Edamame beans are a popular Asian appetizer, and they're beginning to get a foothold in the U.S. market. An Arkansas company is now trying to cash in on this edamame boom.
President Obama cancelled a planned trip to Asia this week to deal with the political crisis at home. That's disappointed — even worried — some of America's friends in the region who are counting on the United States to stand up to an increasingly assertive China.
New York University's new Shanghai campus is the first Sino-U.S. joint-venture university. Chinese students get a Western education without leaving home. American students get to live and study in China, with many enjoying big breaks on tuition and other costs.
As people around the world live longer, many nations are having to find new ways to care for their aging populations. In China, a new law requires adult offspring to visit and look after their elderly parents. China's one-child policy complicates the issue further, and some dismiss the law as another attempt to legislate morality by a government that is riddled with corruption.
Dumplings are a huge part of Chinese culinary tradition, and restaurants there cater to the nation's obsession with a dazzlingly array of dumpling shapes and fillings, including green frogs stuffed with bullfrog meat and a flock of birds filled with roasted Beijing duck.
Years of rapid industrial expansion have left many parts of China contending with thick smog and dirty water. The move comes at a time when China is trying to shift away from the investment-led economic model that has generated such dizzying growth in recent years, but the global economic downturn has made the transition a lot more challenging.
Usually bustling streets are nearly empty at noon, and thousands have gone to hospitals for relief. China's National Meteorological Center says the long-running heat wave is driven by a variety of factors, including climate change, as well as Shanghai's construction density, growing population and shrinking green space.
There is some political willingness, but because China is highly decentralized politically, the Communist Party has only limited influence over provincial governments and how they regulate their dirty factories. The powerful state-owned oil companies have also resisted pressure to produce cleaner-burning fuel.
In 2011, police detained Ai Weiwei for 81 days. Now, he's released a song that's turned the experience into a heavy metal protest song, along with a dystopian nightmare video. The lyrics are explicit and angry. Ai says his music is for the many political prisoners who remain jailed.
China has been building museums with abandon, opening about 100 annually in recent years. Two of the biggest opened on the same day last fall on opposite banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River. But filling these museums — with both art and visitors — is proving more challenging.