South China Morning Post

Conversation 1  (Click here for the audio)

Carey: Good morning. How may I help you?

Voice: Good morning. I’m planning a short afternoon trip to London with a couple of friends who love musicals. I’d like to book three tickets for a theatre show please.

Carey: No problem. Which show were you thinking of?

Voice: Have you got three tickets for Phantom of the Opera for a Saturday evening anytime next month?

Carey: Let me have a look. We’ve got three in the front of the stalls for Saturday the…

Click here for the audio

Script:

Mum: Why the long face?

Amy: You know why. Grandma and I don't get on and I don't like it when she comes to stay.

Mum: Don't be silly. She brought you a lovely present the last time she was here.

Amy: You must be joking! A lovely present? She gave me a pair of awful pink fluffy slippers that I wouldn't be seen dead wearing. She thinks I'm still a kid.

Mum: Well, she’s coming on Saturday to stay with us for ten days. You know she's been in hospital for an…

The first rule any writer learns is that plagiarism often results in the death of a career, and popular Chinese novelist and screenwriter Guo Jingming may be learning this lesson first hand. 

The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity, a recent blockbuster movie directed by Guo, was pulled from cinemas across China last week, with many in the industry suspecting it has to do with a belated plagiarism apology. 

In 2003, Guo was accused of copying In and Out of the Circle, a book by Zhuang Yu, for…

Most patients who received hospital treatment for Covid-19 developed long-term health problems, according to a large-scale study from China.

Researchers found that 76% of those discharged from one hospital in Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak, still showed at least one symptom associated with the disease six months later.

Fatigue and sleep difficulties, which occurred in 63% and 26% of the patients respectively, were the most common problems.

To the surprise of the researchers,…

A respected doctor in China called a brutal knife attack that robbed him of his surgical career “a pleasant surprise” because it forced him to reassess his life.

Tao Yong, an ophthalmologist, spoke one year after a patient, Cui Zhenguo, stabbed him in the head and arm with a vegetable knife at Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital, where he is head of ophthalmology.

Tao sustained injuries on the back of his head and the neck and stayed in ICU for two weeks.

The doctor required surgery to save his hand…

The biggest mass arrests under the national security law in Hong Kong took place on Wednesday morning as 53 former opposition lawmakers and activists were rounded up for their roles in a primary election run-off last July.

Inkstone looks at the controversial democratic primary and why it triggered Beijing’s ire.

What was the opposition’s primary about?

The 35-plus strategy was drafted by Benny Tai Yiu-ting in March last year. Tai was an organizer of the Occupy Central protests that ground…

A company in China has imposed a controversial rule by fining employees who take more than one bathroom break during their shift.

The factory said it imposed the regulation to improve efficiency after discovering that some workers were spending time in the bathroom playing games on their phones or smoking cigarettes. 

According to photos published online by disgruntled employees last week, the factory in the city of Dongguan, in the province of Guangzhou fined six workers US$3 for using the…

Young people in China have recently embraced new ‘unofficial’ laziness rules in the workplace to protest against a modern work culture they believe is far too demanding without sufficient rewards. 

In a snub to China’s rat race and expectation to work long hours, Generation Z is calling on their comrades to start slacking off, or as they have dubbed it, “touching fish,” or “mo yu.”

Among the rules for laziness are doing stretches in the office pantry, using the most toilet paper in the…

In his final weeks in office, US President Donald Trump has issued a wave of controversial pardons to family members, close allies and Blackwater guards who killed Iraqi civilians. 

United Nations experts said the pardon of four Blackwater contractors violated international laws that obligate countries to hold their war criminals accountable for their crimes. 

But controversial presidential pardons are hardly unique for outgoing presidents. US President Bill Clinton pardoned 176 people on his…

Families with smokers from poor parts of China are 10% more likely to live in poverty than people from the same region who don’t smoke. 

A recent study by a Beijing-based research team found over 23% of families with at least one smoker were found be to be poverty-stricken, compared with just over 13% of those without. The survey analyzed more than 2,400 households in eight less-developed provinces in China.

Overall, the tobacco use rate in poor areas is higher than the national average,…