People & Places | Asia Pacific | Smithsonian.com

The Mooncake: A Treat, a Bribe or a Tradition Whose Time Has Passed?

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 03:10:14 GMT

Sienna Parulis-Cook had been living in China for nine months when, in the summer of 2007, she found herself in the belly of the country’s $1.42 billion mooncake industry. A Chinese bakery chain had hired the 22-year-old American to market their contemporary take on the traditional palm-sized pastry that’s widely popular in China. Soon Parulis-Cook was hawking mooncakes door-to-door at Beijing restaurants, and advertising them to multinational corporations that were keen to delight their Chinese employees. “It opened up a whole new world of mooncakes,” said Parulis-Cook from Beijing. Growing up in Vermont, Parulis-Cook had read tales of mooncake that made the palm

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's Revolutionary Leader

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 05:03:03 GMT

On a steamy evening at the beginning of the rainy season, a crowd of 10,000 packs the street outside the National League for Democracy headquarters in downtown Yangon. Volunteers pass out bottled water in the oppressive heat, while a Burmese vaudeville team performs folk dances on a red carpet. This headquarters, a crucible of opposition to Myanmar’s military junta until it was forced to shut down nearly a decade ago, is about to reopen in a lavish ceremony. At 6 p.m., a white sport utility vehicle pulls up, and Aung San Suu Kyi emerges to a jubilant roar. “Amay Suu”—Mother Suu—chant thousands in the throng. Radiant in an indigo dress, white roses in her hair,

Kok-Boru, the Horse Game You Won’t See at the Olympics

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 04:30:30 GMT

Five autumns ago, on a quiet Monday afternoon in Barskoon, a village on the shores of Issyk Kul Lake in eastern Kyrgyzstan, Ishen Obolbekov was lounging in his backyard yurt when he heard what sounded like the clackety clack of horse hooves smacking asphalt. The noise appeared to grow louder. Obolbekov, who is six feet tall and cuts an urbane figure, walked outside and saw the snow-capped Ala-Too Mountains that tower above his village. Then he watched as about a dozen horse-mounted teenage boys stormed his front yard and presented him with a headless goat. They didn’t need to explain. Obolbekov, 49, co-owns a horse-trekking company and hails from a family of shepherds. He knew the

A Fabulous New Luxury Hotel—In North Korea?

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

“Luxury” is not the first word that comes to mind when describing North Korea. But the April 15 centennial birthday celebration of “Eternal Leader” Kim Il-sung is scheduled to include the opening of the tallest and swankiest building in Pyongyang: the Ryugyong Hotel. Official descriptions of the 1,080-foot-high edifice promise 3,000 suites, business facilities, an observation deck and revolving restaurants. Ryugyong translates as “Capital of Willows,” but wags have dubbed it the “Hotel of Doom.” The unsightly pyramidal structure has invited comparisons to an evil castle or an earth-bound Death Star. In earlier years, pundits also called

Inside the ER at Mt. Everest

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 04:44:58 GMT

A middle-aged woman squats motionless on the side of the trail, sheltering her head from the falling snow with a tattered grain sack. Luanne Freer, an emergency room doctor from Bozeman, Montana, whose athletic build and energetic demeanor belie her 53 years, sets down her backpack and places her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Sanche cha?” she asks. Are you OK? The woman motions to her head, then her belly and points up-valley. Ashish Lohani, a Nepali doctor studying high-altitude medicine, translates. “She has a terrible headache and is feeling nauseous,” he says. The woman, from the Rai lowlands south of the Khumbu Valley, was herding her yaks on the popu

The Timeless Wisdom of Kenko

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Around the year 1330, a poet and Buddhist monk named Kenko wrote Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa)—an eccentric, sedate and gemlike assemblage of his thoughts on life, death, weather, manners, aesthetics, nature, drinking, conversational bores, sex, house design, the beauties of understatement and imperfection. For a monk, Kenko was remarkably worldly; for a former imperial courtier, he was unusually spiritual. He was a fatalist and a crank. He articulated the Japanese aesthetic of beauty as something inherently impermanent—an aesthetic that acquires almost unbearable pertinence at moments when an earthquake and tsunami may shatter existing arrangements. Kenko yearned for a

Myanmar's Young Artists and Activists

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Editor's Note, April 3, 2012: The election of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi—the face of her nation’s pro-democracy movement—to Parliament opens a dramatic new chapter in Burma’s journey from oppressive military rule. Her supporters, from young artists seeking freedom of expression, to a generation of activists long committed to the struggle against the ruling generals—believe that a sea change is overtaking their society. We wrote about her supporters in March 2011. The New Zero Gallery and Art Studio looks out over a scruffy street of coconut palms, noodle stalls and cybercafés in Yangon (Rangoon), the capital of Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country for

Catching the Bamboo Train

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

We were a few miles from the nearest village when we ran out of gas. The motor, a small thing perched on the back of a queen-size bamboo platform, spat out a few tubercular-sounding coughs and gave up. There were three of us riding this Frankenstein’s pump trolley, known in Cambodia as a norry, including my interpreter and the conductor, a short, elderly man with sunbaked skin and the permanent squint of failing eyesight. The morning was wretchedly hot, and in addition to a long-sleeved shirt and pants to block the sun, I wore a hat on my head and a scarf around my face. One could stay dry when moving along, the oncoming air acting like a mighty fan. But as the norry rolled to a slow

Shanghai’s European Suburbs

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:15:11 GMT

Chinese urban planners are building new towns with a foreign flair, each mimicking architecture from Europe’s storied cities

The Fatal Consequences of Counterfeit Drugs

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

In Battambang, Cambodia, a western province full of poor farmers barely managing to grow enough rice to live on, the top government official charged with fighting malaria is Ouk Vichea. His job—contending with as many as 10,000 malaria cases a year in an area twice as large as Delaware—is made even more challenging by ruthless, increasingly sophisticated criminals, whose handiwork Ouk Vichea was about to demonstrate. Standing in his cluttered lab only a few paces wide in the provincial capital, also called Battambang, he held up a small plastic bag containing two identical blister packs labeled artesunate, a powerful antimalarial. One was authentic. The other? "It's 100 p

The Legends Behind the Dragon Boat Festival

Fri, 15 May 2009 06:56:39 GMT

There are many competing explanations for Duanwu Jie, the Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar—this year, May 28. All involve some combination of dragons, spirits, loyalty, honor and food—some of the most important traditions in Chinese culture. The festival’s main elements—now popular the world over—are racing long, narrow wooden boats decorated with dragons and eating sticky-rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves, called zongzi in Mandarin, and jung in Cantonese. “Usually Chinese festivals are explained by the traumatic death of some great paragon of virtue,” says Andrew Chittick, a pro

One Woman's Journey to Save Child Slaves

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:10:11 GMT

Jared Greenberg didn't expect Somaly Mam to meet him at the airport in Phnom Penh. After all, she was an award-winning human rights activist, the head of a multinational organization. He was an idealistic college graduate who'd foolishly promised to raise her a million dollars the week before. "I was so moved that she was there," he says, remembering that first meeting. "Right away, she started talking about trafficking." Born in northeastern Cambodia—she's not sure exactly which year—Mam's life story offers bleak insight into the ravages of poverty. She grew up in a forest village near the Vietnamese border. At 14 she was married to a soldier who abused h

Pakistan's Sufis Preach Faith and Ecstasy

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

In the desert swelter of southern Pakistan, the scent of rosewater mixed with a waft of hashish smoke. Drummers pounded away as celebrants swathed in red pushed a camel bedecked with garlands, tinsel and multihued scarfs through the heaving crowd. A man skirted past, grinning and dancing, his face glistening like the golden dome of a shrine nearby. "Mast Qalandar!" he cried. "The ecstasy of Qalandar!" The camel reached a courtyard packed with hundreds of men jumping in place with their hands in the air, chanting "Qalandar!" for the saint buried inside the shrine. The men threw rose petals at a dozen women who danced in what seemed like a mosh pit near th

One Man's Korean War

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

On the June morning in 1950 when war broke out in Korea, John Rich was ensconced in what he calls a "correspondents villa" in coastal Japan, anticipating a long soak in a wooden tub with steam curling off the surface and a fire underneath. Rich's editor at the International News Service had other plans. "Get your fanny back to Tokyo!" he bellowed over the phone. Days later, the 32-year-old reporter was on a landing ship loaded with artillery and bound for Pusan, Korea. Along with notebooks and summer clothes, Rich carried some Kodachrome film and his new camera, a keepsake from a recent field trip to a Japanese lens factory led by the Life magazine photographer David D

The Great Wall of China Is Under Siege

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:31:39 GMT

The Great Wall of China snakes along a ridge in front of me, its towers and ramparts creating a panorama that could have been lifted from a Ming dynasty scroll. I should be enjoying the view, but I'm focused instead on the feet of my guide, Sun Zhenyuan. Clambering behind him across the rocks, I can't help but marvel at his footwear. He is wearing cloth slippers with wafer-thin rubber soles, better suited to tai chi than a trek along a mountainous section of the wall. Sun, a 59-year-old farmer turned preservationist, is conducting a daily reconnaissance along a crumbling 16th-century stretch of the wall overlooking his home, Dongjiakou village, in eastern Hebei Province. We stand nearly 4

A Yankee in China

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:41:02 GMT

In 1990, William Lindesay, a British authority on the Great Wall, Beijing, happened upon a copy of The Great Wall of China, a travelogue by William Edgar Geil—very likely the first individual, Chinese included—to traverse the entire Great Wall of China, at the turn of the century . Lindesay himself is the author of Alone on the Great Wall, an account of on his own 1,500-mile excursion in 1987. Lindesay thumbed through the book, transfixed by the photographs, particularly one showing Geil near a tower on a remote section of the wall. Lindesay possessed his own photograph of that very site; however, by the time he arrived there in 1987, the tower visible in Geil's image had vanis

Year of the Rat

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:12:13 GMT

For billions of people, January 1—the traditional start of the New Year for those following the Gregorian calendar—is just a simple dress rehearsal. The fall of the Waterford crystal ball in Times Square, those earnest declarations of short-lived resolutions, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, for many, these are not the hallmarks of a new year. The real festivities begin when, according to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, the new moon makes its appearance in the night sky, marking the start of the Chinese New Year. China and many other East Asian countries like Vietnam, Korea and Mongolia will celebrate the lunar New Year on February 7. Chinese New Year, one of three, state-

Abigail Tucker on "One Man's Korean War"

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

What drew you to this story? John Rich is a distinguished journalist who couldn't seem to stop recording history, even in his spare time. His color pictures were meant to be personal keepsakes but they've become invaluable artifacts. His drive to ceaselessly report is impressive and very inspiring. Did you have a favorite moment while interviewing John Rich? John's memories of the war are impeccable and he has not lost the love of details that animated his radio and television broadcasts. It was great whenever he came up names or dates or even quotes from half a century ago. He could remember, for instance, the song the Scottish bagpipers played as they marched past him into battle. Were

David DeVoss on "Macau Hits the Jackpot"

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:00:00 GMT

David DeVoss is a journalist who spent more than a quarter century working for Time, The Los Angeles Times and Asia, Inc., a Hong Kong business magazine. He currently operates a print media company called the East-West News Service and the website US-China Travel News. What drew you to this story? Can you describe its genesis? I spent a lot of time in Macau during the late 1970s when I was a Time Magazine correspondent in Hong Kong. When Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn won Macau gaming concessions in 2003, I wrote a story for Asia, Inc. on how western investment could revitalize the crime-plagued city. One Sunday morning in December 2006 I opened the newspaper and read that Macau gaming re

Wonders and Whoppers

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 GMT

"I tell you," wrote Marco Polo, "that this palace is of... unmeasured wealth." Its roof is sheathed in gold "in such a way as we cover our house with lead." Even the floors are gold, "more indeed than two fingers thick. And all the other parts of the palace and the halls and windows are likewise adorned with gold." In this gilded domain, he declared, lived the ruler of an island kingdom called Cipangu (that is, Japan), whose waters yielded red pearls "very beautiful and round and large." Scholars believe Europeans had never heard of Cipangu before Polo told them about it in The Description of the World, which he started writing about 1298,

Thailand's Fight Club

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Saktaywan Boxing Gym resides on a narrow and quiet road in northern Bangkok. It is neighbored on one side by a small apartment complex and on the other side by a sewage canal. The gym is outdoors, and a rank odor lingered in the air when I first walked through its gates on a muggy afternoon in July. Three skinny, shirtless Thai boys punched and kicked invisible opponents inside a dusty boxing ring. A shaded area beside the ring housed gloves, shin guards, head protectors, four punching bags and free weights. Next to the equipment two more boys jumped rope, their bare feet bouncing in rhythm on the cracked concrete. As I watched them, Ajarn Sit, Saktaywan's 48-year-old head trainer, grabb

Swamp Ghosts

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:51:26 GMT

Papua New Guinea—or PNG as it's called, sometimes with affection, sometimes in exasperation—is the kind of place tourist brochures describe as "the land that time forgot." It would be just as accurate to call it "the land that forgot time." Schedules are not rigidly adhered to. In the capital, Port Moresby, young men with no visible means of support hang out along the roads and markets, giving the place a laid-back feel but making it dangerous at night. The topography of mountains and jungle, beautiful but almost impassable, renders national identity elusive. The six million-plus people—80 percent of whom live in remote villages—speak about 850 l

The Mystery of Easter Island

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 04:00:00 GMT

Hundreds of years ago, a small group of Polynesians rowed their wooden outrigger canoes across vast stretches of open sea, navigating by the evening stars and the day's ocean swells. When and why these people left their native land remains a mystery. But what is clear is that they made a small, uninhabited island with rolling hills and a lush carpet of palm trees their new home, eventually naming their 63 square miles of paradise Rapa Nui—now popularly known as Easter Island. On this outpost nearly 2,300 miles west of South America and 1,100 miles from the nearest island, the newcomers chiseled away at volcanic stone, carving moai, monolithic statues built to honor their ancestors.

A Prayer for the Ganges

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:43:06 GMT

A blue stream spews from beneath brick factory buildings in Kanpur, India. The dark ribbon curls down a dirt embankment and flows into the Ganges River. "That's toxic runoff," says Rakesh Jaiswal, a 48-year-old environmental activist, as he leads me along the refuse-strewn riverbank in the vise-like heat of a spring afternoon. We're walking through the tannery district, established along the Ganges during British colonial rule and now Kanpur's economic mainstay as well as its major polluter. I had expected to find a less-than-pristine stretch of river in this grimy metropolis of four million people, but I'm not prepared for the sights and smells that greet me. Jaiswal stares gri

Next Stop, Squalor

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

The Dharavi squatter settlement in Mumbai is often described as the biggest slum in Asia. It sits between two rail lines in the northern part of the city, on a creek that once sustained a thriving fishery. The creek is now a sump of sewage and industrial waste, and the air above Dharavi is foul. By one estimate, the slum is home to 10,000 small factories, almost all of them illegal and unregulated. The factories provide sustenance of a sort to the million or so people who are thought to live in Dharavi, which at 432 acres is barely half the size of New York City's Central Park. There is no discernible garbage pickup, and only one toilet for every 1,440 people. It is a vision of urban hell

Big Deals

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Nicholas Schmidle, who lives in Washington, D.C., spent nearly two years in Pakistan as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, which funds overseas writing fellowships. An article Schmidle published earlier this year in the New York Times Magazine about a resurgent Taliban got him in hot water with the authorities, and he left Pakistan precipitately. But the country nagged at him. "I just felt that mainstream Islam in Pakistan was so sorely overlooked," he says. It was mystical, peaceful Sufism, in particular, that held his attention. "While the Taliban were grabbing all the headlines and wielding the big guns, the Sufis had the numbers and represented the true