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You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing.
A Chinese actor has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for providing venues for drug use.
Thirty-nine-year-old Zhang Lin was found guilty of providing venues for three drug users, including actor Wang Xuebing, between 2010 and January this year.
Beijing Police arrested him on March 9 after finding methamphetamine and marijuana at his apartment in downtown Beijing.
Zhang, well known for his TV roles, was also fined 2,000 yuan, roughly 330 U.S. Dollars.
China has detained and sentenced a number of celebrities, including movie and television stars, on drug offenses this year.
In February, a Beijing court sentenced popular singer Yin Xiangjie to 7 months in prison for possession of drugs.
Jaycee Chan, son of kung fu star Jackie Chan, was arrested last August in Beijing along with noted Taiwan movie star Kai Ko, following the discovery of marijuana at Chan's residence.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
Chinese animated films have received some pretty harsh criticism at home over the past years. But one film has defied that trend. Chinese audiences have been stunned by the return on screens of the legend of classical novel Journey to the Westin the new movie Monkey King: Hero is Back.
The film has captured the nation's attention with its high visual quality and sincerity.
The fictional hero is back, and he has taken China's social media sphere by storm. People are flocking to cinemas to discover the new sensation, or even to re-watch it.
The box office takings for the new Monkey King movie have exceeded 50 million dollars, a new record for Chinese animated films.
The movie took director Tian Xiaopeng and his team eight years to make. With a budget of only about 10 million U.S. dollars, it has achieved a success similar to the Hollywood animated blockbusters.
China now has the largest animation industry in the world, with an output of 260,000 minutes every year. That is almost twice that of Japan, which comes in second place. And yet only a third of them make it to the screens.
