Destination: Asia
Fortune Cookies Exposed: Turns Out, They’re Japanese
by Julia Ross | 01.16.08 | 4:33 PM ET
I’ve always considered fortune cookies to be a prime example of Chinese-American entrepreneurship, developed by early 20th century immigrants to draw Americans into chop suey houses in the San Francisco area. Or so went popular history. Now a fascinating New York Times article has blown the fortune cookie’s cover: A Japanese graduate student has traced the tradition to several family bakeries outside Kyoto, Japan, where they have been tucking paper fortunes into crimped brown wafers since the 1870s.
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Yahoo! BuzzThe (Full Moon) Party’s Over
by Peter Delevett | 01.16.08 | 11:12 AM ET
Photo by Peter Delevett. Peter Delevett visited Thailand's Koh Phangan with his girlfriend in 1994, discovering a boho backpacker Eden. He recently returned -- older, married and with a mortgage -- just in time for the island's signature bash.
R.I.P. Sir Edmund Hillary
by Jim Benning | 01.10.08 | 5:26 PM ET
Sir Edmund Hillary has died at the age of 88. He was the first climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest, along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, and he went on to devote much of his life to exploration and humanitarian work in Nepal. In a 1998 profile of Hillary for Salon.com, Don George placed Hillary in the pantheon of great adventurers:
In Burma, the Revolution Will Be…Text-Messaged?
by Jim Benning | 01.08.08 | 9:31 AM ET
Turns out that jailing all those protesters in Burma (Myanmar) last year may not have been the best way to keep them down, at least in the long term. “There seemed little chance of getting organized until more than 2,000 protesters, arrested and jammed into crowded jail cells, met one another and overcame their distrust,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Now, most of them are on the streets again, carefully building a network for what they call a new revolution. Their digital tools are e-mail and text messages, which are more powerful than a megaphone, and cellphone cameras that are so common that thousands of people are potential journalists.” It sounds encouraging, but only time will tell, of course.
Related on World Hum:
* Can Your Panties Help Save Burma?
* The State of the Burma Travel Debate
Photo: Breathing Fire in Kashmir
by Jim Benning | 01.03.08 | 11:23 AM ET
Good times in Kashmir: A Sikh warrior performs at a festival in Jammu. His fireball looks better than those I’ve seen during my travels in Mexico, where street performers wander into intersections, inhale from gasoline-soaked rags and blow fire at passing cars. I imagine it’s all in the wrist.
Related on World Hum:
* ‘Beatles’ Ashram’ in India to Become Eco-Hotel, School
* Mumbai Plans Museum for Rudyard Kipling
Travel Warnings for Pakistan
by Jim Benning | 12.28.07 | 12:54 PM ET
Not surprisingly, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and ensuing violence and unrest have prompted new travel warnings for Pakistan.
The State of the Burma Travel Debate
by Michael Yessis | 12.26.07 | 2:37 PM ET
It’s been three months since the military junta in Burma cracked down on protesting monks, and the debate about how travelers should respond still rages. In the January issue of Conde Nast Traveler, Susan Hack highlights the latest arguments about whether to go or not to go.
Related on World Hum:
* Invisible Burma
* Can Your Panties Help Save Burma?
Uncensored ‘Lust, Caution’ Spurs Moviegoer Tourism in Hong Kong
by Michael Yessis | 12.21.07 | 12:17 PM ET
When Tourism Meets Nationalism
by Joanna Kakissis | 12.20.07 | 2:49 PM ET
It has in a big way in Yan’an, the prefecture in northwestern China that was the center of the Chinese communist revolution from 1935 to 1948. Mao Zedong and other communist leaders lived in caves and pagodas carved into the hillside, and Chinese communists celebrate it as the birthplace of the revolution. And as China has grown into a world power, its leaders are trying to boost national pride through “red tourism” that celebrates communist touchstones such as Yan’an, according to NPR. Of course, Mao’s pagodas are an obvious choice to muscle up nationalism: Today Chinese visitors from other regions visit Yan’an so they can dress up as revolutionaries and sing the communist ditty “The East is Red” with performers wearing traditional peasant clothes.
‘Beatles’ Ashram’ in India to Become Eco-Hotel, School
by Michael Yessis | 12.19.07 | 10:32 AM ET
Travelers have been making pilgrimages to Rishikesh, India to visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram, aka the “Beatles’ ashram,” ever since the Fab Four landed there in the late ‘60s to study Transcendental Meditation and write some songs, including “Revolution” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Soon, though, the rundown 15-acre campus may become a home and school for street children, as well as a 10-room “eco hotel” where visitors “could volunteer to work with the children or simply relax in the same ashram where John Lennon searched for the meaning of life and George Harrison worked to perfect his sitar playing,” according to the Washington Post.
Spit-Free Trains in China? Say It Ain’t So.
by Julia Ross | 12.19.07 | 10:07 AM ET
Last week, National Public Radio correspondent Rob Gifford filed a series of reports from China’s Yellow River, examining the region’s sobering environmental challenges. I was a big fan of Gifford’s China Road series, which aired on NPR in 2004 and later became a book, so I was happy to follow his recent travels. But it was the Reporter’s Notebook item Gifford posted on NPR’s web site that really got my attention, for one shocking revelation: He claims that the Chinese trains he rode while reporting the latest series were clean and spit-free.
Gadling Goes to North Korea
by Jim Benning | 12.13.07 | 12:13 PM ET
Gadling blogger Neil Woodburn has been posting some interesting pieces about his recent trip to North Korea. My favorite so far: The Sexy Traffic Girls of Pyongyang. Turns out there are no traffic signals in the capital. Hence, the “traffic girls.”
America, China Agree to Allow More Chinese Travelers Into U.S.
by Michael Yessis | 12.12.07 | 4:41 AM ET
Officials from the two countries signed a pact yesterday that will welcome up to 250,000 more Chinese travelers into the U.S. by 2011 and open the country to group tours. Previously, Chinese travelers were only permitted into the U.S. for business, government or educational reasons, writes USA Today’s Barbara De Lollis. The pact, which takes effect in spring 2008, also allows U.S. destinations to market themselves in China for the first time.
It’s Official: China Bans Lonely Planet Guidebook
by Julia Ross | 12.11.07 | 9:13 AM ET
Having recently lived in Taiwan, I’ve been watching with dismay as tensions across the Taiwan Strait have heated up over issues as varied as the Olympic torch route and Taiwan’s plan to hold a referendum on United Nations membership early next year. Now comes word that Lonely Planet has been ensnared in the China-Taiwan standoff. A story in The Age carries the first public confirmation from the Chinese government of rumors that have been swirling for years: that China has banned LP’s China guidebook over a map marking Taiwan and China in different colors, making them appear as separate countries.
Trekker in Nepal Beaten by Former Rebels
by Jim Benning | 12.10.07 | 12:56 PM ET
As the autumn trekking season winds down in Nepal, a Swiss man hiking near Annapurna says he was beaten by Maoists when he refused to give them money. And we thought they simply wanted “donations.”