Compiled by ZAKIAH KOYA, C.ARUNO and R.ARAVINTAN
SUCH was the appeal of Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau (pic) that his four-day concert in Chengdu city raked in 540 million yuan (RM333mil) in tourist expenditure, reported China Press.
The 62-year-old performed in Chengdu between Aug 9 and 12 as part of his “Today is the Day” concert tour and all 52,000 tickets were sold out.
Around 33,800 concert goers travelled from another city just to watch Lau perform in Chengdu.
As part of his tour, Lau will be performing in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Nanjing, Shenzhen and Macau as well as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
Media in China are speculating that the economic impact of Lau’s concerts may soon be a topic of interest to scholars akin to Taylor Swift’s “Swiftonomics”.
> Two Chinese nationals hired as Russian mercenaries, who were given only a month’s military training, died on their second day in the battlefield, reported Sin Chew Daily.
The men, Liu Hongwei and Liu Jie, signed up to be mercenaries in June this year before being assigned to the frontlines on July 31.
They were killed in action the next day.
Their deaths saw a wave of sympathy among Chinese mercenaries on online military forums.
“Four of my comrades, with whom I have eaten and lived together in Moscow, have died. Maybe it will be my time soon.
“I have made my peace and I am ready to welcome my trip to hell. Maybe this is a punishment from God for having lived an evil life in the past. I do not have any regrets. This is a choice I have made and I will see it through,” one mercenary from China wrote.
Hongwei and Jie were not the first mercenaries from China who died fighting for Russia.
It was reported a mercenary, who called himself “Prison Warden” on social media, was killed in action in July.
An influencer Zhaorui, who also became a mercenary, was killed by drones on Nov 29 last year.
The brutality of the Russian-Ukraine war is increasingly being made aware to the Chinese public following accounts by mercenaries currently in the frontlines.
Li Jianwei, a Henan province native, shared a video in May of his experience fighting in Ukraine.
The former member of China’s People’s Liberation Army claimed that most fighters die between eight and 10 hours after being sent into the battlefield.
“More than a dozen people have died over the past few days. Bro, this war is unwinnable. It’s too tough to win. The human cost is too high,” Li said.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.
