麻豆社

Pascale Harter introduces stories of risk and resilience from correspondents around the world.

In rural Sichuan Province, John Sudworth sees for himself how a top-down drive to eradicate poverty is playing out at ground level. The clifftop village of Atuler can now be reached by gleaming new metal ladders, rather than the rickety old wooden one - but are there any real opportunities for the people choosing to stay put here, rather than migrating to the megacities?

Lucy Ash visit the bunkers, checkpoints and homes of Marinka, in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, where the conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed rebels is still claiming victims on both sides of the battle front. Among recruits, volunteers and civilians, there's a growing sense of disillusionment as everyone digs in for another winter at war.

Rana Rahimpour works for the 麻豆社 Persian service, based in London - and reflects on the various waves of popular protest she's witnessed in her home country, Iran. With every surge of politicised youth taking to the streets to vent their anger, comes a new wave of anxiety for Iranian parents keen to keep their children out of trouble.

And Jeremy Grange hears a shocking account from a vanished era in the Tanzanian port of Bagamoyo: a tale of slavery, complete with convoys of people who were bought and sold and led away in chains, within living memory here.

Photo: A family originally from a remote village in Sichuan Province are led to their apartment in a centrally-planned new town, part of the Chinese government's drive to eradicate rural poverty.