My friends and I celebrated International Women's Day on Monday by going to dinner at a restaurant near our office. While we were still looking at the menu, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by cigarette smoke. More than a dozen men had just taken their seats at nearby tables and immediately lit up.

I happened to be in Honolulu in 1993 when Hawaii tried to become the first state in the United States to legalize same-sex marriage. Even the Crossroad Church came out to pledge its support.

Despite myriad sweeteners, Hong Kong Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah's budget, delivered last week, has drawn a storm of criticism centering on its apparent failure to address the widening wealth gap between the haves and have-nots.

Everybody is talking about housing prices, which have skyrocketed in recent years. In major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, it is impossible for a white-collar worker to purchase a decent home even after saving all of his or her earnings over a lifetime.

Three decades of nearly double-digit growth have made China into a unique economic miracle. Will it be able to continue its long-term growth story into the new decade?

For years, we have known companies pay to have their products displayed in TV programs and films. There may be nothing wrong with that in today's world of cut-throat business and profit. But do such product placements influence children's food preferences?

As a man who has many relatives in rural areas, I was delighted at the news about the recent shortage of laborers in China's most developed coastal regions — the Yangtze delta and Pearl River delta.

When I visited Jiayuguan city of Gansu province last summer, I was pleasantly surprised to find a Great Wall Museum outside the historical fort that marked the western frontier of the empire in ancient times.