麻豆社

Pascale Harter introduces stories of dramatic change and historic events, from writers and reporters around the world.

As China's Communist Party held its Congress, Carrie Gracie ventured underground into the Beijing metro system to hear the views and concerns of everyday commuters - and found a good deal of apparently genuine 'positive energy'.

Owen Bennett Jones recounts a dramatic tale of death and fate from rural Pakistan - that of just one among millions of rural women and girls whose lives have been turned upside down by the kindness, as well as the violence, of strangers.

Leon McCarron has a close shave with matters of religion, language and identity in the West Bank - as he's spruced up in a barbershop in Nablus in the company of a Muslim and a Samaritan. The latter is one of just a few hundred members of a community that's survived millennia.

And Lucy Ash reveals a little-known footnote in the history of World War I, which turned out to be an important chapter in the Russian Civil War : the "Intervention" by US and British troops in 1917.

Photo: Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the opening session of the 19th Communist Party Congress held at The Great Hall Of The People in Beijing, China. ( Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)