A 50-minute drive northwest of downtown, Beijing, a village pops up. It    1    (house) a shadow puppetry troupe (皮影戏剧团) and Beijing Long zaitian Shadow Puppet Theater.

Shadow puppetry is seen    2    the prequel (先行篇) to film and animation in China. Besides performances    3     (create) by light and shadow, performers must master a    4    (vary) skill set as the plays combine painting, carving, opera and literature. But due to low revenue and a small market, young people are unwilling     5    (learn) shadow puppetry.

    6    , this particular troupe stands out from the crowd. Average performer age is only 25. Moreover, of the 300 performers    7    has trained over the years, many are under 1.4 m in    8    (high). In 2021, the team created Winter Olympics-themed shadow pupets. The troupe also staged different plays    9    (introduce) ice and snow sports through fairy tales.

“    10    (fortunate), we have these people. They have been devoted to the inheritance of shadow puppetry for over a decade,”said Wang Xi, inheritor of Beijing Western School Shadow Puppetry.

American authorities arrested Masphal Kry, an official in Cambodia’s forestry administration, last November when he was heading to an international meeting about trade regulations for endangered species in Panama. Prosecutors accused him of conspiring with a smuggling ring. The contraband (违禁品): monkeys,     1     long-tailed macaques. His     2     allegedly grabbed wild macaques in Cambodia’s national parks and bribed officials to label them as captive-bred. Fake papers allowed Vanny Bio Research, a Cambodian pharma company, to ship these unfortunate primates (灵长类动物) to America for use in research. Mr Kry is facing trial in Florida’s Southern District Court. The federal government funds seven National Primate Research Centres (NPRCs), which     3     in total around 20,000 primates, not only macaques but also baboons and marmosets. These centres then     4     primates to labs across America. NPRCs have fulfilled only a third of requests for untested-on macaques in 2021 and prices have soared. Before the covid-19 pandemic a rhesus macaque cost $8,000; by 2022 they had     5     $24,000. Another species, long-tail macaques, is probably per pound currently the most expensive     6     wildlife, says Lisa Jones-Engel, a science adviser at PETA, an animal-rights group.

Getting lab monkeys from abroad became harder during the pandemic. Chinese authorities banned the export of all primates in early 2020. The Chinese government wanted to     7     the country’s wildlife trade, which is thought to encourage the     8     of pathogens—like sars-cov-2—from animals to humans.

That forced American companies to rely on less     9     South-East Asian suppliers. Many scientists believe poaching is prevalent across Cambodia. In February, the Department of Justice subpoenaed Charles River over 1,000 juvenile macaques the pharmaceutical company had bought from Cambodia; the DoJ suspected they were     10     in the wild then exported. These primates are now in Texas and Maryland but also in dilemma: they cannot be tested on, nor can they be flown back to Cambodia.