分类： society

A moving cross-province journey honoring veterans of the 1950-1953 War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea concluded recently, after dozens of students and faculty members from Tianjin Binhai Vocational Institute of Automotive Engineering escorted two Tianjin-based veterans to Luoyang, Henan, for the institute’s ongoing ‘Heroes, Hello’ program.

Spanning four days, the excursion brought the Tianjin delegation together with 34 local Henan-based veterans for a series of commemorative and recreational activities, including tours of Luoyang’s world-famous peony gardens, open shared storytelling sessions where veterans recounted their wartime experiences, and one-on-one support for veterans with mobility impairments. Collectively, the 36 veterans in attendance have an average age of 92, carrying decades of memories from the conflict that shaped modern East Asia.

Launched two years ago by the vocational institute, the ‘Heroes, Hello’ program has rapidly expanded its scope across China, reaching more than 20 provinces and connecting with over 40,000 people, including surviving war veterans and family members of soldiers who died in service. The initiative was designed to move beyond traditional classroom-based ideological and political education, creating opportunities for young people to interact directly with national heroes in person.

“Ideological and political education should not be locked inside four classroom walls,” explained Jia Xiufang, chairperson of the Tianjin Binhai Vocational Institute of Automotive Engineering. “Our students need to engage with living history, and meet the heroes who built our country’s safety in person.”

For participating students, the experience transformed abstract textbook history into a tangible, deeply personal lesson. Wang Yuchuan, an automotive service and marketing major at the institute, shared that his prior understanding of the war came entirely from course materials before the trip. “Meeting these veterans face to face made the spirit of that generation feel real, not just words on a page,” he said.

Ninety-four-year-old veteran Wang Lanju, one of the attendees, shared a harrowing firsthand account of his service: he recalled working to construct an airfield in North Korea while facing constant enemy bombing raids. “No matter how heavy the attacks were, none of us retreated,” he stated firmly.

Beyond the excursion, the institute has already worked to preserve these veterans’ stories for future education: it has compiled hundreds of hours of oral history interviews into official teaching materials for its students. Looking ahead, the institution has scheduled a special campus event for May 18, where it will host 25 surviving female Korean War veterans to share their experiences with the student body.

Beijing is preparing to welcome book lovers across the capital for its annual citywide reading campaign week, running from April 20 to 26, 2026. Organizers have curated a diverse lineup of themed literary and cultural events spread across every urban district, designed to cater to a wide range of reading preferences and bring literature out of libraries and into public spaces.

In Dongcheng District, the historic Longfu Temple market will open a curated book fair, where attendees can browse new releases and browse physical copies while soaking up the iconic, beloved aroma of freshly printed books. Xicheng District is leaning into the seasonal spirit of spring with its ongoing Centennial Lilac Poetry Gathering, an event series that ties the soft fragrance of blooming lilacs to poetic appreciation, blending natural beauty with literary art.

For readers who prefer outdoor literary experiences, Chaoyang District has planned a series of relaxed reading sessions along the banks of the Liangma River, where attendees can enjoy leisurely reading with the gentle spring breeze off the water. In Haidian District, Beijing’s hub of higher education and scientific research, leading academicians and scientists will take part in a special book donation event, gifting their personal book collections to local public libraries to expand public access to academic and literary resources.

Beyond district-specific events, independent and chain bookstores across the entire city are hosting special literary exhibitions to coincide with the campaign week. A major recurring attraction, the annual Spring Book Market, will be open from April 18 to 26 across four iconic Beijing locations: Chaoyang Park, Nanyuan Forest Wetland Park, Shougang Park, and the Old Summer Palace. For those who cannot attend the main campaign week, a follow-up book display tour will run from April 26 to May 17, with booksellers setting up pop-up displays in top-tier shopping malls and leading universities across the capital, extending the celebration of reading to more Beijing residents and visitors.

China’s railway sector is rolling out a new premium travel experience connecting China’s eastern economic heartland with its far northwestern frontier, as the first high-comfort dedicated tourist train from the Yangtze River Delta region, dubbed the *Yangtze River Delta Star*, is gearing up for its maiden journey to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Operated by China Railway Shanghai Group, the one-of-a-kind service is scheduled to depart from Shanghai on May 19, kicking off an 18-day cross-country expedition that will conclude on June 5.

Designed around the concept of slow travel, the luxury tourist train is built to let passengers soak in the dramatic, varied landscapes that span thousands of kilometers across China. Along the route, travelers will have the opportunity to take in postcard-perfect views of snow-capped mountain ranges, rolling endless grasslands, crystal-clear alpine lakes and centuries-old historic cities, all while traveling in the comfort of the premium upgraded rail cars. A handout photo from China Railway Shanghai Group highlights the train’s core value proposition: a relaxed, immersive journey that prioritizes scenic enjoyment over rushed travel schedules.

This new route marks a milestone in China’s expanding high-end rail tourism sector, linking one of the country’s most densely populated and economically developed coastal regions with one of its most geographically diverse and culturally rich inland destinations. The launch responds to growing domestic demand for unique, comfortable cross-country travel experiences that showcase China’s natural and cultural heritage, opening up new avenues for tourism exchange between eastern and western China.

More than 11 years after the Taliban shooting that forever altered his family’s path, 25-year-old Khushal Yousafzai has broken his silence about the lingering psychological trauma, mental health battles, and unexpected entanglement with online manosphere communities that followed the attack on his older sister, global girls’ education advocate Malala Yousafzai. In a raw, vulnerable new interview with BBC Asian Network’s Amber Haque, Khushal recounts the day that destroyed his childhood and shaped every year that followed.

It was 2012, when Khushal was just 12 years old, and Malala — then 15 — was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman while riding home from school on a bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Malala had long drawn the militant group’s anger for her outspoken activism demanding equal access to education for girls. On the day of the attack, Khushal was playing video games at home when his cousin delivered the first terrible news that his sister had been injured; minutes later, the family learned the bullet had struck her head. “I remember going into my sister’s room where you can see all the trophies. I felt like I was going to pass out,” he told Haque. “Seconds felt like minutes, minutes were hours and hours were days.”

The attack that didn’t kill Malala would go on to launch her global advocacy work, which earned her a Nobel Peace Prize just three years later. She was immediately evacuated to the United Kingdom for urgent life-saving treatment, and Khushal and the rest of the Yousafzai family eventually resettled in the country alongside her. But for the 12-year-old Khushal, the chaos of the attack and sudden uprooting left a void of rage and grief that would fester for more than a decade. “It left me with so much hate and anger in my heart,” he said. “When I was in the UK, my life mission was like: ‘I’m going to build myself, go back and take revenge.’”

Over the years, Khushal navigated life in the public eye surrounded by family members celebrated globally for turning their pain into transformative, world-changing good. While he rejects the narrative that he lived in his sister’s shadow, he carried a quiet pressure: watching Malala and their father Ziauddin turn their trauma into progress left him grappling with deep feelings of inadequacy. “I just thought, if I’m not bringing positive change into the world, then I’m not doing enough,” he explained. It was only a few months ago that he finally acknowledged he had spent years in denial about how unprocessed that pressure and trauma truly were. “I pretended my [own] expectations are bigger than what the world expects of me,” he said. At his lowest, he recalled feeling like a burden as the world focused its attention and support on Malala’s recovery, asking himself, “Everyone around me is helping my sister. What am I doing? I didn’t see a point in my existence.”

That persistent sense of not being good enough left Khushal vulnerable to the toxic pull of online manosphere spaces, a network of forums, social media accounts, and influencers that promote a rigid, traditionalist vision of masculinity where men hold dominant power over women. What first drew him in, he said, was the community’s outward focus on self-improvement — a message that filled a gap when he needed it most. “Go to the gym, work on yourself. So that message really drew me in,” he said.

But the harmful underbelly of the movement quickly trapped him in a destructive cycle. As influencers began selling harsh life lessons that framed any struggle as a personal failure, Khushal — who had spent years battling undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and cannabis addiction — began to see his own mental health challenges as proof he was a “loser”. The resulting shame only fueled his unhealthy coping mechanisms, creating an unbreakable loop: “What happens is that you get into a shame cycle. So you feel like you’re a horrible human. Whenever I smoked weed, I felt like a horrible human being. You want to escape that feeling, so you fall back to that bad habit. It becomes a loop.”

Khushal ultimately broke free from the influence of manosphere ideology after confronting its misogynistic core, a worldview that directly contradicted everything his family stands for. “My sister took a bullet for education,” he said. “They might as well be speaking about my mother and my sister. And when I started putting [things] into perspective, I started to draw myself away from those spaces.” He also credits his father’s compassion and the grace he extended when the manosphere teaches that vulnerability is unforgivable for helping him begin to heal.

Today, Khushal is speaking out to help other people who may be struggling with unprocessed trauma and vulnerability to toxic online ideologies. He emphasizes that radicalization and harmful indoctrination do not happen in a vacuum: even he acknowledges that his own privilege of a supportive family committed to gender equality kept him from falling prey to far more dangerous extremist groups like the Taliban. “If I was born in another household where my parents were poor, couldn’t afford my education, I could have also become easily radicalised and indoctrinated by the Taliban,” he said.

His core message for people navigating similar battles is that vulnerability is not weakness, and shame is the biggest barrier to healing. “We need to change the narrative that if you are vulnerable about your struggles, it’s a sign of weakness,” he said. For him, breaking the shame cycle required allowing himself to finally grieve and break down: “When I hit rock bottom, when it was really tough and I’d taken pride that I hadn’t cried for six months – then I broke down. I had the best cry of my life. I felt so healed and relieved after.” Access to a trusted support system of family and friends who will hold space for honest, difficult conversations, he says, is the greatest source of strength for anyone working through trauma.

For anyone affected by the mental health issues discussed in this interview, support and resources are available via BBC Action Line. The full conversation with Khushal Yousafzai is available to listen to on BBC Asian Network Trending.

A sweet, playful moment between a protected white-browed gibbon and his human caretaker at Yunnan’s Taiyanghe National Forest Park has won over thousands of social media users across China, after footage of their friendly exchange spread widely online earlier this month.

The young gibbon, known to park staff as Dingding, formed the adorable bond during a routine walk through the reserve’s protected green spaces. As caretaker Xu Yanfang made her way through the park to her next scheduled task, Dingding wrapped his long arms tightly around her wrist, chattering constantly in a playful call-and-response exchange that mirrored casual conversation with a close friend. The warm, unscripted moment was captured on camera and quickly circulated among netizens, who praised the gentle connection between the human caretaker and the wild animal.

As a national first-class protected species in China, white-browed gibbons are one of the country’s most vulnerable wild primate populations, and Taiyanghe National Forest Park has emerged as a key hub for conservation and care for these rare animals. For Dingding, daily life at the Pu’er-based reserve is filled with low-stakes adventure and companionship beyond his interactions with human staff. He shares the sprawling, biodiverse park with a host of other native species, including red pandas, Sumatran rhinoceroses, and Asian bearcats, and regularly spends his days playing and roaming through the forest alongside his wild neighbors.

Conservation efforts across Yunnan have expanded steadily in recent years, expanding protected habitats and boosting populations of once-declining native species. This viral moment has drawn new public attention to the work of park caretakers and conservationists, who dedicate their work to protecting vulnerable wildlife and fostering safe, sustainable environments for rare species to thrive.