West African artist Amoaka Boafo has a new exhibit of portraits in the Western U.S. state of Colorado. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns has our story
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Since 2006, comic book fans have gathered at the legendary New York City Comic Con to dress up and shop. More recently, they have gathered to invest. Aron Ranen has the story from the Big Apple.
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Movie theaters turned into concert venues this weekend as Swifties brought their dance moves and friendship bracelets to multiplexes across the country. The unparalleled enthusiasm helped propel “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” to a massive, first place debut between $95 million and $97 million in North America, AMC Theatres said Sunday. 

It’s easily the biggest opening for a concert film of all time, and, not accounting for inflation, has made more than the $73 million “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” earned in 2011. In today’s dollars, that would be around $102 million. And if it comes in on the higher end of projections when totals are released Monday, it could be the biggest October opening ever. The one to beat is “Joker,” which launched to $96.2 million in 2019. 

A unique experiment in distribution, premium pricing, star power and loose movie theater etiquette—more dancing and shouting than a Star Wars premiere—have made it an undeniable hit. Compiled from Swift’s summer shows at Southern California’s SoFi Stadium, the film opened in 3,855 North American locations starting with “surprise” Thursday evening previews. Those showtimes helped boost its opening day sum to $39 million – the second biggest ever for October, behind “Joker’s” $39.3 million. 

Internationally, it’s estimated to have earned somewhere between $31 to $33 million, bringing its global total in the range of $126 million to $130 million. 

“This is a phenomenal number,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “To have a blockbuster style opening weekend for a concert film is unprecedented.” 

Swift, who produced the film, went around the Hollywood studio system to distribute the film, making a deal directly with AMC, the largest exhibition company in the United States. With her 274 million Instagram followers, Swift hardly needed a traditional marketing campaign to get the word out. 

Beyoncé made a similar deal with the exhibitor for ” Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, ” which will open on Dec. 1. The two superstars posed together at the premiere of “The Eras Tour” earlier this week in Los Angeles. It was a needed injection of star power with Hollywood actors over 90 days into a strike that has left most red carpets void of glamourous talent and resulted in several high-profile films being pushed to next year. 

“The Eras Tour,” directed by Sam Wrench, is not just playing on AMC screens either. The company, based in Leawood, Kansas, worked with sub-distribution partners Variance Films, Trafalgar Releasing, Cinepolis and Cineplex to show the film in more than 8,500 movie theatres globally in 100 countries. 

The spotlight on Swift has been especially intense lately as a result of her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. The two made separate surprise appearances on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend and were also photographed holding hands in New York. 

It led to some hyperbolic projections going into the weekend, with some analysts predicting that “The Eras Tour” could make over $125 million. Dergarabedian said it’s common for outsized expectations to be attached to massive brands like Swift. There’s also no precedent for something like “The Eras Tour” and a celebrity of Swift’s stature. 

“The laws of gravity don’t apply to Taylor Swift,” Dergarabedian said. 

The film scored well with both critics and audiences, who gave it an A+ CinemaScore, a metric that typically signals a film will continue to do well after its first weekend. 

Elizabeth Frank, the executive vice president of worldwide programming and chief content officer for AMC Theatres, said in a statement that they are grateful to Taylor Swift. 

“Her spectacular performance delighted fans, who dressed up and danced through the film,” Frank said. “With tremendous recommendations and fans buying tickets to see this concert film several times, we anticipate ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ concert film playing to big audiences for weeks to come.” 

The stadium tour, which continues internationally, famously crashed Ticketmaster’s site and re-sale prices became astronomical. Pollstar projects that it will earn some $1.4 billion. The concert film offered fans both better seats and a much more affordable way to see the show for the first or fifth time. Prices are higher than the national average, at $19.89, which references her birth year and 2014 album, and ran closer to $29 a pop for premium large format screens like IMAX. Even so, they are significantly less than seat at one of the stadium shows. 

Showtimes are also more limited than a standard Hollywood blockbuster, but AMC is guaranteeing at least four a day on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at all AMC locations in the U.S. Many locations also specified that there are no refunds or exchanges. And fans will have to wait a while for “The Eras Tour” to be available on streaming — part of the AMC deal was a 13-week exclusive theatrical run. 

Michael O’Leary, CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners said in a statement the moment was, “Another landmark weekend for cinemas.” 

“This year has been marked by unprecedented experiences for movie lovers in theaters across this nation,” O’Leary continued in a statement. “The ‘Eras Tour’ debut proves, yet again, that fans are eager to share other experiences in a communal way, with theater owners working creatively to build memorable moments in their cinemas.” 

O’Leary said that a survey of 6,000 people by his organization and The Cinema Foundation found that 72% want to see more concert films on the big screen. 

“The Eras Tour” accounted for over 70% of the total weekend box office grosses. “The Exorcist: Believer” placed a very distant second in its second weekend with $11 million, followed by the “Paw Patrol” movie in third with $7 million. Rounding out the top five was “Saw X” with $5.7 million and “The Creator” with $4.3 million. 

“This is great news for theaters,” Dergarabedian said. “‘The Eras Tour’ wasn’t even on our radar in mid-August. You take this out of the equation and it would have been a totally different weekend.” 

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 

1. “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” $95 to $97 million. 

2. “The Exorcist: Believer,” $11 million. 

3. “Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie,” $7 million. 

4. “Saw X,” $5.7 million. 

5. “The Creator,” $4.3 million. 

6. “A Haunting in Venice,” $2.1 million. 

7. “The Blind,” $2 million. 

8. “The Nun II,” $1.6 million. 

9. “The Equalizer 3,” $960,000. 

10. “Dumb Money,” $920,000. 
    …

Suzanne Somers, the effervescent blonde actor known for playing Chrissy Snow on the television show “Three’s Company” as well as her business endeavors, has died. She was 76.

Somers had breast cancer for over 23 years and died Sunday morning, her family said in a statement provided by her longtime publicist, R. Couri Hay. Her husband Alan Hamel, her son Bruce and other immediate family were with her in Palm Springs, California.

“Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th,” the statement read. “Instead, they will celebrate her extraordinary life, and want to thank her millions of fans and followers who loved her dearly.”

In July, Somers shared on Instagram that her breast cancer had returned.

“Like any cancer patient, when you get that dreaded, ‘It’s back’ you get a pit in your stomach. Then I put on my battle gear and go to war,” she told “Entertainment Tonight” at the time. “This is familiar battleground for me and I’m very tough.”

She was first diagnosed in 2000, and also had skin cancer. She faced some backlash for her reliance on what she described as a chemical-free and organic lifestyle to combat the cancers. She argued against the use of chemotherapy, in books and on platforms like “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which drew criticism from the American Cancer Society.

Somers was born in 1946 in San Bruno, California, to a gardener father and a medical secretary mother. She began acting in the late 1960s, playing the blonde driving the white Thunderbird in George Lucas’s 1973 film “American Graffiti.” Her only line was mouthing the words “I love you” to Richard Dreyfuss’s character.

At her audition, Lucas just asked her if she could drive. She later said that moment “changed her life forever.”

Somers would later stage a one-woman Broadway show titled “The Blonde in the Thunderbird,” which drew largely scathing reviews.

She appeared in many television shows in the 1970s, including “The Rockford Files,” “Magnum Force” and “The Six Million Dollar Man,” but her most famous part came with “Three’s Company,” which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1984 — though her participation ended in 1981.

On “Three’s Company,” she was the ditzy blonde opposite John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt in the roommate comedy. In 1980, after four seasons, she asked for a raise from $30,000 an episode to $150,000 an episode, which would have been comparable to what Ritter was getting paid. Hamel, a former television producer, had encouraged the ask.

“The show’s response was, ‘Who do you think you are?’” Somers told People in 2020. “They said, ‘John Ritter is the star.’”

She was soon fired and her character replaced by two different roommates for the remaining years the show aired. It also led to a rift with her co-stars; They didn’t speak for many years. Somers did reconcile with Ritter before his death, and then with DeWitt on her online talk show.

But Somers took the break as an opportunity to pursue new avenues, including a Las Vegas act, writing books, hosting a talk show and becoming an entrepreneur. In the 1990s, she also became the spokesperson for the “Thighmaster.”

Somers returned to network television in the 1990s, most famously on “Step by Step,” which aired on ABC’s youth-targeted TGIF lineup. The network also aired a biopic of her life, starring her, called “Keeping Secrets.”
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Taylor Swift’s movie of her Eras Tour concert dominated theaters over the weekend with $95 million to $97 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales, according to estimates from distributor AMC Theatres AMC.N on Sunday.

The movie, called “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour”, set the record for a concert film, easily surpassing the $29.5 million collected by “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” over its first three days in 2011.

Final weekend results will be released on Monday. If current estimates hold, Swift’s film will fall short of the most bullish projections from box office analysts, who had forecast a domestic opening of $100 million to $140 million.

Still, for theater operators such as AMC and Cineworld CINE.D, the movie provided a major boost to what had looked like a lackluster autumn slate after strikes in Hollywood prompted delays to “Dune: Part Two” and other releases.

Swift said on Wednesday that she was adding extra showtimes and early screenings on Thursday to meet demand.

 
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With brushes and trowels, Indigenous Colombians are unearthing traces in the jungle of a tragic period in history when their ancestors were violently supplanted by colonists from Spain.

Working as amateur archeologists, they carefully brush away dirt to reveal pottery and other artifacts left behind by ancient inhabitants of what in 1510 became Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien — the first city built by the conquistadores in the Americas.

Watched over by archeologist Alberto Sarcina, an Italian with an Indiana Jones-like aura, what appears to be an ancient cobblestone road emerges from the patient tap, tap, tap of the workers’ tools.

At first it was “difficult” to persuade the local population of Unguia, a municipality in the middle of the Darien jungle, to get involved, said Sarcina, who works for the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History, which is funding the project.

Many, he said, “didn’t want to know anything about the city that started the tragedy” of Indigenous annihilation.

But 10 years into the project, dozens now partake with gusto and pride. They are mainly of Indigenous and Afro descent. Most are women.

“I like to find things that we don’t even know how to make today. … They made their own clay and didn’t have to buy it. They were very resourceful,” 28-year-old Karen Suarez of the Embera Indigenous community told AFP after digging up a piece of pottery.

“A dramatic turn”

Christopher Columbus first arrived on the island of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti) in 1492 on his ultimately unsuccessful quest to find India at a time that world maps were still being developed.

From there, he led expeditions to the mainland Americas.

Several temporary settlements were created along the way, but it was the founding of Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien that really marked the beginning of colonial entrenchment.

“It’s one of those moments in history where the story takes a dramatic turn — one of those moments with a before and an after,” said Sarcina, 55.

“The conquest of an entire continent began here, which means the Indigenous genocide began here.”

Researchers have estimated that European colonizers killed 55 million Indigenous people in the Americas.

The Colombian project seeks to glean more about this period from what the colonizers, and their victims, left behind in and around the 33-hectare (80-acre) city in the northwestern Choco department.

Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien lasted for only 14 years, until 1524, when the original inhabitants of the region killed the invaders and set fire to the settlement.

At its height, the city had some 5,000 inhabitants, but many had already left before its ultimate demise when the headquarters of the so-called Castilla de Oro Spanish territories moved to what is Panama today.

“The best thing”

The source of much historic misery is today helping to lighten the burden for a few descendants of those who survived the Spanish invasion.

The amateur archeologists at Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien receive payment for their efforts and can earn money from hosting tourists at their homes.

“We have felt good in this work, we benefit a little from the economy [generated] and from learning … about the history of the ancestors,” said participant Antonio Chamarra, 40.

Jeniffer Alvarez, 32, told AFP her job on the project was “a respite” from the machismo and violence in an area ravaged by the Gulf Clan drug cartel.

“This site has been the best thing” to happen in a society that tends to relegate women to housework, she said.

The site also hosts a museum — another income generator. After dark, the horseshoe-shaped museum becomes a cinema for the children of surrounding villages in a community with very basic access to services such as health and education.

The project also serves as a sort of open-air university.

It has inspired 16-year-old Hector Monterrosa from the nearby Tanela village to aspire to a career in archeology, like his idol Sarcina.

“Here, in general, it is very difficult to get an opportunity to go to university,” said the teen, who spends much of his free time after school at the dig site.

“There are very few who can go, and since my family’s finances are not so good, this would be a great opportunity for me to start preparing” for an academic career, he said.
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Billie Jean King is still globetrotting in support of more investment and equity in women’s sports. 

She attended the Women’s World Cup in Australia, kicked off the player draft for the new women’s professional hockey league in Toronto, and is opening an office in London for a tennis business venture involving the international Billie Jean King Cup. 

That’s all in the last three months for King, who turns 80 in November. 

“We’re kind of at a tipping point,” King said. “People are actually looking at women’s sports like a great investment.” 

She’s part of ownership groups involved with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the NWSL’s Angel City FC and the PWHL hockey league that starts in January. 

Her busy schedule is reminiscent of the summer of 1973, when a 29-year-old King established the WTA, won the Wimbledon triple crown in singles, doubles and mixed doubles, achieved equal pay at the U.S. Open and beat self-proclaimed chauvinist Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” match. 

On Thursday, King and about 60 athletes will celebrate the 50th anniversary of equal prize money at the U.S. Open and the King-Riggs match at her annual awards dinner for the Women’s Sports Foundation in New York. 

In August, former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended the U.S. Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium to mark the pay equity milestone. 

“Let us remember all of this is bigger than a champion’s paycheck,” Michelle Obama said during the ceremony on opening night. “This is about how women are seen and valued in this world.” 

King recently launched the production company “Pressure is a Privilege,” a phrase associated with the 39-time Grand Slam winner. She’s also an executive producer and host of “Groundbreakers,” a documentary about female athletes that airs on PBS on November 21. 

There’s an effort by members of Congress to award King the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest U.S. civilian honors given to individuals whose achievements have a lasting impact in their field. 

Here’s a Q&A with King, which has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

AP: It’s the 50th anniversary of so many accomplishments in 1973. Talk about that whirlwind. 

King: We started the WTA four days before Wimbledon. I won all three titles at Wimbledon, which for me was a big deal. Then equal prize money came into being, it started in 1972 with us saying we’re not coming back (to the U.S. Open in 1973). Then King-Riggs. That’s all in 3 months. I can appreciate it since being away from it so long. How the heck did we do that? 

AP: You’ve said the King-Riggs match was about social change, women standing up for themselves in all areas. 

King: It was really about men, too. Because men started to shift a little. Obama was 12 years old when he saw the King-Riggs match. He said it affected him a lot. Guys are much better thinking about their daughters than they used to be. All these things add up. 

AP: You’re part of ownership groups for pro sports. How did you get involved in women’s pro hockey, which will have teams in Boston, New York, Minnesota, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal? 

King: The PWHL, it’s really exciting. It took five years. Plus, it took all those years of the other leagues, everyone trying. (U.S. Olympic gold medalist) Kendall Coyne said, “Can you help us?” We need to have a league where the very best players will play. We went to Toronto and I did an opening speech about trailblazers. It was amazing because the families were crying, the players were crying, they said “we’ve never been treated like this, it’s amazing, we feel like pros for the first time.” There were a lot of little kids there. Kids are going to have an amazing opportunity that the generations before them never had. All three of their networks had it on. It’s a religion up there. 

AP: How is investment in women’s sports changing? 

King: I’m asKing CEOs and everyone now — “Do you invest as much in women as you do in men?” Then it usually gets quiet. But I must say it’s better than it used to be. We’re really lucky to be with this investment group. The male allies we’ve had through the years have made such a difference. They have the money and the power. But we’re getting there, getting more and more women investors, particularly in soccer. Women’s sports, we’ve all been fighting for it. 

AP: What would you like to see in the future for women’s sports? 

King: More. And make sure we get girls early in life into sports. It’s really about the health issue, more than anything. More jobs, more everything. Women of color and diversity is really important. 

We only get 5% of the media. That’s where the money is. People always say, “Why doesn’t the WTA have as much money as the ATP?” I’m like, really? If you watch a show at night, a sports show, just count how many minutes are on men and how many minutes are on women. We’re at 5%. We’ve got to change that. 
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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has confirmed the world’s most populous nation will bid to host the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Mumbai on Saturday, Modi said hosting the event is “the age-old dream” for India.

“Indians are not just sports lovers, but we also live it,” Modi said. “India will leave no stone unturned in the preparation for the successful organization of the Olympics in 2036 – this is the dream of the 140 crore (1.4 billion) Indians.”

“We want to realize this dream with your support. I am sure India will get constant support from IOC.”

A city or region wasn’t specified by Modi but Ahmedabad, which boasts the largest stadium in the world with a capacity of 132,000 and is named after the Indian Prime Minister, would be a likely contender as the main host city for the country’s bid.

Indonesia and Mexico have previously expressed official interest in hosting the 2036 Olympics, and last month Poland’s President Andrzej Duda told the IOC it wants to stage the Games.

No firm timeframe has been set by the IOC for when hosting rights for the 2036 Games will be awarded.

The 2036 Summer Games is the next available edition: Paris will host in 2024, Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane in 2032.

Modi also told the IOC that India would consider bidding to host the Youth Olympics in 2029.

“Sport is not just about winning medals but also winning hearts,” he said.
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For 400 years, Indigenous North Americans flocked to a group of ceremonial sites in what is present-day Ohio to celebrate their culture and honor their dead. On Saturday, the sheer magnitude of the ancient Hopewell culture’s reach was lifted up as enticement to a new set of visitors from around the world.

“We stand upon the shoulders of geniuses, uncommon geniuses who have gone before us. That’s what we are here about today,” Chief Glenna Wallace, of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, told a crowd gathered at the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park to dedicate eight sites there and elsewhere in southern Ohio that became UNESCO World Heritage sites last month.

She said the honor means that the world now knows of the genius of the Native Americans, whom the 84-year-old grew up seeing histories, textbooks and popular media call “savages.”

Wallace commended the innumerable tribal figures, government officials and local advocates who made the designation possible, including late author, teacher and local park ranger Bruce Lombardo, who once said, “If Julius Caesar had brought a delegation to North America, they would have gone to Chillicothe.”

“That means that this place was the center of North America, the center of culture, the center of happenings, the center for Native Americans, the center for religion, the center for spirituality, the center for love, the center for peace,” Wallace said. “Here, in Chillicothe. And that is what Chillicothe represents today.”

The massive Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks — described as “part cathedral, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory” — comprise ancient sites spread across 150 kilometers south and east of Columbus, including one located on the grounds of a private golf course and country club. The designation puts the network of mounds and earthen structures in the same category as wonders of the world including Greece’s Acropolis, Peru’s Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China.

The presence of materials such as obsidian, mica, seashells and shark teeth made clear to archaeologists that ceremonies held at the sites some 2,000 to 1,600 years ago attracted Indigenous peoples from across the continent.

The inscription ceremony took place against the backdrop of Mound City, a sacred gathering place and burial ground that sits just steps from the Scioto River. Four other sites within the historical park — Hopewell Mound Group, Seip Earthworks, Highbank Park Earthworks and Hopeton Earthworks — join Fort Ancient Earthworks & Nature Preserve in Oregonia and Great Circle Earthworks in Heath to comprise the network.

“My wish on this day is that the people who come here from all over the world, and from Ross County, all over Ohio, all the United States — wherever they come from — my wish is that they will be inspired, inspired by the genius that created these, and the perseverance and the long, long work that it took to create them,” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said. “They’re awe-inspiring.”

Nita Battise, tribal council vice chair of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, said she worked at the Hopewell historical park 36 years ago — when they had to beg people to come visit. She said many battles have been won since then.

“Now is the time, and to have our traditional, our ancestral sites acknowledged on a world scale is phenomenal,” she said. “We always have to remember where we came from, because if you don’t remember, it reminds you.”

Kathy Hoagland, whose family has lived in nearby Frankfort, Ohio, since the 1950s, said the local community “needs this,” too.

“We need it culturally, we need it economically, we need it socially,” she said. “We need it in every way.”

Hoagland said having the eyes of the world on them will help local residents “make friends with our past,” boost their businesses and smooth over political divisions.

“It’s here. You can’t take this away, and so, therefore, it draws us all together in a very unique way,” she said. “So, that’s the beauty of it. Everyone lays all of that aside, and we come together.”

National Park Service Director Chuck Sams, the first Native American to hold that job, said holding up the accomplishments of the ancient Hopewells for a world audience will “help us tell the world the whole story of America and the remarkable diversity of our cultural heritage.”
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Piper Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who performed in acclaimed roles despite at one point abandoning acting altogether in search of a “more meaningful” life, died early Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91.

Laurie died of old age, her manager, Marion Rosenberg, told The Associated Press via email, adding that she was “a superb talent and a wonderful human being.”

Laurie arrived in Hollywood in 1949 as Rosetta Jacobs and was quickly given a contract with Universal-International, a new name that she hated and a string of starring roles with Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, among others.

She went on to receive Academy Award nominations for three distinct films: The 1961 poolroom drama “The Hustler”; the film version of Stephen King’s horror classic “Carrie,” in 1976; and the romantic drama “Children of a Lesser God,” in 1986. She also appeared in several acclaimed roles on television and the stage, including in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” in the 1990s as the villainous Catherine Martell.

Laurie made her debut at 17 in “Louisa,” playing Reagan’s daughter, then appeared opposite Francis the talking mule in “Francis Goes to the Races.” She made several films with Curtis, whom she once dated, including “The Prince Who Was a Thief,” “No Room for the Groom,” “Son of Ali Baba” and “Johnny Dark.”

Fed up, she walked out on her $2,000-a-week contract in 1955, vowing she wouldn’t work again unless offered a decent part.

She moved to New York, where she found the roles she was seeking in theater and live television drama.

Performances in “Days of Wine and Roses,” “The Deaf Heart” and “The Road That Led After” brought her Emmy nominations and paved the way for a return to films, including in an acclaimed role as Paul Newman’s troubled girlfriend in “The Hustler.”

For many years after, Laurie turned her back on acting. She married film critic Joseph Morgenstern, welcomed a daughter, Ann Grace, and moved to a farmhouse in Woodstock, New York. She said later that the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War had influenced her decision to make the change.

“I was disenchanted and looking for an existence more meaningful for me,” she recalled, adding the she never regretted the move.

“My life was full,” she said in 1990. “I always liked using my hands, and I always painted.”

Laurie also became noted as a baker, with her recipes appearing in The New York Times.

Her only performance during that time came when she joined a dozen musicians and actors in a tour of college campuses to support Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid.

Laurie was finally ready to return to acting when director Brian De Palma called her about playing the deranged mother of Sissy Spacek in “Carrie.”

At first, she felt the script was junk, and then she decided she should play the role for laughs. Not until De Palma chided her for putting a comedic turn on a scene did she realize he meant the film to be a thriller.

“Carrie” became a box-office smash, launching a craze for movies about teenagers in jeopardy, and Spacek and Laurie were both nominated for Academy Awards.

Her desire to act rekindled, Laurie resumed a busy career that spanned decades. On television, she appeared in such series as “Matlock,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Frasier” and played George Clooney’s mother on “ER.”
…

Even after long periods in Beijing, Manya Koetse still felt like an outsider. At parties and over hotpot, her Chinese friends discussed memes and other social media trends, but Koetse didn’t know what they were talking about.

“I just felt really left out,” the Dutch national told VOA, adding that she was missing a key way to relate to her friends and understand China more broadly.

That isolated feeling led Koetse in 2013 to start a news site, What’s on Weibo, named after one of China’s largest social media platforms.

Through it, she could track what was trending on Chinese social media and, more importantly, why items went viral. It all started purely out of curiosity, she said.

One decade later, her site has contended with Chinese censorship and harassment. But What’s on Weibo has continued to provide a rare window into Chinese social media — and relatively unfiltered insights into Chinese society.

The site’s coverage is wide ranging. Recent articles looked at everything from the Chinese female bodyguard assigned to the Syrian first lady on her trip to China, sand dune tourism, eco-anxiety and women’s rights, to online frustrations about youth unemployment and protests.

“What are people concerned about? What are people getting really angry about? What are people really rolling on the floor laughing about? That’s the kind of story that you want to convey to a non-Chinese audience to create this kind of bridge,” Koetse told VOA.

Koetse, who grew up in the Netherlands and spent some of her high school studies in Japan, moved to Beijing in 2008 — “the golden year,” she said.

She briefly worked at the beer company Heineken during the Summer Olympics and studied at Peking University.

She soon realized that the conversations and trends on platforms like Weibo were key to understanding China and its people.

Koetse, who is now in Amsterdam, says that for several years, she never prioritized making money from her media site. But, now that the site has become so big, she introduced its first premium subscription option in the hopes of making a full-time income from her work.

But the job comes with its challenges, including online harassment over what she publishes and censorship. “I’m still, even to this day, being accused of being both pro-China and being anti-China,” she said.

One of the biggest changes Koetse has documented at What’s on Weibo over the past 10 years has been the rise of censorship in China. “There’s more control on Chinese social media,” she said. “Censorship has professionalized.”

One example is trending lists. Years ago, trending lists on Weibo regularly included sensitive issues, Koetse said. “They would only be censored later down the road. You had a lot of time to take screenshots or to get everyone’s opinion before it finally vanished from the internet.”

But as censorship became more widespread, the trending lists became a less accurate marker, Koetse said.

Her reflections are backed by data. For nine consecutive years, Freedom House has ranked China the worst in the world in terms of internet freedom.

The rise of censorship in China has left its mark on What’s on Weibo, which has been blocked in China since 2018. Still, What’s on Weibo averages around 250,000 visitors per month — many of whom are viewers in China who use VPNs to access the site, according to Koetse.

Being blocked has given Koetse a sense of freedom. “I do feel more free in continuing just reporting whatever I feel is right to report,” she said, since she no longer has to worry about authorities blocking the site.

In a statement to VOA, Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson of China’s Washington embassy, said, “The Chinese government protects press freedom in accordance with law and gives full play to the role of media and citizens in supervising public opinion.”

Nearly 1.1 billion people — or about 76% of the population — use the internet in China, the government agency China Internet Network Information Center reported in August.

Most of their discourse doesn’t cross any red lines, What’s on Weibo’s assignment editor Miranda Barnes told VOA. “We can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on in the society,” said Barnes, who was born in China and now lives in London.

The site also provides a different perspective from other media coverage.

“We present what the ordinary people think, from the bottom. It is very easy to fall into the ideological narrative, just to bash China. And I find that helps nobody,” Barnes said.

Western media mainly focuses on political, economic and security issues, according to Yaqiu Wang, Freedom House’s China research director. While those are important, she said, “they are not all of China.”

“What’s On Weibo brings to the international audience another important aspect of China,” Wang said. “The China [that most] people are living and experiencing. It’s important for the international audience to see this aspect of China, so to understand the country in a holistic way, not just through the lens of geopolitics and human rights.”

In recent years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, covering China has become an increasingly difficult story for foreign media to cover with fewer overseas reporters able to be based inside China.

The combination of fewer correspondents in the country and more people who are scared to talk to foreign media ultimately risks dehumanizing the country and its people, reporters have said.

Koetse, however, eschews the “journalist” label. “I see myself as a Sinologist who’s writing about China,” she said.

In a country whose population is increasingly afraid to talk to foreign news outlets, social media is one of the last remaining barometers to move past state propaganda and figure out what ordinary Chinese people are thinking, Koetse said.

“Foreign policy is one part of China. China can be very dangerous, and China can be powerful,” Koetse said. “But China can also be friendly, and China can also be fragile.”
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