Category: Новини

KINGSTON, New York — On a residential block in upstate New York, college students dug and sifted backyard dirt as part of an archeological exploration this summer of a centuries-old cemetery for African Americans.

Now covered with green lawns in the city of Kingston, this spot in 1750 was part of a burial ground for people who were enslaved. It was located on what was then the outskirts of town. An unknown number of people who were denied church burials were interred here until the late 19th century, when the cemetery was covered over as the city grew.

The site is now being reclaimed as the Pine Street African Burial Ground, one of many forgotten or neglected cemeteries for African Americans getting fresh attention. In the last three summers, the remains of up to 27 people have been located here.

Advocates in this Hudson River city purchased a residential property covering about half the old cemetery several years ago and now use the house there as a visitor center. Money is being raised to turn the urban backyard into a respectful resting place. And while the names of people buried here may be lost, tests are planned on their remains to shed light on their lives and identify their descendants.

“The hardships of those buried here cannot just go down in vain,” said Tyrone Wilson, founder of Harambee Kingston, the nonprofit community group behind the project. “We have a responsibility to make sure that we fix that disrespect.”

While the more-than-0.2 hectares site was designated as a cemetery for people who were enslaved in 1750, it might have been in use before then. Burials continued through about 1878, more than 50 years after New York fully abolished slavery. Researchers say people were buried with their feet to the east, so when they rise on Judgment Day they would face the rising sun.

Remains found on the Harambee property are covered with patterned African cloths and kept where they are. Remains found on adjoining land are exhumed for later burial on the Harambee property.

Students from the State University of New York at New Paltz recently finished a third summer of supervised backyard excavations in this city 129 kilometers upriver from Manhattan. The students get course credit, though anthropology major Maddy Thomas said there’s an overriding sense of mission.

“I don’t like when people feel upset or forgotten,” Thomas said on a break. “And that is what’s happened here. So we’ve got to fix it.”

Harambee is trying to raise $1 million to transform the modest backyard into resting spot that reflects the African heritage of the people buried there. Plans include a tall marker in the middle of the yard.

While some graves were apparently marked, it’s still hard to say who was buried there.

“Some of them, it’s obvious, were marked with just a stone with no writing on it,” said Joseph Diamond, associate professor of anthropology at New Paltz.

The only intact headstone recovered with a name visible was for Caezar Smith, who was born enslaved and died a free man in 1839 at age 41. A researcher mined historical records and came up with two more people potentially buried there in 1803: a man identified as Sam and a 16-year-old girl named Deyon who was publicly hanged after being convicted of murdering the 6-year-old daughter of her enslavers.

The cemetery was at first covered by a lumberyard by 1880, even though some gravestones were apparently still standing by that date.

In 1990, Diamond was doing an archaeological survey for the city and noticed the cemetery was marked on a map from 1870. He and the city historian went out to find it.

Coincidentally, Pine Street building owner Andrew Kirschner had just discovered buried bone chips while digging in front of the building in search of a sewer pipe. He put the pieces in a box. Kirschner said he was still digging when Diamond told him what they were looking for.

“The conversation begins and then I go, ‘Well, let me show you what I found.’ Of course, they were amazed,” said Kirschner, who had owned the building next to the current Harambee property.

Even after the discovery, Diamond said it was difficult to convince people there were graves on Pine Street. There were even plans in 1996 to build a parking lot over much of the site. Advocates purchased the property in 2019.

Similar stories of disregard and rediscovery have played out elsewhere.

In Manhattan, the African Burial Ground National Monument marks the site where an estimated 15,000 free and enslaved Africans were buried until the 1790s. It was discovered in 1991 during excavations for a federal building. Farther up the Hudson River, the renovation in Newburgh of a century-old school into a courthouse in 2008 led to the discovery of more than 100 sets of remains.

Antoinette Jackson, founder of The Black Cemetery Network, said many of the 169 sites listed in their online archive had been erased.

“A good deal of them represent sites that have been built over — by parking lots, schools, stadiums, highways. Others have been under-resourced,” said Jackson, a professor of anthropology at the University of Southern Florida.

She added that the cemeteries listed on the archive are just the “tip of the iceberg.”

Given the meager historical record in Kingston, advocates hope tests on the remains will help fill in some gaps. Isotopic analyses could provide information on whether individuals grew up elsewhere — like South Carolina or Africa — and then moved to the region. DNA analyses could provide information on where in Africa their ancestors came from. The DNA tests also might be able to link them to living descendants.

Wilson said local families have committed to providing DNA samples. He sees the tests as another way to connect people to heritage.

“One of the biggest issues that we have in African culture is that we don’t know our history,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of information of who we are.”
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WASHINGTON — Movie ticket sales in China have generated more than $1.5 billion so far this summer, a little more than half of last year’s record total of $2.89 billion, according to China’s Film Data Information Network, an institution directly under the Central Propaganda Department. 

Summer is usually one of three lucrative periods for China’s movie industry, but industry analysts, observers and customers say a slower economy and a lack of creative domestic films are to blame for the decline.

Some would-be moviegoers explained why they are staying home this summer.

One posted on social media: “The impact from last year’s economic downturn officially appeared this year. Everyone thinks 40-80 yuan ($5-$11) per ticket is expensive.” 

“Many movies in theaters in July are on streaming services in August,” another posted. “We’d rather watch them at home than go to the theater.”

A moviegoer in Beijing who identified herself as Ms. Yu, told VOA that this year’s film market is sluggish because the themes are plain, and streaming services allow everyone to watch movies at home without spending money.

“Everyone’s life is already miserable,” she said, “so we don’t want to watch sad movies.”

Although the streaming services have become theaters’ biggest competitors, the economic downturn may be the main reason for the ticket sales plunge, said Shenzhen-based film director Zhang, who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

 

“The spending power of young people and parents has decreased,” Zhang told VOA. “One [reason] is that young people don’t date, and parents whose income has been reduced are under great pressure to raise children, so they naturally cut the consumption activities except eating and drinking, not just movies.”

China’s economy has been struggling to stabilize since the pandemic, according to the World Bank, with growth falling to 3% in 2022 before a moderate recovery to 5.2% in 2023. The global lender expects China’s growth rate to drop back below 5% this year, while youth unemployment has surged.

China’s National Bureau of Statistics removed students from its unemployment calculation after China hit a record high 21.3% youth unemployment rate in June 2023, prompting authorities to temporarily suspend publication of the statistic. 

Darson Chiu, director-general of the Confederation of Asia-Pacific Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Taiwan, told VOA that China’s controls on film and creativity have also contributed to the lackluster box office figures.

“China has a very strict censorship system,” Chiu said. “Cultural activities need creativity, and it must be bottom-up. But it is obviously a top-down [censorship] mechanism, so it [the Chinese film industry] is not as creative as it is in other more open and free economies.”

Lee Cheng-liang, an assistant professor of communications at National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan, said Chinese cinemas in the summer mainly show domestic movies, which are struggling to find investors.

“The economy is declining; investors are more cautious to minimize risks. So they diversify the movie themes they invest in,” Lee told VOA. “If you focus on the Chinese market, you will not necessarily make money unless you are at the top of the pyramid.”

Director Zhang said the Chinese summer comedies “Successor,” which critiques the Chinese social education system, and “Upstream,” which portrays package deliverers, are movies that do not “empathize with the general public.” 

Commercial movies are often condescending, he said, with hypocritically fabricated plots to show the suffering of people at the bottom. “It is actually a very deformed route,” Zhang added.

Other film critics, however, find “Upstream” a great work with increasing favorable audience feedback, which uncovers China’s immense economic problems and the struggle of its army of gig workers.

China’s state Xinhua News agency said “Successor,” grossing nearly 3.2 billion yuan as of Aug 20, accounted for almost 30% of China’s summer box office sales.

Zhang said the more depressed the social and historical period is, the more popular comedy is because the audience wants to feel “dreamy and painless.”

Despite the poor summer box office showing, not all critics are negative about China’s film industry.  

“The ticket sales are not good this summer, but it does not mean that their [China’s] movies are bad,” Michael Mai, a film critic based in Taipei, told VOA. “Their audience is hard to please. Why? Because their appetite is too big. They have all kinds of movies.”

Mai noted that there are three major periods in the Chinese movie market: the Lunar New Year, in January and February; the summer season, from June to August; and the weeklong National Day season from Oct. 1.  

Movie ticket sales always have seasonal ups and downs, Mai said, so people should be focusing more on long-term trends.      

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Paris — The Opening Ceremony of the Paris Paralympics got underway Wednesday in the center of the French capital, firing the starting gun on 11 days of intense competition.

Just as for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics on the River Seine in July, it took place away from the main stadium for the first time at a Paralympics.

In balmy weather — in contrast to the heavy rain that blighted the opening of the Olympics on July 26 — the Games opened in Place de la Concorde, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron.

The ceremony culminates with the lighting of the cauldron, which has already become a highly popular point of interest in the city since its debut at the Olympics.

When the sporting action begins on Thursday, a new generation of Paralympians will join seasoned veterans competing in many of the same venues that hosted Olympic sports.

Eighteen of the 35 Olympic venues will be used for the Paralympics, which run until September 8, including the Grand Palais, which scored rave reviews for its hosting of fencing and taekwondo under an ornate roof.

The La Defense Arena will again host the swimming events, and track and field will take place on the purple track of the Stade de France.

Sluggish ticket sales have picked up since the Olympics, and more than 2 million of the 2.5 million available have been sold, with several venues sold out.

The Paralympic flame was lit at Stoke Mandeville hospital in England, the birthplace of the Games, and brought to France through the Channel Tunnel before touring French cities.

Theater director Thomas Jolly, who also oversaw the Olympics Opening Ceremony, said there was a deep symbolism in having the Paralympics ceremony in the center of Paris — a city whose Metro system is not adapted to the needs of wheelchair users.

“Putting Paralympic athletes in the heart of the city is already a political marker in the sense that the city is not sufficiently adapted to every handicapped person,” Jolly said earlier this week.

Organizers say wheelchair users can take Paris buses, and they have laid on 1,000 specially adapted taxis as well.

Paralympic powerhouse China will send a strong squad — the Chinese dominated the medals table at the Covid-delayed Games in Tokyo three years ago, winning 96 golds. Britain was second with 41 golds.

Riding the wave of its Olympic team’s success, host nation France will be aiming for a substantial upgrade on the 11 golds it won in 2021, which left it in 14th position. French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said she wants France to finish in the top eight of the medals table.

Ukraine, traditionally one of the top medal-winning nations at the Paralympics, have sent a team of 140 athletes spread over 17 sports despite the challenges they face in preparing as the war against Russian forces rages at home.

Russia and Belarus are sending a total of 96 athletes, who will compete under a neutral banner but are barred from the opening and closing ceremonies because of the invasion of Ukraine.

Every Games produces new stars, and in this edition, look to American above-the-knee amputee sprinter/high jumper Ezra Frech to make the headlines.

Away from the track, Iranian sitting volleyball legend Morteza Mehrzad, who stands 8 feet, 1 inch tall, will attempt to take gold again.

International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons told AFP earlier this year he hopes the Paris edition will restore the issues facing disabled people to the top of the list of global priorities.

Parsons believes the Games “will have a big impact in how people with disability are perceived around the world.”

“This is one of the key expectations we have around Paris 2024; we believe that we need people with disability to be put back on the global agenda,” the Brazilian said.

“We do believe people with disability have been left behind. There is very little debate about persons with disability.”
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