While ensuring full coverage of all types of meteorological disasters and terrains in its forecasts, the administration will ramp up its monitoring of imminent weather events using technologies such as artificial intelligence and multi-source information fusion. It will also improve its related warning procedures. The administration will place emphasis on providing weather forecasts for unique climate during specific seasonal periods…

Following a very challenging 2022, the world may find it difficult to be optimistic about 2023, given the risks to the economy as well as global and regional security. The trends of transformation and turbulence are both evolving continuously, and the tendencies toward unity and division are contending with each other. A more unstable world All the knock-on effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the energy crisis and the crisis in the global food supply remain at play as 2023 begins, with a mix of inflation and recession, leaving the world vulnerable to yet more economic trauma. The growth of the global economy has slowed from 6 percent in 2021 to 3.2 percent in 2022, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) figures. The IMF has said at least one third of…

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), consisting of 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, as well as China, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Australia and New Zealand, came into force on January 1, 2022. As the world’s largest free trade deal, the RCEP established a market of 2.2 billion people, or 30 percent of the world’s population. Member countries combined represent roughly 30 percent of global GDP and 28 percent of international trade. One year on, the agreement has injected strong impetus into the region and the world at large. “Since its entry into force, the RCEP has borne remarkable fruits,” Lu Yue, a professor at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, told Beijing Review. “It has boosted…

Chinese shadow puppetry, or shadow play, is one of the most ancient art forms to make use of light and shadow, originating thousands of years before its much more popular successor, film. On January 1, the China National Arts and Crafts Museum, also known as the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum, raised the curtain on an exhibition of shadow puppetry from the northwestern province of Shaanxi, showcasing more than 200 exhibits and artifacts on this longstanding art. Chinese shadow puppetry is a type of theater produced using translucent colored puppets that cast colorful shadows onto a backlit opaque screen. Manipulated by puppeteers using rods, the puppets, made of either leather or paper, create the illusion of moving images to tell stories, which are accompanied by music and song. The history…