出國趣

Kim Seong Min risked everything to escape from North Korea The activist, poet and broadcaster died on September 12th, aged 63 Sep 25th 2025|5 min read He could not shake the shackle off. At the other end of it was a North Korean officer, who went with him everywhere. If Kim Seong Min as much as used the lavatory, the officer came along too. For three days they were yoked like this, hostile twins,...

Are red-light face masks worth the hype? Used properly, the right ones can help combat the signs of ageing Sep 26th 2025|3 min read HOLED UP AT home when no one else is looking, people indulge in their covert, sometimes embarrassing, self-care routines. One of the newest involves donning a mask that would make the greatest movie villains envious. Strap it around the face, switch it on and ominous...

Culture | Back Story First, they come for the comedians But, try as strongmen might, the jokes always get away Sep 22nd 2025|4 min read Josef Stalin loses his pipe and informs his security chief. Later he finds it behind the sofa. “That’s impossible,” says the henchman (黨羽), “three people have confessed to stealing it!” Lots of jokes were told about the Soviet generalissimo, proliferating long a...

United States | Stay in place It is getting much harder to get evicted in New York City Tenants win. Potential** tenants** lose One in one out Sep 25th 2025|NEW YORK |3 min read There are few things that unite all New Yorkers, but one is an obsession with talking about the housing market. And so it is no surprise that it is dominating the city’s mayoral election on November 5th. The Democratic can...

United States | Lexington The real collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin It may be scarier than their critics long suspected Aug 14th 2025|5 min read To DEFY Donald Trump is to court punishment. A rival politician can expect an investigation, an aggravating network may face a lawsuit, a left-leaning university can bid farewell to its public grants, a scrupulous civil servant can count...

Business | Marketing missteps How do you pronounce Biemlfdlkk? The brands lost in translation As they race to go global, many Chinese companies are choosing new names A brand you’ll never forget Sep 11th 2025|SHANGHAI|3 min read Biemlfdlkk is a mouthful. It is not exactly clear how to enunciate the eight-consonant jumble in the Chinese golf-apparel brand’s English name. It is even hard to write. B...

不唸書的下場是我們的政治越來越愚蠢了? Is the decline of reading making politics dumber? As people read less they think less clearly, **scholars **fear Sep 4th 2025 The experiment was simple; so too, you may have thought, was the task. Students of literature at two American universities were given the first paragraphs of “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens and asked to read and then explain them. In o...

**The rise of **beer made by AI Customers love it Aug 27th 2025 WHEN BECK’S, a storied German brewery founded in the city of Bremen in 1873, celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2023 it decided to bring in a new brewmaster to mark the occasion: ChatGPT, an artificial-intelligence (AI) chatbot. The company asked it to whip up a recipe using only hops, yeast, water, and malt. The result was “Beck’s A...

Erotic writing is becoming more explicit Gardening metaphors are out. Other things are very much in Feb 27th 2025 START WITH the nipples. The lover does in “Mistress and Mother”, a steamy romantic novel from the 1990s. Though, since it was written three decades ago, they are not always called “nipples”. Instead, the author also discreetly describes them as “little buds”. Other erotica from this er...

China | For good or ill Hong Kong is super superstitious Why** prophetic artists** and feng-shui masters hold such sway Aug 14th 2025|Hong Kong|3 min read TATSUKI RYO is the finest diviner since Nostradamus, in the view of many Hong Kongers. In 1999 the Japanese manga artist published a collection of supposedly prophetic dreams warning of a “great disaster, year 2011, month 3.” In March 2011 Japan...

**“Comrade” **is making a comeback in China Or so the government hopes Jul 24th 2025|Beijing DURING THE decades when Mao Zedong ruled China, it was common for people to address each other as tongzhi: “comrade”. Like its English equivalent, the word has an egalitarian ring, as well as a hint of revolutionary fervour. But after Mao’s death in 1976, and the market reforms that followed, the term tong...

Science & technology | Well informed Do** probiotics** work? For a healthy microbiome, eating your greens is a surer bet Jul 18th 2025|3 min read A DAZZLING menagerie of microbes live inside the human gut—by some counts a few thousand different species. Most residents of this gut microbiome are not the disease-causing kind. In fact, many do useful jobs, such as breaking down certain carbohydra...

Why all Indians are** rule-breakers** Because the state makes it impossible not to be Jul 3rd 2025|4 min read IF YOU HAVE ever relaxed with a cold Kingfisher beer at the end of a long, sweaty day in Mumbai, the party capital of India, you have almost certainly broken the law. Specifically, you violated section 40 of the Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949, under which you must hold a permit to drink bo...

Simon Groot scattered better plant seeds across the world The seedsman from Enkhuizen died on July 6th, aged 90 What started him thinking was a cabbage. Not any old cabbage, but the variety, “Glory of Enkhuizen”, which his family company, Sluis and Groot, had produced in that town in North Holland in 1899. It was a beautiful cabbage, round, compact, with a light-green head framed in darker leaves....

United States | Welcome to Trader Zoh’s Should cities run their own supermarkets? New York’s mayoral front-runner thinks so Many a New Yorker dreams of not paying rent. So do New York’s shops; **retail space **there is pricier than anywhere else in America, by a lot. Seldom is this wish granted. But for a select few publicly owned grocery stores, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York...

Can men and women be just friends? The answer matters more than you think Jun 19th 2025|Istanbul and Seoul “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way,” says Harry in When Harry Met Sally (1989). Decades later, Turkey’s religious authority echoed this sentiment, warning that friendships between men and women lead to adultery. While studies show men in platonic frien...

Is the “manopause” real? If it is, it is nothing like the menopause HOT FLUSHES; insomnia; joint pains; loss of libido: for many women, the menopause is no fun. Why exactly women become infertile decades before they die is a  much-debated mystery  in evolutionary biology. Besides humans, the only other mammals whose females experience so early a menopause in the wild seem to be some species of wha...

1. If China invaded Taiwan, who would enter the war? Japan and the Philippines would struggle to stay out. But what about the rest? At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, French President Emmanuel Macron raised a key question: What if China launches a major military operation against Taiwan? His cautious stance reflects broader global uncertainty. A report by the Centre for a New American Securi...

1) 流行歌曲越來越短 Hit songs are getting shorter The trend is not as bad as it sounds Summer hits are getting shorter. Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet and Charli XCX’s Brat were full of two-minute tracks, reflecting a broader trend. The average Billboard Hot 100 hit has dropped from 4:22 in 1990 to 3:34 in 2024—the shortest since the 1960s. Technology has shaped this shift. Early records allow...

Culture | You can go your own way Travel buddies are out; solo trips are in More people are going on holiday alone See for yourself May 12th 2025 INTREPID YOUNGSTERS have long ventured abroad in search of edification and excitement. In 1608  Thomas Coryat , an Englishman sometimes called “the world’s first backpacker”, embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe. Friendless and on foot, Coryat discovered f...

1. Can China Undermine Taiwan’s Will to Resist? China appears to be ramping up its psychological campaign against Taiwan, aiming for a “Peiping model” — a bloodless takeover by convincing the island that resistance is futile. While the People’s Liberation Army rehearses blockades, Chinese influence efforts are already in motion. Espionage prosecutions in Taiwan have surged, and even members of the...

1. Why the MAGA (Make America Great Again) economy is thriving The world’s largest market is becoming two 1) America is increasingly splitting into two distinct economies: one liberal, the other conservative or "MAGA." This divide is evident in consumer behavior, economic activity, and industrial composition. Conservatives favor brands like MyPillow, Black Rifle Coffee, and Jeremy’s Razors—product...

Trump is a threat to Asia’s giant insurers Not just its exporters May 8th 2025|Hong Kong and Singapore Shorter version 1) Taiwan, despite its high-tech economy and strong exports, still has surprisingly cheap prices—Big Macs, for example, are the cheapest among tracked countries. This hints that the Taiwanese dollar (TWD) is undervalued. Despite Taiwan’s massive current-account surplus and booming...

1. China’s secret weapon in the trade war As China grapples with steep U.S. tariffs—145% on exports—millions of** manufacturing **jobs are at risk. Goldman Sachs estimates 16 million workers are tied to goods for America, and Nomura warns of up to 15.8 million job losses long-term. 當中國面臨美國高達145%的出口關稅時，數百萬製造業工作岌岌可危。高盛估計，有1,600萬名工人從事出口到美國的商品生產，而野...

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