At the age of eighty, the Dalai Lama has begun to discuss a range of prospects for the future disposition of his soul. Traditionally, after he dies, a search party of senior monks would set out to locate his new incarnation, who is most often a boy toddler, who goes on to be trained as a monk and a leader.

When the British-Malaysian photographer Ian Teh first worked in China, more than a decade ago, he rendered it as a nation of people in Technicolor.

The only real mystery in the stories of political plagiarism is its durability in an age of Turnitin and other scanning software that can protect an author from his own mistakes, intentional or otherwise.

The devotion that young Chinese feel to the Internet is driven by deep factors ranging from youth unemployment and income inequality to political repression and the demographic imbalance between men and women.

Young Chinese, who have grown up in an age of prosperity and stability, are typically the most passionate defenders of the Chinese political and economic way.

For my book, 'Age of Ambition,' I spent time documenting, among other things, the trials of young Chinese strivers who are bombarded by pressures unlike those that their parents faced.

For much of their history, life for most people in China was arduous and circumscribed - and people travelled as little as they could.

In 1975, the collapse of a cascade of Chinese dams during a flood killed a hundred and seventy-one thousand people, but the event is rarely discussed, and the names of the victims are largely unrecorded today.

When Libya was in turmoil in 2011, the Chinese public was surprised to discover that more than thirty thousand of their countrymen were living there, most of them working on Chinese-run oil projects.

In my fifth year in Beijing, I moved into a one-story brick house beside the Confucius Temple, a seven-hundred-year-old shrine to China's most important philosopher.

For years, China expected foreign companies not to publicly voice their complaints about hacking or intellectual-property violations in order to protect their broader interests in the country.

China is so central to our economic lives that journalists have had no choice but to engage China with greater technical analysis and precision.

For years, American officials visiting China marvelled at how Chinese leaders could push through infrastructure projects and sweeping legislative changes without the complications of opposition and the niceties of voting.

When I moved to Beijing in 2005 to write, I was accustomed to hearing the story of China's transformation told in vast, sweeping strokes - involving one fifth of humanity and great pivots of politics and economics.

Fact-checking can wreak havoc on Chinese political mythology.

Lei Feng is reported to have died in a freak accident in 1962 - struck by a falling telephone pole.

The fastest way to get around the southern Chinese city of Foshan is on the back of a motorcycle-for-hire.

By the Nineties, so many people were moonlighting and creating their own professional identities that China generated a brisk new business in the printing of business cards.

Walking, it turns out, is a sublime way to get to know people in China. They're used to meeting strangers on the road. Many here understand what it feels like to walk a long way.

Valuing the road over the goal was a Taoist goal in itself.

For all that we can see from the road in China, there is a lot that we cannot see. We miss what's behind the trees, the cover-ups, the darker side of things - the ingredients that so often drive a reporting trip.

China's Communist Party is wary of independent-minded movements.

By tradition, Beijing is a city of walls, sheltering its intrigues and ambitions behind a series of concentric barriers from the Great Wall down to courtyard homes that draw sunlight only from the gardens at their core.

We binge on instant knowledge, but we are learning the hazards, and readers are warier than they used to be of nanosecond-interpretations of Supreme Court decisions.

In Beijing, the joke among hacks is that, after the drive in from the airport, you are ready to write a column; after a month, you feel the stirrings of an idea-book; but after a year, you struggle to write anything at all, because you've finally discovered just how much you don't know.

In Chinese, there are an impressive number of ways to describe saying nothing at all.

It can take the uninitiated a minute to realize that 'Gangnam Style' is satire.

If you can't sit in a cafe quietly and be ignored, how can you observe human nature and write a story?

I never developed hard cartilage in my ears because I played with them since I was a baby. I can fold my ear entirely inside out, and I can put the whole thing inside itself.

I'm very proud of being a woman, and as a woman, I don't even like the word 'feminism' because when I hear that word, I associate it with women trying to pretend to be men, and I'm not interested in trying to pretend to be a man. I don't want to embrace manhood; I want to embrace my womanhood.

Every woman is after a kind of classy image.

The world is full of opportunities, and I want to try as many as I possibly can.

In my world, I don't believe in forever promises. I don't think it's realistic.

Even if you're unhappy, just pretend that you're happy. Eventually, your smile will be contagious to yourself. I had to learn that. I used to think, 'I'm being fake,' but you know what? Better to be fake and happy than real and miserable.

When I hear the words 'Women should be barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen,' I think, 'What. A. Dream.' There are no negative connotations to it.

I dance around my living room to cheesy '80s aerobics music until I'm sweating really hard!

I am a classy dame.

I don't like the idea of playing a one-dimensional character who is just fearless, strong, and killer and has instincts and just thrives in dangerous circumstances - that's really boring to me, and I don't think it represents what most women feel inside.

I have battled clinical depression and have come out of the other side. I've been free of it for many years now. Finding the place in my own mind and heart to win that battle without using medication, finding the place within myself where I could be alive again, that was one of the biggest challenges I've faced.

I'm good at looking good with weapons and stunts. But if you put a bull's eye in front of me and asked me to hit it, I'd say the chances of me hitting it are about one in a million!

I think I'm not always what I seem. Most people, when they get to know me, say, 'You know, when I first met you...' People initially think I'm a snob because I'm intensely private.

I am five foot six, I am built of muscle and bone, and that is not very good for fashion, but it's who I am. Women who look good in fashion are six foot tall, don't have an ounce of muscle, and their legs are the size of my arm.

I just like short hair on women; I think it's cool.

My son is wonderful. He is amazing.

My family didn't have a lot of money, and I'm grateful for that. Money is the longest route to happiness.

That's what happens in Hollywood. People are like, 'I want to hate you, because everyone else seems to love you.' But the reality is this: I'm a simple person who's not interested in attention and who just wants to go about her business.

I'm very picky when it comes to men. I come across a man who I'm really attracted to about once every five years.

Life is all about embracing each moment that is given to you.

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being an elf.

I would love to pretend I don't diet, but I work very hard. I stay active and eat very healthy. Anybody who says otherwise is either unhealthy or lying! I will admit that I'm addicted to sugar - licorice, Jujubees and jelly candies. And I actually love bran muffins!