My apartment had too much yin and not enough yang… the landscape had to go

News Snapshot:

Shoppers in Beijing, where, amid economic trouble, the cost of living is coming down for many people. Photograph: by Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images The woman was sitting on a low stool, handling gently a white, gelatinous lump of glue the size of a human brain as she submerged it in a bucket of water. She took it out and pushed it carefully through a piece of cloth before transferring it into a small steel saucepan and stirring it with a wooden spoon, spraying it with water a couple of times. Her colleague was unrolling lengths of silk on to...