When you think about fine wine, what countries come to mind? France? Italy? What about China? Well, by 2020, China could become the world’s second-largest wine consumer, behind the United States. That’s according to a report by Vinexpo, a leading wine exhibition. VOA’s Chu Wu visited California’s wine country to hear what winemakers—and drinkers—had to say.
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On Sydney’s glittering harbor, the Chinese have been on a mission to conquer the world of sailing.  With an average age of 24, the crew onboard the yacht De Rucci includes professional athletes and former members of China’s special forces.

They have been here training and competing for weeks in preparation for the 630-nautical-mile yacht race to Hobart, the capital of the island state of Tasmania.

The 73rd running of the race kicked off December 26, and ended with a new record. An Australian crew finished the race in one day, eight hours and 48 minutes, smashing the previous record of one day, 13 hours and 31 minutes. De Rucci is expected to finish the race Thursday.

Skipper Dong Qing says that back home, sailing continues to ride a wave of popularity. 

“Chinese people are becoming richer and richer,” he said. “Now more and more people can afford to buy a boat.”

Crew members have been competing against some of the world’s best ocean-racing yachts in preparation for the arduous dash from Sydney to Hobart. They might be relative newcomers, but they have long-term ambitions to win major races.

“I do not think it is possible for now because we have just started,” the skipper said, “but I think all of us as Chinese we have this dream of winning in big sailing competitions one day.”

Britain, the Netherlands and Australia dominated sailing at the Rio Olympics. But China, which won a silver medal, has lofty ambitions in a sport that requires money and motivation, according to De Rucci’s Australian coach, Ben Morrison-Jack.

“You could probably draw some comparisons, maybe, with some other sports that they have taken on,” he said. “There is always a timeline and sailing is a complex sport, so it will take a while but if they are committed to it they’ll win medals eventually. That is for sure. It is crucial to the sport because it is not that big a sport, really, and to have a population of China starting to get interested in the sport is fantastic.”

Previous attempts

Fate hasn’t been kind to the sailors from Shanghai. A collision with a rival boat knocked them out at the start of the 2015 Sydney-to-Hobart race. Last year, a broken mast saw them limp to the finish line.

However, they have already made history. The crew from Noah’s Yacht Club in Shanghai was the first team from mainland China to compete in the famous Australia race. It will also take its place in the Australian Yachting Championships in Melbourne in January.

After a dogged pursuit of success, the team will then head home in time for Chinese New Year.
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With echoes of Rebecca and lavish Max Ophuls productions, writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson spins the tale of an obsessive fashion designer and his muse into a suspenseful and often funny parlor drama with all the trimmings in Phantom Thread.

Anderson is revered for his grand stage meditations on the American man (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master). But here, and perhaps to the dismay of some of his fans, he both narrows and redirects his gaze elsewhere to a single couture house in 1950s London and the very particular man behind the designs, Reynolds Woodcock.

The great Daniel Day-Lewis, in what may be his final film performance, plays Reynolds as a soft-spoken dandy whose precise rules and polished look thinly veil his volatile artist’s temperament. We’ve certainly seen this kind of thing before — a celebrated artist who literally cannot stomach anything outside of his routine from ugliness to general unpleasantries and everything in between — but it is something special and distinct in the hands of Day-Lewis, who is perhaps the only working actor perfect and exacting enough to play someone so perfect and exacting.

Reynolds’ nature is just one of the reasons why he’s sailed past middle age and has not only never married but also will proudly tell a woman on a first date that he is a “confirmed” and “incurable” bachelor. The audience sees Reynolds and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), who runs the business side of the House of Woodcock, dispose of a pretty woman early on for the crime of wanting his attention (and disrupting breakfast by offering him an unwanted pastry).

Thus we’re not expecting anything very different when he takes a shine to Alma (Vicky Krieps), a waitress at a restaurant in the country whom he teases and flirts with by ordering an excessively large breakfast spread for just himself and grinning widely at his next prey. Alma, who seems shy and awkward in her lanky body, bumping into chairs and blushing at the sight of Reynolds, smiles and plays along and gladly accepts his dinner invitation, and, soon one to come back to London to model for him. 

But this is not Funny Face or My Fair Lady or Pretty Woman or any number of “ugly” duckling turns to swan with the help of a hairbrush/expensive clothes/great man stories. It’s not even really about fashion (although Mark Bridges costumes are indeed sumptuous). It’s a story of relationships and power.

Alma, we come to discover, is not like the other girls even if she fits the mold (Cyril tells her plainly that she has the perfect shape — “he likes them with a little belly”). She has a bite and will push back on some things and concede on others. “He’s too fussy,” she says defiantly after a disastrous breakfast where Reynolds storms off because she’s buttering her toast too loudly, only later to succumb to the library silence he prefers in the morning. Ultimately, it seems, Alma is testing the waters in hopes of carving out her own unique relationship with Reynolds.

Why Alma loves this petulant genius is something the film doesn’t really make any effort to explain. It’s just a fact, and an occasionally infuriating one. This takes a somewhat surreal twist halfway through, but it’s intriguing enough to carry you to the end of the film.

Even in the unusually confined setting, Anderson gives moments and characters room to breathe in this silky smooth film that lulls you in before taking you on the unexpected ride of the third act. Giving one of the most beautifully subtle performances of the year, Krieps more than holds her own against Day-Lewis, and in some cases even goes so far as to outshine him — a fitting parallel to her character. Manville, too, is superb as Cyril — a Mrs. Danvers-type, without the sinister angle.

Like all of Anderson’s efforts, Phantom Thread is beautiful and intriguing, but it’s also a film that is not unlike its central character: easy to respect and admire, and nearly impossible to fully love.

Phantom Thread, a Focus Features release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “language.” Running time: 130 minutes. Three stars out of four.
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Russian ballet and its dancers are famous the world over and inspire many Russians to pursue a career in the classical dance.  But to break into ballet, dancers have to struggle through a brutal training regime and gender stereotypes.  VOA Moscow videographer Ricardo Marquina Montanana talked to an aspiring ballerina and a successful ballet dancer whose father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and be a boxer.
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Kenneth Branagh is teasing the return of “old friends” in his planned sequel to “Murder on the Orient Express.” 

Branagh is expected to both direct and reprise his role as the fancifully mustachioed lead character Detective Hercule Poirot in “Death on the Nile,” another mystery based on an Agatha Christie novel, which screenwriter Michael Green will return to adapt. 

Branagh says he’s excited to gather an ensemble cast that could possibly include bringing back some “old friends” to explore “primal human emotions” like “obsessive love and jealousy and sex” that make for a “very dangerous atmosphere.”

The tense whodunit “Murder on the Orient Express” featured an all-star cast including Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz and Michelle Pfeiffer. It was a global hit after its release in early November. Branagh says he was glad to see audiences responding to his quirky portrayal of Poirot and looks forward to seeing how that will evolve in the sequel. 

“One of the things that I liked – really loved doing here that the audience responded to was that Hercule Poirot, for all his intellectual power, got dragged into it, got dragged into feeling it. And I think it’s a hell of a trip, that trip down the Nile. So I think it would be great to see how he, how his heart, responds to that kind of intensity,” he said. 

Christie’s 1937 novel, “Death on the Nile,” was previously adapted into a 1978 film starring Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow and Maggie Smith.

With a wealth of source material to draw from, Branagh also endorses the idea of a Poirot-slash-Christie “cinematic universe” – the popular term for a series of interlocking films that bring various characters together. 

“I think there are possibilities, aren’t there? With 66 books and short stories and plays, she – and she often brings people together in her own books actually, so innately – she enjoyed that,” he says. “You feel as though there is a world – just like with Dickens, there’s a complete world that she’s created – certain kinds of characters who live in her world – that I think has real possibilities.”

However, Branagh says he hasn’t exactly floated that idea with any of the brass at 20th Century Fox. 

“I bet they’ve been thinking about it though,” he says. 

“Murder on the Orient Express” will be released on home video in the coming months. “Death on the Nile” is in the early stages of pre-production.
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At the age of 5, Maame Biney immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana to live with her father. She was an energetic child, and her father wanted to channel that energy into a sport. One day, they drove by a local ice rink in Reston, Virginia, where a sign in front read “Learn to Skate.”

Biney’s father asked if she wanted to give it a try.

“I brought her here, in this particular rink, and she just tried it,” her father, Kweku Biney, said. “And the first day she got on the ice I was scared, you know. I thought she was going to break her head open, so I said, ‘What did I get myself into? This is risky.’”

But Biney was a natural. “She took that thing in stride, and I was just surprised, you know, the way she was skating,” he said. “And she just looked like somebody who’s been doing it for probably a few months prior to that day.”

Biney was hooked. Every morning she would bounce out of bed to wake up her father for the early morning practices. She tried figure skating first, but a coach noticed how fast she was and encouraged her to take up speedskating. She competed in local events before moving up to the U.S. Junior Championships, where she won a bronze medal.

This month, she qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team after finishing first in the women’s 500-meter trial in Kearns, Utah. At age 17, she is the youngest speedskater on the U.S. team and the first African American woman to represent the country as a speedskater.

“First time I met Maame, she was 9,” said Sooan Yoo, Biney’s coach in Reston. “Now she’s almost my height as she’s gaining age, and she’s representing the USA team.”

Despite her accomplishments, the high schooler doesn’t take herself too seriously.

“I just hope that everyone sees how fun the sport is when you can just go fast and just be awesome. Not that I am awesome or anything, but just — you feel good about yourself, so yeah. Be proud of yourself. That’s it,” she said.

Biney’s achievements have earned her fans around the world, particularly in West Africa, where skating isn’t common. She hopes girls watch her and become inspired to pursue their own dreams.

“Since speedskating or any ice sport isn’t really an option back in Africa, I would just tell all the little kids back there just to find something that you love, and be happy,” she said. “And just have fun with it. Because why are you going to do something if you don’t have fun?”

Biney hopes to do more than just have fun when she competes at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February. Her event, the 500 meter, is the shortest and requires intense sprinting ability. She said her strategy is simple: “Go fast and don’t fall.”

Her teammates say her easygoing attitude belies her hard work and competitive spirit. Her team, Dominion Speedskating, practices six to seven days a week.

“She is really kind and everything. She’s really caring,” said 15-year-old Dominion teammate Joonsuh Oh. “Everyone loves her when you first see her. She seems kind of intimidating because you just never know her. But if you actually meet her, she’s really friendly, and when she skates, she’s amazing.”

Despite intense pressure, Biney’s father hopes she can just soak up the moment and have fun. He said seeing her walk with Team USA during the opening ceremony will be enough of a reward. Anything more will be a bonus, he said.

“Once you stay focused, everything will fall in place” he said. “That’s it. That’s all I got for her. She doesn’t need to be afraid of anything, and I don’t think she is.”
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When schoolchildren in Washington, D.C. are asked to say the first thing that comes to mind about Africa, they use words like hot, desert, sand, poverty, hunger, war and Ebola.

 

These are all accurate things to say about that part or the world — but they reflect an “incomplete” picture, says writer Austin Merrill, who together with photojournalist Peter DiCampo has set out to document African reality beyond common stereotypes.

 

They are the founders of Every Day Africa, an Instagram community of photographers who strive to capture ordinary moments of life, such as children picking flowers in a field, or girlfriends chatting at a coffee shop. Their Instagram following has topped 370,000.

In addition to the Instagram feed, the book “Every Day Africa, 30 Photographers Re-Picturing the Continent,” recently hit bookstores in Europe, the United States and certain countries on the African continent. The book is filled with images documenting life in Africa that aim to shatter misconceptions often found in Western media.

 

Readers see a teenager rollerblading in the streets of Dakar, a DJ playing music in Lagos, a couple looking at the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Town. The book displays the full diversity and visual richness of African life.

 

Both DiCampo and Merrill invited a diverse “community of photographers” from all over the continent to contribute to the Instagram project and the book. Some are professionals, while others are skilled amateurs.

Ethiopian-American writer Maaza Mengiste prologues the book in an essay focusing on the power of the ordinary. “We sometimes forget that no matter what is happening in our lives, ordinary moments find a way to move forward,” Mengiste writes.

 

Normality

 

Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill, both Americans, met while serving with the Peace Corps in Ivory Coast. In 2012, they received a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington to cover the aftermath of Ivory Coast’s civil war.

While they were interviewing refugees and soldiers, Merrill remembers that around them “the vast majority of life was pretty normal, but that wasn’t coming through in the story that we were trying to put together.”

 

“We were seeing all these other moments, that were much sort of truer to our daily life experience in that part of the world,” says DiCampo.

 

So, they took their cellphones and started to photograph what was around them. They felt, says Merrill, that the normal, everyday scenes of life “might be the most important thing we had to tell about that place, about that moment, instead of the crisis story.”

 

Media organizations tend to focus on breaking news, often triggered by an evolving crisis. Africa has many of those; but, as Di Campo puts it, “It’s quite difficult to have a global understanding when all you see of other parts of the world are really extreme stories.”

This is the gap that the “Everyday Africa” book is trying to fill; to look at the continent from the inside and from different perspectives.

 

DiCampo and Merrill, with the support of the Pulitzer Center, have also created media workshops that train elementary school students in the United States on how to document their lives and recognize stereotypes.

 

“We use the story of how we we created Every Day Africa,” said DiCampo, “to engage the students in a discussion of how media representation affects them, their lives and their communities and we use our photography to teach basic photography lessons, so that by the end of the workshop, they have an everyday project for their own school or community.”

 

This social media model has hit a nerve. “The Every Africa platform on Instagram may very well be the biggest visual library of the continent,” writes Ghanaian photographer Nana Kofi Acquah.

 

“To task African photographers with the burden of changing how the continent is perceived, might be overwhelming,” writes Acquah; but, he adds, “a picture of the real Africa” is slowly emerging.
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Atop a lake covered by thick ice, fishermen in Northeast China cast out the first net for this year’s winter fishing festival. It’s an ancient yearly tradition that these days is as much an international spectator sport as it is a source of food. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Actress Heather Menzies-Urich, who played one of the singing von Trapp children in the 1965 hit film, “The Sound of Music,” has died. She was 68.

Her son, actor Ryan Urich, told Variety that his mother died late Sunday in Frankford, Ontario, Canada. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer.

Menzies-Urich played Louisa von Trapp, the third-oldest of the seven von Trapp children in the film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.

“The Sound of Music” captured five Academy Awards, including best picture.

Variety reports that Menzies-Urich is survived by two other children, several grandchildren and a great grandchild.

Her husband, actor Robert Urich, died in 2002.
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The Somali Football Federation (SFF) has announced plans to host international games beginning next year because of improving security, the head of the body has announced.

President of the SFF, Abdiqani Said Arab, says the time has come for Somalia to organize home games in the country’s soccer stadiums in 2018.

“Due to the betterment of the security situation in Somalia we have decided to stage our home games at home,” Arab said in a statement.

“The Somali people have the right to watch their national team play at home and we have to make that happen now that the country is going ahead.”

Arab said his federation will first invite East African soccer national teams to play friendly matches with the Somali national team.

He said staging friendly matches will be followed by hosting regional soccer tournaments, such as the CECAFA (Council for East African and Central Africa Football). SFF has not released the dates and fixtures of international matches to be played at home for next year.

Somalia hosted its last international match in Mogadishu in 1988. Following the collapse of the state in 1991, the Somalia national soccer team was forced to play its home games abroad in a neutral country, mainly in the region, like Djibouti and Ethiopia, denying it the all-important home advantage that other teams enjoy against opponents.

The Confederation of African Football chief Ahmad Ahmad approved Somalia’s plan to host international soccer games when he visited Mogadishu in April.

Somalia soccer has made steady development over the years despite the country’s difficulties.

In April 2012, a suicide bomber killed both the head of the Somali Olympic Committee, Aden Yabarow Wiish, and the president of Somali Football Federation, Said Mohamed Nur. But in December that same year, the SFF completed installing an artificial turf at Mogadishu stadium. Two years later in December 2015, the soccer body had showed the first-ever live stream of a football game on TV.

And in August this year, it was a bright night for Mogadishu as the first soccer game was played at night in more than 30 years.
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Management experts are always coming up with innovative ideas to improve the work environment, inspire employees and raise productivity. Big companies in Germany, like Lufthansa, Siemens, Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen’s Audi, are bringing harmony to the workplace by having symphony orchestras and encouraging employees to play music together. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Quietly, Bonna Neang Weinstein wept. Her husband, Howard Weinstein, sitting next to her, held her hand, comforting her.

“It reminded me of everything and myself,” she said of a December 15 performance of “Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia” at the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The first major symphonic work to remember the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians under the rule of the Khmer Rouge regime undid Weinstein, a survivor, who arrived in the U.S. in 1984.

“I could not believe that I lived through that,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

The production is the first collaboration between composer Him Sophy and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rithy Panh, who directed and designed the production.

Both artists survived the Khmer Rouge, which by some estimates killed 90 percent of Cambodia’s artists.

The two are in the forefront of Cambodia’s cultural renaissance, a movement to revive and preserve the ancient arts that were nearly excised, while educating new generations about their cultural heritage. Because of the Khmer Rouge genocide from 1975-1979, half of Cambodia’s population is younger than 25.

The production presented in New York is also aimed at the Cambodian diaspora. It has played on tour in Australia, where the Sydney Morning Herald described it as “light after utter darkness, a promise of resurgence…” and, after sold-out performances in Boston, it is headed to the Philharmonie de Paris next year before opening in Cambodia in 2019, the 40th anniversary of the end of the Khmer Rouge era.

Named after ceremony

“Bangsokol” is named after a ceremony performed at Cambodian funerals. A bangsokol is both the white cloth placed over the body of the deceased and the act of its removal, which signified the passage into the next life, where the spirits of the dead find rest. Bangsokol is also remembering the dead at a watt, the Buddhist temple, with prayer and offerings.

Each audience member found a bangsokol draped across their seat with a note: “We invite you to place this shroud around your shoulders for the duration of the performance.”

“Bangsokol” weaves Khmer traditional music enhanced by a Western orchestra and a Taiwanese chorus performing the libretto by Trent Walker.

Throughout the one-hour production, archival footage — the faces of Cambodian refugees and Khmer Rouge victims, black-clad Cambodians working in fields — flickered across three flat screens hung high behind the performers. Footage of aerial bombings was followed by a clip of then-U.S. President Richard Nixon saying, “Cambodia is the Nixon Doctrine in its purest form.”

“Whatever the film showed, it took me there,” Bonna Neang Weinstein said. “It has been more than 30 years, almost 40 years, but I still dream that I am in the Pol Pot regime.”

For many in the audience, the power of the past showed as quick swipes with damp tissues wiping away silent tears.

“If I’d know this was about the Khmer Rouge, I would not have come,” said a weeping To Voeun, 79, of Alexandria, Virginia. The Khmer Rouge killed her husband, leaving her to raise seven children alone, two of whom remain in Cambodia.

For Bonna Neang Weinstein, the owner of the Khmer Art Gallery in Philadelphia who attended “Bangsokol” with her husband and her three children, the Nixon clip hit home.

She explained: “I cried because I am hurt that the U.S. government bombed my country,” an event that many believe gave rise to the Khmer Rouge.

‘I cannot let it go’

“The U.S. has not admitted anything and not even apologized to us,” said Weinstein, who lost eight family members to the Khmer Rouge. “It mentions at the end ‘Let it all go.’ But I cannot let it go because the perpetrators have not acknowledged their guilt and apologized.”

Sophy Him, who composed the rock opera Where Elephants Weep, told VOA Khmer that his requiem does more than commemorate those who died under the Khmer Rouge.

“We remember the deaths, but also wish and encourage people in the world to have hope and love each other,” said Sophy Him, who lost two older brothers to the regime.

“This performance is for all people in the world who have suffered from genocides and wars,” he said. “This performance is also a warning to the world about the impact of war and genocide.”

That warning was not lost on Jonathan Hulland, a senior program officer at the American Jewish World Service in New York City, who told VOA after the performance that by putting on the white shroud, he felt he was part of the performance.

Hulland, who has been to Cambodia four times, most recently in October, appreciated the warning implicit in the performance. 

“I felt some shame and some guilt,” said Hulland, who was born in the United Kingdom and is now an American citizen. “I am an American now, and I do feel like this country has such a responsibility for what happened.”

Joseph Melillo, BAM’s executive producer, said, “BAM plays a very significant role, not only here in New York City, but in this country of introducing to our culture, the work of other cultures.”

Melillo, who has been to Cambodia twice, said he decided to bring “Bangsokol” to BAM because of Phloeun Prim, the executive director of Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), “who has a clear vision of what he wants for his country.”

The performance was commissioned by CLA, a nonprofit group that works to support the revival of traditional art forms.

Mary Read, who serves on the CLA board of directors, said, “Bangsokol” showed “that there is compassion.”

“Art comes to the heart,” said Read, an Australian known internationally for her Sydney fashion boutique and online store. “By healing the heart, you can heal the spirit of the country.”

The performance ends with Chhay Yam, a joy-filled Cambodian dance accompanied by singing. Two Cambodian-American children of the production’s volunteer helpers participated, learning the steps and how to play traditional musical instruments.

Hollywood luminary Angelina Jolie, who holds Cambodian citizenship and directed First They Killed My Father ​with Rithy Panh, recently saw the performance with her children Maddox Jolie-Pitt, whom she adopted as a baby in Cambodia, and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. They all wore white shirts and black pants, traditional Khmer funeral dress.

Jolie told VOA after the performance, “I think this was a deeply moving performance. I think it is brilliantly done. I think it is very powerful. It put you into a meditation. It’s like an hourlong prayer to pay respect, to remember, and to help us think of Cambodia the past, the ancient past, the more recent past, the present, and take us forward into a more hopeful future.”
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The Guinea-Bissau Writers Association gathers dozens of people from different backgrounds who share the same goal: to improve the literature of a small West African country with one of the world’s lowest literacy rates.

The authors and poets trickle in one by one, to the meeting of minds taking place at a plain-looking educational building. Among them is a dancer. Another is an officer in the country’s military.

Despite their differences, they are all here for the Guinea-Bissau Writers Association’s poetry gathering. At these regular meetings, the nearly 40 members come to share their thoughts and help one another hone their craft. Many hope this will, in turn, help develop their country. 

But with only a 55 percent literacy rate, it is hard for authors to reach a large audience, say association members.

“The reading community is not that big, so we cannot expect to make money writing books, at least not for a living,” said Abdulai Sila, an author and the association’s president.

First step: Imagine it

Sila said that despite the challenges, the writers’ shared vision of improving their country and forging a national identity through literature keeps them going. 

 

“For someone to be able to fight for something, first of all he needs to be able to imagine it,” he said. “One of the tasks of the writers association and the writer is to draw that image that then can be shared by the rest of the citizens. If you are able to imagine something, you can be able to fight for it.”

The former Portuguese colony has been plagued by military coups and instability since its independence in 1974. Today it is ranked among the bottom 10 countries on the U.N. Human Development Index. Currently, the country’s president and ruling party are locked in a political battle that has left parliament out of session for more than two years and caused stagnation.

Of the 40 members of the group, at least half are poets — a style that meshes well with the region’s rich history of oral storytelling. The genre also provides a practical platform for shorter works for those authors who are busy with day jobs.

One of those poets is Manuel da Costa, a major in Guinea-Bissau’s army. 

Da Costa began writing during the country’s fight for independence, and more recently he has also written about drug trafficking in the country. The military officer said the genre allows him to be subjective and leave things open to interpretation. When asked whether he thought that writing about trafficking conflicted with his day job as a member of the military — a branch often implicated in the country’s drug underbelly — he said he did not worry about getting into trouble because of poetry’s nature.

“Poetry language is subjective. When are you writing, it’s only you who knows what you are writing. Anyone who is reading it can have their own interpretation,” he said.

Language choice

Da Costa, as most other poets in the group haved done, chose to write in the country’s Portuguese-based Kriol language.

Association member and author Antonio Afonso Te has just published a book focused on how to write in Kriol. He said learning how to write in Kriol and integrating that into the national education program can help develop the country — and its literary scene.

IN PHOTOS: Writers Seek to Form National Identity Through Literature for Guinea-Bissau

“Kriol should be introduced for education in Guinea-Bissau, because most people speak Kriol. And another thing that is important is the teachers,” Te said, adding that they have more mastery of Kriol than the other languages that they use for teaching.

Whether it’s poetry or novels, in Kriol or Portuguese, the writers of this country say they hope they can use their craft to help Guinea-Bissau turn a new page toward improved development. 
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Spectators at the home stadium of Real Madrid saw its team’s hopes to keep La Liga title fade away Saturday as Barcelona rolled to a 3-0 El Clasico victory, opening a 14-point lead over the current champions. 

Luis Suarez, Lionel Messi and Aleix Vidal each scored, while Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema missed first-half chances. 

“They did really well in the second half. The first half was terrible, in my opinion. They [Barcelona] had very little possession [of the ball],” Joe Villanueva, a Barcelona fan, told VOA. 

Barcelona’s win, however, went beyond the European soccer classic. The soccer match came two days after elections in Catalonia in which separatist parties claimed a majority of the votes. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia and its largest city, while Madrid is Spain’s capital.

Saturday’s El Clasico was the first meeting between Madrid and Barca since the banned October referendum on Catalan independence. 

Club allegiances do not necessarily dictate political opinions. Still, Villanueva thought they would play a bigger role in the match. 

WATCH: A Barcelona Fan’s Take on the Game

“I thought the match would get ugly, especially after they were down 2-0 and they had a player down,” he said. “I thought it would get ugly, but they were composed. Both sides were composed. Usually Real Madrid gets pretty rowdy, especially when they’re losing, but they did well.”

‘An infinite stalemate’

After the political convulsions of the past three months, Catalonia and Spain are back to square one, said Xabier Barrena, a political columnist for the El Periodico newspaper.

“Catalonia is living in an infinite stalemate. There was a considerable increase in participation in the parliamentary elections this time, and despite this, the result is the same as in 2015. Both then and now, the solution must be a legitimate referendum,” Barrena said.

The most likely election outcome remains a coalition of the three pro-independence parties, but their options appear limited, Barrena said. “Any unilateral declaration [of independence] would elicit a violent response from the state,” he said. “So they will avoid that course.”

In the meantime, Barca coach Ernesto Valverde said a long stretch of the season remained. 

“The league isn’t finished. We haven’t even completed the first half of the season,” Valverde said. 

Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane acknowledged it was a defeat “that hurts.”

“Madrid never gives up, whatever happens,” he said. “It is a difficult moment because we’ve lost by three goals. I could say we don’t deserve it, but that is football.”
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