Wai and Ling are secondary school Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong, both crumbling under the pressure of a forced transition from using Cantonese to Mandarin as a medium of Chinese-language instruction.
This is an exceptional moment for democracy. In the year of elections, read Margaret Atwood, Mary Beard, Lea Ypi, Elif Shafak and more on what democracy means - and why it matters. In 2024, nearly half the world will take part in a national election, with billions heading to the polls.It's a thrilling, unprecedented opportunity for change - yet democracy is also under threat.
Imagine waking up in a cosy photo studio in the mountains, between this world and the next. A kind man hands you a hot drink and a stack of photographs, one from every day of your life. Then, you are asked to pick one photograph from each year to be placed in a beautiful Japanese lantern, to be set spinning so that your life will flash before your eyes before you move on...
