As elsewhere in China, Xinjiang has been stepping up efforts to banish ethnic-minority languages from schools—a policy that has recently triggered protests by parents in Inner Mongolia, a northern region.

I'll have a whisky on the rocks, please.

A rather different instrument was the nocturnal: it enabled you to tell the time at night, provided you knew the date, from the position of the stars in the constellation of the Great Bear, which rotate around the Pole Star.

To her it seemed indecent that a pregnant woman of her standing (Government Service) should have to board the steamer without a husband to go with her and dispute about her accommodation and whisper anxiously to the doctor and stewardess—almost as indecent as a Government Service woman's having her baby in the hospital in Port Zodiac with the wives of workingmen and Greeks.