Monika, from Indonesia, was promised a good life if she married a man from China.

The 23-year-old soon found out that she had been lied to by the matchmaker who recruited her. She says her husband beat her for refusing to have sex with him. Her mother-in-law physically and verbally abused her.

This is the story of her 10-month ordeal.

“The matchmaker told me that I would live a good life in China, and that I would be able to send money to my parents and that my husband would give me an…

The number of young Hongkongers taking to the streets to protest against a now-suspended extradition bill has waxed and waned over the past two weeks. At the moment, they’re gearing up for another large demonstration later this week.

At Inkstone, we’ve explained how the demonstrators rest, eat and pee. But how do they communicate with each other? And how do they organize themselves, when there’s no apparent leader?

In the past, the city’s pro-democracy movements had been headed by respected…

After banning 24 types of trash imported from overseas last year, China’s war on garbage is continuing at home.

The affluent metropolis of Shanghai is adopting strict rules and fines in a battle against waste.

From July 1, Shanghai’s residents will be required by law to sort garbage into four different categories – or they could face fines.

The regulation is an example of China’s reignited country-wide campaign to reign in out-of-control city waste, as cities across the country struggle to…

Last week, we wrote about a professor at Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University who gave the graduating class of 2019 an audacious speech.

In it, Qu Weiguo praised the importance of fighting for individual liberty and encouraged students to think independently.

You loved it. Readers asked us for a full translation of Qu’s speech, so after a lot of work, here it is.

Dear students, parents and teachers, greetings everyone!

First of all, please allow me to offer my warmest congratulations to…

Part of living in mainland China is living with a censored internet. But what’s that doing to the people growing up behind the “Great Firewall”?

A recent study has found that the perils of living with such a controlled internet go beyond simply having limited access to valuable information.

In fact, censorship in China is fostering a society where people no longer demand uncensored information at all, according to research published in the American Economic Association.

“Citizens with access…

As hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Hong Kong took to the streets over the last two weeks, a 1974 Christian hymn emerged as an unlikely, perhaps mystifying, protest anthem.

It goes like this: “Sing Hallelujah to the lord.” Repeat that about a million times, and you have the unofficial soundtrack to the protests that forced the authorities to suspend an unpopular bill seen as damaging the city’s autonomy from Beijing. 

A group of Christians and youngsters have gathered on a…

Love conquers all – at least while Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are set to meet.

In the 1999 film Lover’s Grief Over the Yellow River, a Chinese soldier and an American serviceman fall in love during wartime. 

That may not sound like the kind of fare China would want its people to see in the midst of the trade war with the United States. 

But just hours after the two presidents confirmed plans to meet at the G20 summit in Japan later this month, the Chinese state broadcaster’s movie channel…

It’s graduation time around the world, including in China, where students don their caps and gowns and listen to speeches that endeavor to offer insight into the meaning of life.

Qu Weiguo, the head of the English department at the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, took this opportunity seriously.

This week, he gave the class of 2019 an audacious speech praising the importance of fighting for individual liberty, talking with the world outside China and encouraging students to think…

Huge protests have forced Hong Kong’s leader to apologize (twice) over an unpopular extradition bill that many felt could erode the city's autonomy from mainland China.

The bill sought to allow Beijing to extradite suspects from the former British colony, which was promised a great deal of autonomy when it returned to Chinese rule. The plan is now dead in all but name after 2 million people took to the streets on Sunday to protest it.

But it was not just Hong Kong’s fight, and the fallout has…

Simon Tse calls himself a “Honger,” a “Hong Kong Canadian” or simply “Canadian.” Chinese Canadian? Not so much.

Welcome to the awkward world of Chinese subethnicity in Canada, where its different communities defy the assumption from other Canadians that “Chinese Canadians” are all the same.

Tse, a 26-year-old marketing professional, moved from Hong Kong to Vancouver in 2006. He has been a Canadian citizen since birth, born in Hong Kong to immigrant parents who were naturalized in Canada and…