Emily Fang
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Emily Fang, NPR News, Van, Turkey.
In 2020, North Korea closed its borders to fend off the then-necent COVID-19 pandemic.
That shot of access to the hermit kingdom, even to neighboring China, which is a close economic and political partner of North Korea's.
But this week, trains will run between Beijing and Pyongyang again four times a week, and Air China will resume flights to North Korea at the end of March.
Both countries are run by autocratic communist rulers, and North Korea and China have had a close economic, though sometimes politically strained, relationship for decades.
The two countries still do about $2 billion worth of trade each year, much of it passing through the northern Chinese border town of Dandong, separated only by the Yalu River from North Korea.
Over 10,000 Chinese citizens were brought out of Gulf countries like Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, according to a Chinese ministry spokesperson.
And more than 3,000 Chinese citizens had to be evacuated out of Iran, mostly overland through Azerbaijan.
With scores of flights canceled in the region, Beijing had to work with Chinese airlines to boost special evacuation flights out of the Gulf, where China has pursued close economic and security ties with Gulf countries.
Wang Yi, China's foreign minister, said earlier this week that the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran should not have happened, and he warned against what he called the, quote, law of the jungle coming back.
Across Taiwan and China, people celebrated Yuan Xiao Jie, or the Lantern Festival, the 15th day of the Lunar New Year and a time for family and friends to gather.
In Taiwan's Pingxi District, people gathered as tradition and let go large paper wish lanterns on which they'd written, with ink calligraphy, their wishes for the year of the fire horse.
And in China, people held parades and dance performances to celebrate the full moon.
And people ate tang yuan, sweet glutinous rice balls often filled with sesame paste because their shape resembles the full moon, and they're eaten for good luck on Lantern Festival and the winter solstice.
China's state broadcaster shared video of about a dozen of its citizens being ferried from northern Iran.
to Azerbaijan, where they were met by Chinese diplomats.
Beijing has condemned the joint strikes in Tehran, which killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials.