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A trip on the overnight express from Beijing to North Korea

Guillermo Abril — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At Beijing’s train station, inaugurated by Mao Zedong himself in 1959, waiting hall number four is overflowing. At the far end of the hall, amid austere marble columns and dozens of travelers, a neon sign indicates that the legendary K-27 overnight express to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, is about to depart. The resumption of the route two weeks ago, after a six-year suspension, signals a shift toward openness in the reclusive nuclear nation. “It will contribute to boosting exchanges between the two countries, as well as economic and trade cooperation and cultural exchanges,” announced the Chinese state press. Air service between the two capitals was also scheduled to resume on March 30.

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Jung Chang, writer: ‘If people thought China was so wonderful, they would go there’

Berna González Harbour — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:26:58 GMT

Jung Chang rose to fame in 1991 with her memoir Wild Swans, an odyssey based on the life of her grandmother, who became the concubine of a warlord general during the Chinese empire; her mother, a Communist leader who was later persecuted; and herself, a young woman in the Chinese Red Guard disillusioned after the devastating repression of the Cultural Revolution. That young woman, born 73 years ago in Yibin (Sichuan, China), managed to go to London, study, write, and achieve success, and now returns with Fly, Wild Swans, where she revisits a gripping family biography intertwined with the history of China in the last century.

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Sale of nuclear secrets? Invasion of Taiwan? What the tea leaves reveal about the purge in China’s military leadership

Guillermo Abril ,Inma Bonet Bailén — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:20:56 GMT

When a brief note from the official Xinhua news agency announced just over a week ago the fall from grace of Zhang Youxia, China’s highest-ranking general, one thing was clear: no one, beyond President Xi Jinping’s inner circle (or perhaps not even them), knew why. Zhang was placed under investigation, along with Liu Zhenli, another top military commander, for alleged “serious violations of discipline and the law,” the statement said, offering no further clues.

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From missile command to the military hierarchy, Xi Jinping puts his own army to the test

Guillermo Abril ,Inma Bonet Bailén — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 18:29:25 GMT

On April 2, while Donald Trump was battering the world with tariffs, high-ranking officers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), dressed in camouflage uniforms and armed with shovels, were digging in the earth during a voluntary reforestation day in Beijing. The activity, which has been carried out since the 1980s, included top leaders from the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC, the highest authority over the armed forces) and other Communist Party officials. Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, members of the military high command had never missed the event. This year was different. Those who follow the capricious twists and turns of Chinese politics immediately noticed the absence of General He Weidong, the PLA’s second-in-command.

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Gao Zhen, the Chinese artist who has been detained for more than 400 days after criticizing Mao

Guillermo Abril — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 19:36:12 GMT

At dawn on August 26, 2024, artist Gao Zhen realized that there was no electricity in his house. A short time later, an acquaintance alerted his wife that he had seen a lot of police in the area. Something strange was afoot. The couple and their son, residents of New York, were on a visit to China. Gao — one of the Gao brothers, an artist duo known for their satiric works about the Chinese Cultural Revolution — and his wife, Yaliang Zhao, had been warned by friends that they were running a risk by traveling to their birth country. But Yaliang’s mother was going to have cancer-related surgery and, they reasoned, they’d only be there for a short amount of time. They were staying in the brothers’ studio in a brick building in the Sanhe district, in Hebei province near Beijing. It was there that the lights stopped working that morning. After making a call, they got an electrician to come look at it. When the technician entered the studio, some 30 police officers followed. They were there for Gao.

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China displays its military might at parade attended by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un

Guillermo Abril ,Inma Bonet Bailén — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:15:41 GMT

Eighty cannon shots that shook Tiananmen Square marked the beginning of China’s largest display of military muscle in recent years. The parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the end of World War II kicked off in Beijing at exactly 9:00 a.m. Wednesday, local time. Chinese leader Xi Jinping presided over the celebrations — flanked by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un — on the same gallery overlooking the square from which Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic in 1949. “Today, humanity once again faces the choice between peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, shared benefit or a zero-sum game,” Xi proclaimed during his speech.

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An artist learned to draw comics to understand her family’s trauma. She has now made Pulitzer Prize history

Iker Seisdedos García — Sun, 18 May 2025 04:00:00 GMT

When cruise ships dock in Juneau, Alaska’s capital, the tourist invasion causes the fragile internet signal to become unstable for the residents. That’s why, on Monday, May 5, someone had to tell Tessa Hulls that her graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts (2024), had become only the second comic in history to win a Pulitzer Prize. In 1992, Art Spiegelman’s masterpiece, Maus — based on the memories of his father, a Holocaust survivor — was awarded a Special Citation.

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Tibet, the territory where the Chinese Communist Party is omnipresent

Guillermo Abril — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 17:08:52 GMT

The white and reddish walls of the Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama’s former residence, rise on the hill opposite. It has something of an ancient ship about it, like a stranded ark awaiting the flood, riddled with dozens of hatches. Tibetan fabrics flutter above the galleries. The view is lost in the labyrinth of staircases that crisscross toward the sky in an optical illusion crowned by golden roofs. A blinding sun beats down at an altitude of 3,646 meters. It is midday in Lhasa, the capital of the autonomous region of Tibet, on the borders of China, at the foot of the Himalayas. The current Dalai Lama left this city in March 1959 on his way to exile. He has never returned to what he considers an “occupied” territory.

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Yan Lianke, writer: ‘Revolutions are terrible. Human progress cannot depend on destruction’

Anatxu Zabalbeascoa — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Exploring the emptiness of soldiers in the Chinese Revolution and the cost of China’s supposed progress has earned Yan Lianke, 66, the nickname “the fearless Chinese writer.” His books include Dream of Ding Village — which delves into humanity’s insatiable greed, Hard Like Water — a satire on the revolution, and Lenin’s Kisses — about the downfall of a village in the face of promises of a glorious future. He has won international awards such as the Franz Kafka Prize, been shortlisted twice for the Man Booker International Prize and is repeatedly mentioned as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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Watch melted during atomic blast over Hiroshima sells for more than $31,000

AP Associated Press — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 23:10:41 GMT

A watch melted during the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, has sold for more than $31,000 at auction.

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The modern dictator’s handbook

Gutmaro Gómez Bravo — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 13:04:06 GMT

Benito Mussolini — Il Duce — gave away autographed photos of himself, often with personal messages. Hitler’s voice constantly resonated throughout a Nazi Germany plastered with images of the Führer. Stalin embodied not only the Communist Party, but also Grandfather Frost — Russia’s Santa Claus. Mao Zedong — China’s Great Helmsman — was the philosopher-king of the East. And François “Papa Doc” Duvalier was the first voodoo protector of Haiti. They all portrayed themselves as champions of the people, advocating for a fresh political approach while elevating themselves far above the masses. Like Machiavelli, they knew that it’s better to be feared than loved. However, they also craved adulation and wanted to cling to power forever, which led to repressive systems designed to maintain an illusion of popular support. These are some of the shared characteristics of modern dictators explored by Dutch historian Frank Dikötter in How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century.

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Artists and writers sum up communism in three words: censorship, repression, death

Manuel Morales Ruiz — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 18:26:12 GMT

“What is called communism is nothing other than fascism with a red flag,” communist, lieutenant colonel in the Spanish Civil War, and anti-Stalinist Valentín González once said.

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To visit authentic dictatorships, travel back in time

Guillermo Altares Lucendo — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 15:32:02 GMT

Twilight Zone: The Movie was an episodic film that, in 1983, brought together the directors who changed commercial cinema in the 1970s and 1980s: Steven Spielberg, John Landis, George Miller and Joe Dante. The first story, directed by Landis, was titled Time Out and narrated the tale of a racist and anti-Semitic man who, without further explanation, travels back in time and finds himself persecuted by the SS as a Jew in Vichy France, and then transformed into a Black man about to be lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. He ends up on a cattle train heading east in an unknown direction. I would not want those who believe that we live in a dictatorship or who shout racist and fascist slogans to be subjected to a similar lesson, but it wouldn’t hurt them to look back a little either.

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Xi Jinping becomes the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao

Guillermo Abril — Sun, 23 Oct 2022 10:46:47 GMT

Xi Jinping secured absolute control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Sunday, becoming the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. The CCP’s central committee elected him as general secretary for an unprecedented third term. Xi also unveiled the Politburo Standing Committee, stacked with loyalists, that will determine the path of the country’s development in the next five years. “They are quite familiar to you,” Xi said while introducing his six “comrades” at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, before Chinese and international media.

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