Li Xueying

2 weeks ago | straitstimes.com | Li Xueying

Synopsis: Every first Friday of the month, The Straits Times catches up with its foreign correspondents about life and trends in the countries they’re based in. In six of the 10 years between 2014 and 2023, Xi’an had the poorest air quality among China’s new top-tier cities, which are the most commercially attractive cities after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

1 month ago | straitstimes.com | Li Xueying

Synopsis: Every first Friday of the month, The Straits Times catches up with its foreign correspondents about life and trends in the countries they’re based in. Talk about what’s new with Johor nowadays and one usually ends up with a five-letter acronym - JSSEZ, or the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. But all the excitement about rising opportunities has also hastened the demise of what traditionally has juiced up Johor’s economy - pineapple farms.

2 months ago | straitstimes.com | Li Xueying

The woods are Maia Sandu’s sanctuary. On the rare weekends when she can get away from the unceasing work of running a country, she heads out into the countryside of Moldova – to feel the soil beneath her, and to breathe. Sometimes, she is with her sister Veronica; at other times, with her dog, a rescue stray aptly called Codrut – “Little Forest” in Romanian, the main language used in the eastern European nation of some 2.5 million wedged between Ukraine and Romania.

2 months ago | straitstimes.com | Li Xueying

Synopsis: Every first Friday of the month, The Straits Times catches up with its foreign correspondents about life and trends in the countries they’re based in. Trichy in southern India has no direct flights to the capital city New Delhi, but it has five daily flights to Singapore. The planes are packed, underscoring the rich flows of people both ways. It is a relationship that stretched back to the early 19th century, when migrants from Tamil Nadu settled down in Singapore.

2 months ago | thestar.com.my | Li Xueying

DUSK in wintry Davos is a lovely thing. The sun dips behind the alpine town’s mountains, and the glare of the daylight bouncing off the snow fades into a gentle sheen. And that was how it was here, before 5.43pm in Switzerland on Jan 20, as a smiling Donald Trump walked into the Capitol Rotunda in Washington to take his oath to become the United States’ 47th president. As the sky darkened, some people gathered in a tiny room at Hotel Meierhof.