How the ‘princeling’ descendants of Mao’s ‘Eight Immortals’consolidated unimaginable power and wealth in the New China.

The perilous routes through which information—video footage, secret documents, radio broadcasts—flow in and out of North Korea through its porous borders with China.

The angel saving jumpers on an infamous bridge in China.

How what was once one of the most popular websites on Earth—with ambitions to redefine music, dating, and pop culture—became a graveyard of terrible design and failed corporate initiatives:

In retrospect, DeWolfe says, the imperative to monetize the site stunted its evolution: "When we did the Google deal, we basically doubled the ads on our site," making it more cluttered. The size, quality, and placement of ads became another source of tension with News Corp., according to DeWolfe and another executive. "Remember the rotten teeth ad?" DeWolfe says. "And the weight-loss ads that would show a stomach bulging over a pair of pants?"

Less than half a decade after The Hills brought them massive celebrity, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are broke and his living in his parent’s vacation house. Their onscreen relationship was mostly fake, but the reality, as their current situation attests, was far worse:

By the end of 2009 (and the show’s fifth season), their lives seemed insane. Instead of riding bikes, Spencer was holding guns. Heidi’s plastic surgeries gave her a distorted quality, but she vowed to have more. Spencer grew a thick beard, became obsessed with crystals, and was eventually told to leave the series. There were daily updates on gossip sites about them “living in squalor,” publicly feuding with their families, and attacking The Hills producers (or claiming The Hills producers attacked them). By the time they announced they were (fake) splitting, followed by Spencer threatening to release various sex tapes, and Heidi (fake) filing for divorce, it seemed like they had ventured into, at best,Joaquin Phoenix-like, life-as-performance-art notoriety and, at worst, truly bleakStar 80 territory that could end with one or both of them dead.

He left China at 10 and would never see his mother again. He lived in extreme poverty once he arrived in America. He found his calling in art, became the creative force behind one of Disney’s iconic films, but didn’t get recognition for his brilliance until late in his life, when in addition to painting and illustrating he began to make fantastical kites.

The dilemma of providing quality health care for undocumented immigrants, and how one city is attempting to solve it.

A season with the American Football League of China.

A lifelong Jehovah’s Witness moves to China to proselytize.

The world’s fastest growing economy isn’t China; it’s the “unheralded alternative economic universe of System D” aka the $10 trillion global black market.

Nearly all the world’s fake products come from China. America’s oldest private detective agency is on the case.

Just a few years ago, universities had a chance to make a quality education affordable for everyone. Here’s the little-known and absolutely infuriating history of what they did instead.

Without fanfare—indeed, with some misgivings about its new status—China has just overtaken the United States as the world’s largest economy.

An army of Western luxury-lifestyle purveyors flock to China to teach the country’s new billionaires how to act rich.

How KFC brought fried chicken to China and Africa as U.S. sales slumped.

The city’s radical pro-democracy movement faces a stiff test from Mainland China.

As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose.

How the China National Tobacco Corp., which manufactures 2.5 trillion cigarettes per year, came to make more money than Apple.

Nick now claims that he was searching for methamphetamine for his entire life, and when he tried it for the first time, as he says, ''That was that.'' It would have been no easier to see him strung out on heroin or cocaine, but as every parent of a methamphetamine addict comes to learn, this drug has a unique, horrific quality.

A youth set to the shifting sounds of CCM, Christian Contemporary Music:

This, by the way, is considered the ultimate sign of quality CCM, even amongst Christians: the ability to pass as secular. Every band’s goal was to have teenagers stop their grooving mid-song and exclaim, like a soda commercial actress who’s just realized she’s been drinking Diet, “Wait, this is Christian?”