Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s understated and relatable charm have won him throngs of new admirers during the awards season, especially after his Korean-language thriller “Parasite” picked up four Oscars on Sunday night. There, his meme-friendly reactions and thoughtfulness on stage — and off — propelled him into a mainstream star.

For all his new acolytes out there, here are some ways to live a more Bong Joon Ho life, according to the director himself.

For the record:

5:06 PM, Feb. 13, 2020
An earlier version of this article misattributed a quote in the Guardian to interpreter Sharon Choi. It was said by interpreter Massoumeh Lahidji.

Channel your anxiety into art: For someone who seems so collected when accepting awards or on late-night television, Bong says he’s actually petrified on the inside. “I’m actually very anxious 24 hours a day,” he told Vanity Fair. “A psychiatrist actually told me that I have severe anxiety, and I have severe compulsive tendencies to the point where it would be impossible for me to have a social life. But thanks to filmmaking, I’ve been able to survive.” He’s worked out some anxieties through his work — about income inequality (“Parasite”) factory farming (“Okja”) and police incompetence (“Memories of Murder”). When Bong confronts fear and dread, it strikes a chord with audiences.

Maintain a simple lifestyle: Perhaps one reason Bong became such a delight in Hollywood is because he stays so unaffected by the trappings of show business. “I try to maintain a very simple lifestyle,” he told the Telegraph of London. “Drink coffee, write and try not to meet a lot of people.”

And a Vanity Fair cover feature revealed how his publicist insists on keeping him out of photo shoot poses that seem “very Hollywood,” because “he’s so not about that.” The cult of celebrity that’s grown around him seems to just weird him out. His reaction to getting a hero’s welcome at the Incheon International Airport in Seoul after winning the top prize at Cannes last year? “It was very awkward in the airport. Super awkward.”

Eschew categories: He comes from a country that remains divided along the 38th parallel, and his films explore social and economic divisions, the kind of lines that feel impossible to cross. But Bong’s art refuses to fit easily into any boxes, jumping from hilarious hijinks, to tragedy, to thriller, to horror and back. As he’s become an international success story, Bong has consistently downplayed the notion of borders and labels in filmmaking.

“I don’t think it’s necessary to separate all the divisions, whether it’s Europe, Asia or the U.S.,” he said. “If we pursue the beauty of cinema and focus on the individual charms that each piece has, then I think we will naturally overcome all these barriers.”

Maintain a sense of mischief: Bong says his originality comes from being a “weirdo.” But his films and his personal history suggest his weirdness has a distinctively subversive flavor. He was a college activist during South Korea’s successful push for democracy, a formative period for the country and for Bong. In his work, he inserts a healthy amount of absurdist humor through the stories and keeps his toe across the line with visual gags or easy-to-miss political references. “My films generally seem to have three components: fear, anxiety, and a … sense of humor,” he told New York magazine‘s Vulture website. “At least when we laugh, there’s a feeling that we’re overcoming some kind of horror.”

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Look loose while simultaneously sweating the details: He comes off super loose, dropping f-bombs easily and ending his Oscar acceptance speech for directing by saying, “I will drink until morning.” But when it comes to his craft, he’s so detail-oriented that his nickname in his native Korea is “Bong-tail.” He draws by hand all the storyboards to his movies, which end up looking like elaborate graphic novels. He has said that going on set without a storyboard makes him feel like he’s in a train station in his underwear. So having it all drawn out in advance smooths out the filmmaking process — he shoots no extra “coverage” shots when the actors arrive on set. After filming, he relishes being involved in every aspect of post-production, down to the sound-mixing at the very end.

“It’s rare that such an obsessive craftsman can achieve such fleetness and the consistent impression of total ease and even looseness, when in fact there’s nothing remotely loose about what he’s doing,” fellow director and Bong superfan Ari Aster told Vanity Fair.

Stay true to yourself and your story: Bong made English-language productions “Snowpiercer” and “Okja” in collaboration with American teams. Yet his winningest and most universally acclaimed film is a full Korean production, set in modern Korea with Korea-specific cultural touchpoints. The lesson, according to Bong, is a liberating paradox — the more personal you get, the more universal the appeal. “Perhaps the deeper I delve into the things that are around me, the broader a story can become,” Bong says. After all, Parasite’s central story about a family progressively embedding itself more deeply into a rich one is borrowed from his own life.

Have a partner on your side who truly sees and hears you: Part of the reason Bong comes off so lovable is because his interpreter, Sharon Choi, 25, takes his Korean quips and artfully — and simultaneously — translates them into conversational English. Case in point? His much-shared quote following his Golden Globes win: “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” Korean speakers know she could have translated that from the original Korean more directly, which would be technically correct but less true to the spirit of what he expressed.

Without this indispensable relationship, the magic of Bong would, well, translate less well to the rest of us. Now, Bong’s trying to reciprocate by supporting Choi. She is a filmmaker too, and Bong announced to the press room at the Oscars, “She’s writing a feature-length script,” like a proud dad. “I’m so curious about it.”

Don’t delay meals: This following is the entirety of Bong’s speech after “Parasite’s” eight-minute standing ovation at Cannes: “Thank you, let’s all go home.” He later said that he kept things hyper-brief because he knew everybody in the cast was starving and impatient to finally eat.

Elise Hu is a correspondent and host at NPR, based in Culver City.

LAKE ASSAL, Djibouti — 

“Patience,” Mohammed Eissa told himself.

He whispered it every time he felt like giving up. The sun was brutal, reflecting off the thick layer of salt encrusting the barren earth around Lake Assal, 10 times saltier than the ocean.

Nothing grows here. Birds are said to fall dead out of the sky from the searing heat. And yet the 35-year-old Ethiopian walked on, as he had for three days, since he left his homeland for Saudi Arabia.

Nearby are two dozen graves, piles of rocks, with no headstones. People here say they belong to migrants who like Eissa embarked on an epic journey of hundreds of miles, from villages and towns in Ethiopia through the Horn of Africa countries Djibouti or Somalia, then across the sea and through the war-torn country of Yemen.

The flow of migrants taking this route has grown. According to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, 150,000 arrived in Yemen from the Horn of Africa in 2018, a 50% jump from the year before. The number in 2019 was similar.

They dream of reaching Saudi Arabia, and earning enough to escape poverty by working as laborers, housekeepers, servants, construction workers and drivers.

But even if they reach their destination, their fate is uncertain; the kingdom often expels them. Over the last three years, the IOM reported 9,000 Ethiopians were deported each month.

Many migrants have made the journey multiple times in what has become a repeating loop of arrivals and deportations.

Eissa is among them. This is his third trip to Saudi Arabia.

In his pockets, he carries a text neatly handwritten in Oromo, his native language. It tells stories of the prophet Muhammad, who fled his home in Mecca for Medina to seek refuge from his enemies.

“I depend on God,” Eissa said.

‘I have to go to Saudi’

Associated Press reporters traveled along part of the migrants’ trail through Djibouti and Yemen in July and August. Eissa was among the travelers they met; another was Mohammad Ibrahim, who comes from the Arsi region, as does Eissa.

Perched in the Ethiopia’s central highlands, Arsi an area where subsistence farmers live off small plots of land, growing vegetables or grain. When the rains come, the families can eat. But in the dry months of the summer, food dwindles and hunger follows.

The 22-year-old Ibrahim had never been able to find a job. His father died when his mother was pregnant with him — she told him stories of how his father went off to war and never returned.

One day, Ibrahim saw a friend in his village with a new motorcycle. He was making a little money carrying passengers. Ibrahim went to his mother and asked her to buy him one. He could use it, he told her, to support her and his sister. Impossible, she said. She would have to sell her tiny piece of land where they grow corn and barley.

“This is when I thought, I have to go to Saudi,” Ibrahim said.

So he reached out to the local “door opener” — a broker who would link him to a chain of smugglers along the way.

Often migrants are told they can pay when they arrive in Saudi Arabia. Those who spoke to the Associated Press said they were initially quoted prices ranging from $300 to $800 for the journey.

How the trip goes depends vitally on the smuggler.

In the best-case scenario, the smugglers are a sort of tour organizer. They arrange boats for the sea crossing, either from Djibouti or Somalia. They run houses along the way where migrants stay and provide transport from town to town in pickup trucks. Once in Saudi Arabia, the migrants call home to have payment wired to the smuggler.

In the worst case, the smuggler is a brutal exploiter, imprisoning and torturing migrants for more money, dumping them alone on the route or selling them into virtual slave labor on farms.

Intensified border controls and crackdowns by the Ethiopian government, backed by European Union funding, have eliminated some reliable brokers, forcing migrants to rely on inexperienced smugglers, increasing the danger.

The long walk

Eissa decided he would not use smugglers for his journey.

He’d successfully made the trip twice before. The first time, in 2011, he worked as a steel worker in the kingdom, making $25 a day, enough to buy a plot of land in the Arsi region’s main town, Asella. He made the trip again two years later, walking for two months to reach Saudi Arabia, where he earned $530 a month as a janitor. But he was arrested and deported before he could collect his pay.

Without a smuggler, his third attempt would be cheaper. But it would not be safe, or easy.

Eissa picked up rides from his home to the border with Djibouti, then walked. His second day there, he was robbed at knifepoint by several men. The next day, he walked six hours in the wrong direction, back toward Ethiopia, before he found the right path again.

When the Associated Press met him at Lake Assal, Eissa said he had been living off bread and water for days, taking shelter in a rusty, abandoned shipping container. He had a small bottle filled with water from a well at the border, covered with fabric to keep out dust.

He had left behind a wife, nine sons and a daughter. His wife cares for his elderly father. The children work the farm growing vegetables, but harvests are unpredictable: “If there’s no rain, there’s nothing.”

With the money he expected to earn in Saudi Arabia, he planned to move his family to Asella. “I will build a house and take my children to town to learn the religious and worldly sciences,” he said.

The trip

The 100-mile trip across Djibouti can take days.

Many migrants end up in the country’s capital, also named Djibouti, living in slums and working to earn money for the crossing. Young women often are trapped in prostitution or enslaved as servants.

The track through Djibouti ends on a long, virtually uninhabited coast outside the town of Obock, a shore close to Yemen.

There, the AP saw a long line of dozens of migrants led by smuggling guides, descending from the mountains onto the rocky coastal plain. Here they would stay, sometimes for several days, and wait for their turn on the boats that every night cross the narrow Bab al-Mandab strait to Yemen.

During the wait, smugglers brought out large communal pots of spaghetti and barrels of water for their clients. Young men and women washed themselves in nearby wells. Others sat in the shade of the scrawny, twisted acacia trees. Two girls braided each other’s hair.

One young man, Korram Gabra, worked up the nerve to call home to ask his father for the equivalent of $200 for the crossing and the Yemen leg of the trip. It would be his first time talking with his father since he sneaked away from home in the night.

“My father will be upset when he hears my voice, but he’ll keep it in his heart and won’t show it,” he said. “If I get good money, I want to start a business.”

At night, AP witnessed a daily smuggling routine:

Small lights flashing in the darkness signaled that a boat was ready. More than 100 men and women, boys and girls were ordered to sit in silence on the beach. The smugglers spoke in hushed conversations on satellite phones to their counterparts in Yemen on the other side of the strait. There was a moment of worry when a black rubber dinghy appeared out in the water — a patrol of Djibouti’s marines. After half an hour it motored away. The marines had received their daily bribe of about $100, the smugglers explained.

Loaded into the 50-foot-long open boat, migrants were warned not to move or talk during the crossing. Most had never seen the sea before. Now they would be on it for eight hours in darkness.

Eissa made the crossing on another day, paying about $65 to a boat captain — the only payment to a smuggler he would make.

‘It was a terrible thing’

Ibrahim took an alternative route, through Somaliland. He traveled nearly 500 miles, walking and catching rides to cross the border and reach the town of Laascaanood.

Isolated in the Somaliland desert, the town is the hub for traffickers transporting Ethiopians to Yemen. It is also a center for brutal torture, according to several migrants. The smugglers took Ibrahim and others to a compound, stripped him and tied him dangling from a wooden rafter. They splashed cold water on him and flogged him.

For 12 days, he was imprisoned, starved and tortured. He saw six other migrants die of severe dehydration and hunger, their bodies buried in shallow graves nearby. “It’s in the middle of the vast desert,” he said. “If you think of running away, you don’t even know where to go.”

At one point, smugglers put a phone to his ear and made him plead with his mother for ransom money.

“Nothing is more important than you,” she told him. She sold the family’s sole piece of land and wired the smugglers more than $1,000.

The smugglers transported Ibrahim to the port of Bosaso on Somaliland’s northern coast. He was piled into a wooden boat with some 300 other men and women, “like canned sardines,” he said.

Throughout the 30-hour journey, the Somali captain and his crew beat anyone who moved. Crammed in place, the migrants had to urinate and vomit where they sat.

“I felt trapped, couldn’t breathe or move for many hours until my body became stiff,” he said. “God forbid, it was a terrible thing.”

Within sight of Yemen’s shore, the smugglers pushed the migrants off the boat into water too deep to touch the bottom.

Flailing in the water, they formed human chains to help the women and children onto shore.

Ibrahim collapsed on the sand and passed out. When he opened his eyes, he felt the hunger stabbing him.

‘Far from my dreams’

Migrants with reliable, organized smugglers are usually transported across Yemen in stages to the migrant hub cities farther down the line — Ataq , Marib, Al Jawf and Saada, where half the distance is under internationally recognized government control and the other half under that of Houthi rebels, fighting a U.S.-backed coalition since 2015.

But for thousands of others, it’s a confusing and dangerous march down unfamiliar roads and highways.

A security official in Lahij province outside the main southern city, Aden, said bodies of dead migrants turn up from time to time. Just a few days earlier, he told the AP, a farmer called his office about a smell coming from one of his fields. A patrol found a young migrant there who had been dead for days.

Another patrol found 100 migrants, including women, hidden on a farm, the official said. The patrol brought them food, he said, but then had to leave them.

“Where would we take them and what would we do with them?” he asked, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the press.

Many migrants languish for months in the slums of Basateen, a district of Aden that was once a green area of gardens but now is covered in decrepit shacks of cinder blocks, concrete, tin and tarps amid open sewers.

Over the summer, an Aden soccer stadium became a temporary refuge for thousands of migrants. At first, security forces used it to house migrants they captured in raids. Other migrants showed up voluntarily, hoping for shelter. The IOM distributed food at the stadium and arranged voluntary repatriation back home for some. The soccer pitch and stands, already destroyed from the war, became a field of tents, with clotheslines strung up around them.

Among the migrants there was Nogos, a 15-year-old who was one of at least 7,000 minors who made the journey without an adult in 2019, a huge jump from 2,000 unaccompanied minors a year earlier, according to IOM figures

Upon landing in Yemen, Nogos had been imprisoned by smugglers. For more than three weeks, they beat him, demanding his family send $500. When he called home, his father curtly refused: “I’m not the one torturing you.”

Nogos can’t blame his father. “If he had money and didn’t help me, I’d be upset,” he said. “But I know he doesn’t.”

Finally, the smugglers gave up on getting money out of the boy and let him go. Alone and afraid at the stadium, he had no idea what he’d do next. He had hoped to reach an aunt who is living in Saudi Arabia, but lost contact with her. He had hoped one day to go back to school.

“It’s far from my dreams,” he added, in a dead voice.

After a few weeks, Yemeni security forces cleared out the stadium, throwing thousands back onto the streets. The IOM had stopped distributing food, fearing it would become a lure for migrants. Yemeni officials didn’t want to take responsibility for the migrants’ care.

Eissa, meanwhile, made his way across the country alone. At times, Yemenis gave him a ride for a stretch. Mostly he walked endless miles down the highways.

“I don’t count the days. I don’t distinguish, Saturday, Sunday or Monday,” he said in an audio message to the AP via Whatsapp.

One day, he reached the town of Bayhan, southern Yemen, and went to the local mosque to use the bathroom. When he saw the preacher giving his sermon, he realized it was Friday.

It was the first time in ages he was aware of the day of the week.

He had traveled more than 250 miles since he landed in Yemen. He had another 250 miles to go to the Saudi border.

‘Pray for me’

In the evenings, thousands of migrants mill around the streets of Marib, one of the main city stopovers on the migrants’ route through Yemen. In the mornings, they search for day jobs. They could earn about a dollar a day working on nearby farms. A more prized job is with the city garbage collectors, paying $4 a day.

Ibrahim had just arrived a few days earlier when the AP met him, his black hair still covered in dust from the road.

He had wandered in Yemen for days, starving, before villagers gave him food.

He made his way slowly north. Not knowing the language or the geography, he didn’t even know what town he was in when a group of armed fighters snatched him from the road.

They imprisoned him for days in a cell with other migrants. One night, they moved the migrants in a pickup, driving them through the desert. Ibrahim was confused and afraid: Where was he going? Who had abducted him? Why?

He threw himself out of the back of the pickup, landing in the sand. Scratched and battered, he ran away into the darkness.

Now in Marib, he was stranded, unsure how to keep going. His arm was painfully swollen from an insect bite. He wouldn’t be able to work until it was better. The only food he could find was rice and fetid meat scraps left over from restaurants.

Using the AP’s phone, he called his mother for the first time since the horrific calls under torture at Laascaanood.

“Pray for me, mama,” he said, choking back tears.

“I know you are tired and in pain. Take care of yourself,” she told him.

Was it worth all this to reach Saudi Arabia? he was asked.

He broke down.

“What if I return empty-handed after my mother sold the one piece of land we have?” he said. “I can’t enter the village or show my face to my mother without money.”

The kingdom

North of Marib, migrants cross into Houthi territory at Al Hazm, a run-down town divided down the middle between the rebels and anti-Houthi fighters. It’s a three-mile no-man’s land where sniper fire and shelling are rampant.

Once across, it is 120 more miles north to the Saudi border.

Eissa walked that final stretch, a risk because the militiamen have a deal with migrant smugglers: Those who go by car are allowed through; those on foot are arrested.

“Walking in the mountains and the valleys and hiding from the police,” Eissa said in an audio message to the AP.

He traversed tiny valleys winding through mountains along the border to the crossing points of Al Thabit or Souq al-Raqo.

Souq al-Raqo is a lawless place, a center for drug and weapons trafficking run by Ethiopian smugglers. Even local security forces are afraid to go there. Cross-border shelling exchanges and airstrikes have killed dozens, including migrants; Saudi border guards sometimes shoot others.

Eissa slipped across the Saudi border on Aug. 10. It had been 39 days since he had left home in Ethiopia.

After walking 100 miles more, he reached the major town of Khamis Mushait. First, he prayed at a mosque. Some Saudis there asked if he wanted work. They got him a job watering trees on a farm.

“Peace, mercy and blessings of God,” he said in one of his last audio messages to the AP. “I am fine, thank God. I am in Saudi.”

SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia — 

Hundreds of cruise ship passengers long stranded at sea by virus fears cheered as they finally disembarked Friday and were welcomed to Cambodia by the nation’s authoritarian leader, who handed them flowers.

Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed to let the Westerdam dock at the port of Sihanoukville on Thursday after Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Guam had barred the ship earlier.

“Today, although Cambodia is a poor country, Cambodia has always joined the international community to solve the problems that the world and our region are facing,” he said as the first passengers disembarked.

“How wonderful it is to be here. Thank you very much to the prime minister. He has a wonderful heart,” said Anna Marie Melon of Queensland, Australia. “I’m very excited,” she said as she waved a rose Hun Sen handed to her.

The passengers cheered as they walked toward waiting buses and waved goodbye to other passengers watching from the ship’s deck.

“Your country did a great job. Did a wonderful job. Thank you very much. We appreciate it very much,” Joe Spaziani, 74, from Florida, told reporters. He and many other passengers wore a krama, a traditional Cambodian scarf, around their necks.

“Cambodia alone, even the United States, Guam, did not let us land, but Cambodia did, so that’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful,” Spaziani said. “We appreciate it very very much. It’s been a long struggle and we appreciate everyone being here.”

The Westerdam was unwelcome elsewhere even though operator Holland America Line said no cases of the COVID-19 viral illness have been confirmed among its 1,455 passengers and 802 crew members. Some 20 passengers had reported stomachaches or fever, but tests for the virus done at the Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh showed none had the illness.

Hun Sen has said he acted for humanitarian reasons and said at the dock he wanted to allow passengers to return to their home countries.

“If Cambodia did not allow this ship to dock here, where should this ship go?” he said. “I want to inform Cambodians and the world that I coming here even for a short time means this is no time for discrimination and to be scared, but a time for everyone to be in solidarity to solve the problems we are facing now.”

A strong supporter of China, Hun Sen has downplayed threats from the new virus and unlike other Asian nations, he declined to ban direct flights between Cambodia and China, saying that would disturb bilateral relations and hurt his country’s economy. Cambodia has one confirmed case of the virus, a visitor from China, despite its popularity with Chinese tourists.

Acting as a good Samaritan is an unusual role for Hun Sen, who has been in power for 35 years. His party swept 2018 elections that drew sharp condemnation as neither free nor fair after a court dissolved the only credible opposition party.

The U.S. has imposed diplomatic sanctions due to Cambodia’s repressive political climate, and the European Union earlier this week declared its intention to do the same, citing human rights and trade union violations.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to boost his country’s tourism profile, Hun Sen said the passengers were free to go to the beach, go sightseeing in Sihanoukville or even visit the famous centuries-old Angkor Wat temple complex in the northwest.

Mang Sineth, the vice governor in Preah Sihanouk province, told reporters 414 passengers will leave the port Friday and fly to Cambodia’s capital before traveling to their final destinations. Three flights from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh were arranged to take all the ship’s passengers.

He said that if the flying arrangements went smoothly, all passengers would probably be leaving Sihanoukville by Sunday.

On Twitter, W. Patrick Murphy, U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, called the disembarking activities “heartwarming sights … with Cambodian hospitality on full display.”

He said “joint operation ‘Homeward Bound’ is underway!”

The COVID-19 illness has sickened tens of thousands of people in China and a few hundred elsewhere, including 218 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which made stops in Hong Kong and other ports before arriving in Japan last week.

The Westerdam began its cruise in Singapore last month and its last stop before it was refused further landings was in Hong Kong, where 53 cases of the disease and one death have been confirmed.

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Marta Ayala and Chong Taing, both Rosemead residents, couldn’t see the threat of the coronavirus more differently. You can see it on their faces.

While walking out of Superior Grocers supermarket in El Monte, Ayala’s face scrunched in annoyance as she spotted an Asian customer wearing a white medical mask coming from the opposite direction. Despite hearing about the fast-spreading illness, to the 64-year-old Mexican immigrant, the mask is an overreaction that just stokes alarm.

“I don’t believe in using masks and I don’t understand the need,” she said. “I know there’s a serious disease out there, but who has time to think about that?”

For the 39-year-old Taing, who wears a mask, the item makes as much sense as wearing long-sleeve shirts or sunglasses to protect from the sun. The masks aren’t just designed to protect the person wearing them from illness, but to protect others as well. It’s a common courtesy in a place he calls “the 626″ — the area code-based nickname for the San Gabriel Valley.

“People wearing masks are being considerate,” Taing said. “Yes, we’re going to wash our hands, but we’re going to take extra precautions when we pick up our kids, do our shopping and go outside. We want to avoid getting sick as much as anyone, and at least we’re taking steps to do that.”

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The virus, officially named COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, has seen cases worldwide rise to over 60,000 while the death toll has surpassed 1,300, as of Wednesday evening. In the U.S., there have been 15 confirmed cases with investigations ongoing in 41 states and territories.

Few places illustrate the parallel reactions to the illness the way the diverse San Gabriel Valley does. According to 2010 U.S. Census Bureau statistics, Latinos and Asians make up 46% and 28%, respectively, of the area’s 1.85 million residents. The two largest groups frequently shop, eat and send their children to the same schools. But how they have responded to the virus couldn’t be more different.

It is among the Asian population that concern over the disease manifests itself most visibly, with changing eating and shopping habits, the cancellation of large public events like Lunar New Year celebrations, avoidance of large family gatherings and the masks.

While the majority of people in the San Gabriel Valley do not wear the masks, those who do wear them — whether as protection against illnesses or pollution — are almost always of Asian descent. That can provoke misunderstanding and prejudice.

“Asking why people wear face masks… it’s a little bit like asking why do people wear hats in the U.S.,” said Emma Teng, a professor of Asian Civilizations at MIT.

Across the Pacific, masks have been worn for everything from disease control to anonymity during pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Teng said.

She said masks to protect against illness in Asia may have first emerged in Japan during the influenza pandemic in 1918 that lasted two years and claimed 50 million lives worldwide.

In more recent years, masks in Japan have served as a compromise for employees who didn’t want to miss work — or infect colleagues.

“I find it interesting that a lot of American people find it so strange,” Teng said. “Like for us, you’re sick and you wouldn’t blow your nose into a tissue and leave it on top of someone’s desk. This is just a courtesy.”

Still, Teng said she is selective about where she wears surgical masks. During a recent trip to Taiwan, she wore one, particularly while taking public transportation. But in the U.S., including at her job at MIT, she often refrains from wearing a mask.

“I believe it would make the students very nervous if they saw their teacher wearing a face mask,” Teng said. “So, I think there are some deep cultural differences.”

In the San Gabriel Valley, Latinos and Asians often work in the same places. Many of the Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants that line streets such as Valley Boulevard and Garvey Avenue have kitchens manned by Latino immigrants. And yet it’s exceedingly rare to see a Latino, or non-Asian, wearing a surgical mask.

News about the coronavirus also doesn’t dominate Spanish-language media the way it does Chinese-language media.

“I think there is a panic too, especially within the Chinese community,” said Karina Hernandez, 25, as she shopped at Superior market with her three-year-old daughter Caroline. She added: “There needs to be more information out there because I’m not hearing anything.”

Many Latino residents interviewed by The Times described the virus as “distant” and “nothing to be worried about,” while some expressed skepticism.

“I heard the word ‘contagious’ with the virus and if I hear it gets bad here, then I’ll do it,” said Elizabeth Robles, 26, of El Monte, of wearing a mask. “But, I haven’t seen anything here yet.”

As he shopped at Superior market, 23-year-old Van Yin said he didn’t understand why some non-Asians were taken aback by the wearing of masks. Yin did not wear one, but he said he understood why many people did.

“If you live in the San Gabriel Valley, you’re just going to see a lot of masks,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.” What worried Yin was that social media might be stoking fears of coronavirus to unnecessary levels.

“A lot of the news has been blown out of proportion and it’s scared a lot of people,” he said.

At Saturday’s San Gabriel Valley Lunar festival, a smaller-than-normal crowd showed up. Most people, regardless of their background, did not wear masks.

Gabrielino High School junior Kevin He said he felt totally comfortable chatting with hundreds of people as an information booth volunteer without wearing a mask. Not that the 16-year-old begrudged anyone wearing the facial covering.

“I’m not going to criticize those who wear masks because they’re just trying to stay safe and healthy and not spread anything,” he said. “I don’t think enough people understand that.”

Outside the San Gabriel Mission after evening mass, 73-year-old Dora Oros of Alhambra said she was both confused and intrigued by the masks.

“I see people wearing them, but I don’t know what that means,” she said. “I don’t know if that means they’re sick or they’re trying to prevent others from getting sick.”

Oros said she considered purchasing a mask, but was told by her daughter that the nearest Rite Aid had been sold out for weeks.

“I guess I’ll just wait,” she said with resignation. “I haven’t seen anyone I know getting sick yet, so I won’t worry.”

As the scientific community scrambles to find a drug that can effectively treat patients sickened by the new coronavirus from China, doctors are trying some surprising remedies: medicines targeting known killers such as HIV, Ebola and malaria.

The respiratory disease, now known as COVID-19, has afflicted tens of thousands of people worldwide and killed more than 1,300. Yet “everyone agrees we don’t have a standard therapy for the novel coronavirus,” said Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, a professor of medicine at Harvard University.

Among the potential treatments is an HIV medication that may work to block an enzyme the virus needs to mature.

An unapproved medicine used to fight the Ebola virus is being tested in Chinese patients to see whether it can disrupt the new virus’ genetic material.

And a third drug, widely used around the globe to fight the parasite that causes malaria, is also being tried in China to see if it can slow infection by preventing the virus from infiltrating cells.

The evidence behind some of these medicines is flimsy, researchers acknowledged. But the strategy is not unprecedented.

An outbreak of a new, potentially deadly disease can make physicians want to try everything possible to save their patients, said Dr. Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa.

“It’s just so hard when you’re on the front line and your patient is sick and you want to do something,” Perlman said.

Medications available in the United States have already gone through rigorous testing to prove they are not dangerous, eliminating the need to run costly human trials to assess safety in an emergency.

That said, officials generally look at the evidence surrounding the drugs and the virus to try to find a viable option.

“They usually cast a pretty wide net because they don’t know for any given virus what’s gonna work,” said Gandhi, the chair-elect of the HIV Medicine Assn.

In 2003, another coronavirus with no known treatment caused a global outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. The response involved testing a litany of drugs, including a combination of ritonavir and lopinavir, two antiretroviral medications used to fight HIV.

Early studies hinted that the medicines were effective in fighting the virus in patients. The combination, known by the brand name Kaletra, appears to work to stop enzymes called proteases from allowing the virus to mature and replicate. But the SARS outbreak — and the ability to robustly test treatments — all but disappeared in a little over a year.

Nine years later, another coronavirus caused Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. That outbreak gave scientists another chance to test the HIV medication against this family of viruses, and a clinical trial is underway in Saudi Arabia.

Chinese doctors are now using Kaletra against COVID-19.

A more unorthodox remedy being tested against the coronavirus in China is chloroquine.

The drug is intended to treat malaria, a condition caused by a parasite transmitted through a mosquito bite. A limited number of studies suggest the drug can work against SARS. In laboratory tests, it kept COVID-19 from spreading by blocking its method of infecting cells, according to a report last week in the journal Cell Research.

Scientists treating coronavirus patients are pairing treatment with research to test the effectiveness of one unapproved drug: remdesivir. Made by Gilead Sciences, the broad-spectrum medication has been used in experiments to combat the Ebola virus, and tests in animals suggest it helps keep the SARS and MERS coronaviruses from replicating. But it is not yet clear if it will work against this new virus.

The lack of certainty surrounding treatment for coronaviruses is partly due to the boom-and-bust nature of outbreaks — they can spread like wildfire and then disappear, Gandhi said. Although that is good for the public’s health, it also means scientists sometimes don’t have the time or the means to thoroughly test a treatment in humans.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that research on the coronavirus causing the COVID-19 outbreak must not be “an afterthought. Because we don’t know how long some of these new emerging infections will persist.”

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The ramp-up in research and investments into outbreaks can wreak havoc on private drug companies, especially if the virus disappears at some point, as SARS did, said Dr. Jesse Goodman, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The federal government helps offset these costs through initiatives such as the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which helps public-private partnerships develop drugs against public health threats.

Because of the volatility in outbreaks, “it becomes very daunting for companies to actually justify those investments” in targeted therapeutics, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore.

Goodman said one of the lessons learned from previous outbreaks is the need to invest more in the infrastructure required to conduct clinical trials.

Human trials are essential to understanding how a drug will work against a new virus, Perlman said. Even if a drug has been approved for use for another disease, doctors still have to guess about important questions, like how big the dosage should be, he added.

Looking ahead, the World Health Organization is trying to equip countries with the means to quickly begin researching a disease in the event of an outbreak.

“The time to prepare for clinical studies is not in the middle of an outbreak,” said Goodman, a former chief scientist for the Food and Drug Administration. “It’s beforehand.”

BEIJING — 

More than 1,700 Chinese medical workers have been infected by the new virus that has killed nearly 1,400 people and spread to other parts of Asia and as far as the U.S. and Europe, a senior Chinese official announced Friday.

Six of the workers have died, Zeng Yixin, vice director of the National Health Commission, said at a news conference.

The health commission is “highly concerned about this issue” and has issued guidelines for the prevention and control of infection within medical institutions, he said.

Medical workers account for about 3.8% of confirmed cases as of three days ago, Zeng said.

The commission also reported another sizable rise in the number of infections as a result of a new way of counting adopted by Hubei province, the hardest-hit area.

Confirmed cases in mainland China rose to 63,851 by the end of Thursday, up 5,090 from the previous day. The death toll rose 121 to 1,380.

Hubei province is now including cases based on a physician’s diagnosis before they have been confirmed by lab tests. Of the 5,090 new cases, 3,095 fell into that category.

The acceleration in the number of cases does not necessarily represent a sudden surge in new infections of the virus that causes COVID-19 as much as the revised methodology.

The health commission has said that the change was aimed at identifying suspected cases so they can be treated more quickly, though experts also saw it as a reflection of the crush of people seeking treatment and the struggle to keep up with a backlog of untested samples in Hubei and its capital, Wuhan, where the disease first surfaced in December.

In Taiwan, about 100 family members of people stuck in Hubei province protested outside Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council headquarters in the capital, Taipei.

About 1,000 Taiwanese hoping to fly home on charter flights have sparked a dispute between their government and China.

One flight brought 247 people back on Feb. 4. Three were not on a passenger list that Taiwan gave to Chinese authorities and one tested positive for the virus, Taiwan’s Central News Agency has reported.

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Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council wants China to step up quarantine work and reach agreements with Taiwan on the names of people on priority lists for flights.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office accused Taiwan on Wednesday of “using all kinds of excuses to obstruct and delay” flights. China sees self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory rather than an independent state.

“We don’t want to politicize it, we want charter flights,” said protester Chung Chin-ming, chairman of the Chinese Cross-Strait Marriage Coordination Assn. in Taipei.

Elsewhere, Japan confirmed seven more cases, a day after it reported its first death from the virus. Japan now has 258 confirmed cases, including 218 from a cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, that has been quarantined in Yokohama.

Health officials allowed 11 elderly passengers to leave the ship on Friday after they tested negative for the virus. They are the first group of dozens of older passengers expected to get off the vessel before their 14-day quarantine period ends on Wednesday to reduce risks of their health deteriorating.

Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato on Thursday said passengers age 80 or older with chronic health issues or in cabins without windows that can open will be able to leave the ship if they pass the virus test.

More than 580 cases have been confirmed outside mainland China and three deaths, one each in the Philippines and Hong Kong and now a Japanese woman in her 80s. Health officials are investigating how she got infected.

In an unprecedented attempt to contain the disease, the Chinese government has placed the hardest-hit cities — home to more than 60 million — under lockdown. People are restricted from entering or leaving the cities, and in many places can only leave their homes or residential complexes for shopping and other daily needs.

NEW DELHI — 

Six months after India’s government stripped restive Kashmir of its semi-autonomy and enforced a total communications blackout, it is heralding the restoration of limited, slow-speed internet as a step toward normalcy.

But for the Himalayan region’s 7 million people, the reality is far different. They are only allowed to access government-approved websites. Popular social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter remain blocked. And while users can access YouTube and Netflix, the internet service is too slow to stream video.

Some Kashmiris are evading censors by using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which are widely employed globally to access restricted websites, but Indian authorities are looking for ways to clamp down on those too.

“Frankly, let’s call it what it is: It’s still an internet shutdown and a blanket censorship of the internet,” said Nikhil Pahwa, a New Delhi-based digital rights activist. “Can you imagine this being done to Delhi?”

The portion of the divided Kashmir region that India controls was already one of the most militarized places in the world before the government scrapped its semi-autonomy and statehood last summer, began pouring in more troops and imposed harsh curbs on civil rights and information, including a blackout on the internet, cellphones, landlines and cable TV.

The government said it was necessary to ban the internet to head off anti-India protests by rebels who have fought for decades for independence or unification with Pakistan, which administers the other part of Muslim-majority Kashmir. Both countries claim the Himalayan region in its entirety.

Digital experts say the internet controls are particularly severe.

“The internet clampdown in Kashmir is far worse censorship than anywhere in the world. It even surpasses China’s,” said Pranesh Prakash, an affiliated fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. “It is a step toward demolishing democracy in India.”

Since the internet ban was partially lifted on Jan. 25, some Kashmiris have shared access to banned sites through VPNs with neighbors and friends and taken to the web to denounce the government’s actions in the region.

“They made us silent for six months. Now they’ve opened a window,” said Shoaib Rassol, a student. “We’ll tell the world what India has done to us.”

Internet shutdowns are a favored tactic for the government of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During protests in New Delhi against a citizenship law passed late last year that fast-tracks naturalization for immigrants of all South Asia’s major religions except Islam, internet and cell service were frequently disrupted.

Since Modi came into power in 2014, the internet has been suspended more than 365 times in India, according to the global digital rights group Access Now.

In January, government official Shaleen Kabra said terror groups operating in the region and anti-national elements were using the internet to “propagate terrorism” and spread rumors to “cause disaffection and discontent.”

Recently, internet service was suspended in areas of New Delhi, in the eastern state of West Bengal, the northern city of Aligarh and the entire state of Assam during protests after the contentious citizenship law was passed in Parliament.

In Kashmir, internet bans have been more frequent. More than a third of India’s internet bans of the last six years have been imposed there, some lasting months.

In 2017, Indian authorities blocked 22 social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, and cut 3G and 4G mobile data services for one month in the region in an effort to calm tensions after protests fueled by videos depicting the alleged abuse of Kashmiris by Indian forces.

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United Nations experts at the time said the ban had “the character of collective punishment.”

On Wednesday, four U.S. senators wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, expressing concern about the curbs on the internet in Kashmir and calling for its full restoration. President Trump is to visit India later this month.

For Kashmiris, the internet shutdowns are more than an inconvenience. They have a grave human cost.

During the service blackouts, critically ill patients can’t access government healthcare or seek insurance reimbursements online, students can’t apply for fellowships or take competitive exams and distraught families can’t connect to relatives outside the region.

A successful telemedicine consultancy operated by a group of Kashmiri doctors who shared thousands of patients’ medical reports with a pool of doctors in the U.S. and Europe for their opinions on treatment had to close down.

The internet lockdown also hurt Kashmir’s economy as tens of thousands of artisans became jobless when their handicrafts couldn’t be sold online. Local tech companies had to close or relocate to other areas of India, suffering heavy losses.

As Kashmiris rush back online, authorities have instructed commercial broadband operators to block VPNs.

One official of state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., the leading broadband service provider in Kashmir, said it’s proving difficult because of the proliferation of new digital workarounds.

“We’ve little expertise to keep track of countless applications added to the digital world every day,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media. He said authorities have privately said they won’t restore regular internet broadband service until VPNs can be blocked. Officials at the region’s police, home and telecommunications departments said they wouldn’t comment.

In a government order on Jan. 31, Kabra said authorities reviewing internet activity after the blackout was partially lifted found VPNs were being used “for coordination of terror acts, transmission of rumors and targeted messages to spread ideologies inimical to the interest of the state.”

Analysts say the clampdown could spearhead a new level of government control over information, allowing it to crack down on freedoms in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.

“Given that this is a norm that has been established: that it is legal for the state to ask internet service providers to start filtering out most of the internet, nothing stops the government of India from doing something similar. There’s no accountability, no transparency,” said Pahwa, the digital rights activist.

Il y a un mois, on apprenait que Jean-Michel Apathie quittait RTL pour Europe 1. Aujourd’hui nos confrères de Puremedias révèlent que l’ancien pilier du Grand Journal de Canal + interviendra comme éditorialiste politique sur BFM TV à partir de la rentrée prochaine.

«Apathie est bien meilleur intervieweur que Mazerolle!”. C’est ce que déclarait il y a quelques jours Jean-Jacques Bourdin alors qu’il était interrogé par les Grandes Gueules sur RMC. La star de la radio du groupe Next Radio TV peut donc se réjouir puisque le journaliste politique sera bientôt l’un de ses collègues.

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L’ancien chroniqueur du Grand Journal de Canal +interviendra comme éditorialiste politique sur BFM TV à partir de la rentrée prochaine selon les informations de Puremedias corroborées par son nouvel employeur. Après neuf ans sur Canal +, Jean-Michel Apathie, 56 ans, commencera sur BFM TV la semaine du 24 août.

Après avoir mené pendant douze ans l’interview politique du matin sur RTL, le journaliste qui a conservé l’accent de son Pays basque natal, coanimera (avec Maxime Switek) par ailleurs Europe 1 Midi à partir de septembre.La rentrée s’annonce donc mouvementée pour lui à moins de deux ans de la présidentielle 2017.

Crédits photos : NO CREDIT

En couverture de la version américaine de Marie-Claire pour le mois d’août, Amanda Seyfried se confie sur son profond désir de maternité.

Passé un certain âge, de nombreuses femmes sont confrontées à leur horloge biologique et se découvrent de profondes aspirations à la maternité. Sujet récurrent et source d’anxiété pour beaucoup lorsque bébé tarde à venir, qui n’épargne pas les stars. Amanda Seyfried voit la trentaine approcher et le tic-tac utérin s’accélérer.

Il y a quelque temps dans le magazine Vogue, elle avait expliqué vouloir s’installer dans sa ferme de Stone Ridge pour pouvoir y élever des enfants. Ce mois-ci, c’est dans le Marie-Claire américain et sans détour qu’elle évoque son pressant désir de maternité. “Je veux vraiment des enfants. Je veux être mère. C’est ce que je ressens, depuis deux ans déjà.”

D’un naturel anxieux au point de suivre une thérapie pour gérer ses angoisses, cette volonté pour l’instant contrariée l’inquiète terriblement. “J’ai l’impression que mes ovules meurent les uns après les autres” lâche-t-elle soucieuse. Pourtant, à 29 ans, Amanda Seyfried a encore de belles années devant elle avant que son corps ne mette un frein à ses ambitions familiales. En couple depuis deux ans avec l’acteur Justin Long, 37 ans, dans une situation financière sans aucun doute suffisante pour accueillir un enfant, la jeune femme est dans de bonnes conditions pour satisfaire ses projets.

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A moins que son compagnon ne se sente pas prêt: “Je ne suis pas prête, mais personne ne l’est. Un bébé, ça change tout, alors comment être prêt pour ça?”

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Près d’un an après avoir sorti son dernier album Les Feux d’artifice, Calogero vient de dévoiler le clip de l’une de ses dernières chansons. Dans J’ai le droit aussi, le chanteur dresse le portrait d’un adolescent homosexuel tiraillé entre son désir de vivre librement sa vie et l’appréhension de la réaction des gens qui l’entourent.

“Que dira mon père? J’en ai marre de faire semblant. Que dira ma mère? M’aimera-t-elle toujours autant?,” se demande Calogero. A la sortie de son album, le chanteur expliquait qu’il avait voulu tenter d’expliquer le mal être que ressentent de nombreux jeunes homosexuels. Il se confiait sur ce choix dans les pages du Parisien l’an dernier: “ L’âge fait que je me sens plus fort pour aborder ce genre de chose. J’ai voulu me mettre dans la peau d’un homosexuel après avoir vu un documentaire où des gays se faisaient tabasser en Russie. Je n’aurais pas pu le faire à 30 ans.”

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Visiblement marqué par cette chanson qui lui tient à cœur, le chanteur français a décidé un an plus tard de mettre en images sa musique. C’est à Benoît Pétré, réalisateur de long-métrage Thelma Louise et Chantal que Calogero a confié la réalisation de son clip. Il met en scène un jeune homme homosexuel qui s’imagine vivre une vie normale loin du regard réprobateur des autres. “Je ne voulais pas raconter un coming-out ou la vie d’un jeune homosexuel qui se ferait humilier et malmener au lycée. C’est souvent le cas quand l’homosexualité est traitée à l’image (…) Je voulais mettre en images la vie amoureuse de deux garçons qui soit joyeuse, gaie et simple”, explique le réalisateur au magazine Têtu.

Ce n’est pas la première fois que le chanteur traite de sujets de société brûlants. Il a notamment écrit une chanson intitulée Un jour au mauvais endroit, assortie d’un clip relatant un fait divers qui avait touché le chanteur. Calogero a tout l’air d’un artiste engagé et pourtant il refuse un tel qualificatif: “Je ne suis pas un chanteur politique,” avait-il lancé au Parisien.