Faster than a speeding train:

It used to take the best part of 24 hours to travel by train from Beijing to the southern boomtown of Guangzhou. But as of Wednesday, when the world’s longest high-speed rail line opened for business, the 1,428-mile journey has been cut to a mere eight hours.

The trains travel at an average speed of 186mph, passing through five provinces as they tear through the countryside.

Also, visit your parents:

That’s an order.

So says China, whose national legislature on Friday amended its law on the elderly to require that adult children visit their aged parents “often” – or risk being sued by them.

Former Stranger news writer Cienna Madrid has been a writer in residence for Richard Hugo House, a local literary nonprofit. There, she taught fiction classes and wrote 4/5 of a book about a death-row...