Jan 20th, 2012 at 12:00PM:
Chinese New Year occurs in the early months of our calendar year, typically January or February and this year falls on January 23rd. This is the first of 15 days of celebration and the start of the Year of the Dragon.
Chinese New Year (also called the Lunar New Year) is the longest and most important festivity in the Chinese calendar and a time to welcome longevity, wealth and prosperity ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
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10 places to celebrate Chinese New Year
Jan 20th, 2012 at 12:00PM:
Chinese New Year occurs in the early months of our calendar year, typically January or February and this year falls on January 23rd. This is the first of 15 days of celebration and the start of the Year of the Dragon.
Chinese New Year (also called the Lunar New Year) is the longest and most important festivity in the Chinese calendar and a time to welcome longevity, wealth and prosperity ...Photo of the Day: Singapore's unusual theme park
Jan 13th, 2012 at 5:30PM:
This fellow is from one of Singapore's more unusual attractions - the Haw Par Villa theme park, also called Tiger Balm Gardens. Originally built in the 1930s by the creators of Tiger Balm to showcase Chinese folklore and mythology, the park is known for its bizarre and gruesome Ten Courts of Hell with such creepy statues and dioramas as a human-faced crab and bloody dismembered torsos ...Review: Chinatown Chow Down iPhone app
May 19th, 2011 at 11:30AM: One of the best things about living in New York City is that you can experience the foods from all over the world without ever leaving town. And one of our favorite ways to do that is by heading to Chinatown. There's one problem with selecting a place to eat in Chinatown, however: how do you choose from the hundreds of restaurants? It's easy to be paralyzed by choice as you see block after block ...VIDEO: Chinese popcorn cannon
May 10th, 2011 at 1:30PM:
Don't have 5 minutes (cooking times may vary, wait until you hear 2-3 seconds between pops) to wait for microwave popcorn? Perhaps this Chinese popcorn cannon from the streets of Shanghai is fast enough for you - it just takes a few seconds, provided you have a serious pressure cooker. This ingenious contraption can also be used for puffed rice or other grains, though we wonder how clean the ...
Useful foreign phrases, Part 2: how to say, "Can you write this down for me?" in 10 languages
May 5th, 2011 at 1:00PM: A post written by Chris on Tuesday reminded me of this little language series I started in March. In "Ten things Ugly Americans need to know before visiting a foreign land," Chris recommended brushing up on the local language. He joked about dashing around Venice clutching his concierge's handwritten note, "Do you have 220/110 plug converters for this stupid American who left his at home?"
...Video of the Day: Yao Ming PSA about shark fin soup
May 2nd, 2011 at 6:30PM:
We recently covered the controversy over shark fin soup, so no need to rehash that. However, we were interested in this video staring Yao Ming, arguably the most famous - and popular - Chinese national in the world. In the ad, diners decline to eat shark fin soup after witnessing just how inhumane it is.
Yao, of course, is the dominant center on the NBA's Houston Rockets. That's when he's ...
Useful foreign phrases, Part 1: how to say, "I'm just looking" in 10 languages
Mar 24th, 2011 at 12:00PM: I've frequently pimped Lonely Planet's Phrasebooks on this site, but I swear I don't get kickbacks from the company. It's just that I'm a big believer in not being a). A Tourist (although, let's face it, if I'm not at home, I am indeed A Tourist) and b). helpless.
Even if you're the biggest xenophobe on earth--which would make foreign travel a really weird and pointless pastime you might want ...10 breeds of pirate - Somalis to Vikings to Japanese Pirate Ninjas
Feb 21st, 2011 at 11:00AM:
A yacht carrying a quartet of Americans was recently seized by Somali pirates, the latest in a string of hijackings that reaches back millenia. According to MSNBC, the seized yacht, the "S/V Quest," is owned by Jean and Scott Adam - a couple on a worldwide quest distributing bibles. While they no doubt expected to spread the word far and wide, they were certainly not expecting to be boarded by ...East of Africa: Sapphire of Ilakaka
Dec 27th, 2009 at 9:00AM:
After hours of driving through untouched landscape, a speck of civilization appears on the horizon. It's a sizable town; modest in structure, but full of activity and commotion -even at a distance.
A patchwork of low-grade wooden structures stem from a single main road. Electrical wires criss cross each other in all directions, connecting small shanty homes with restaurants and makeshift ...Undiscovered New York: Sunset Park
Aug 26th, 2009 at 10:00AM: You don't just stumble upon Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood by casually walking around New York City. It takes effort. And you're also not going to find any world famous buildings or iconic parks while you're there - those are elsewhere. But for all the things Sunset Park lacks (like tourists), it still manages to have plenty to offer. This little neighborhood-that-could has been surprising ...Dim Sum Dialogues: Double Happiness
Aug 16th, 2009 at 8:30AM:
In a continuation from yesterday on my post about Hong Kong weddings, I wanted to shed some light on the interesting history behind a prominent symbol that can be found decorating virtually every wedding in China. Double Happiness.
Sometimes translated as "double joy", or "double happy", the character itself is a ligature of two Chinese characters that mean "joy", pressed together. It's ...Outsiders not welcome at Chinese spy museum
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:00AM: Foreigners keep out!
Committed to preserving national secrets, the new Jiangsu National Security Education Museum in Nanjing is only open to Chinese citizens. So, if you want to see guns embedded in lipstick, maps hidden in decks of cards and other accoutrements of the spy trade (or, "tradecraft," as spies over here call it), you have to have the right passport.
Most of the items on display are ...Budget Travel: Butte, Montana
Jan 9th, 2009 at 11:30AM:
Summary: Butte, a town in the southwestern part of Montana, began as a group of gold and silver mining camps in the 1870s. When copper mining boomed, it grew into one of the wealthiest spots in the United States. During WW I, Butte was called "The Richest Hill on Earth." Never mind that Jon Stewart's the "Daily Show" made fun of Butte a couple years ago. It's one of those towns with a unique ...Galley Gossip: Interview with a flight attendant - ME!
Dec 15th, 2008 at 10:30AM: Dear Heather,
I know this is really random and weird, but I'm a Jr in high school and we were given an assignment to write a research paper over a job that we would like to do once we graduate and I have become very interested in becoming a flight attendant. Anyway part of the assignment is to interview someone that does the job we would like to do. It's been very hard trying to find someone that ...Why you'll still be able to find the new Guns and Roses album in China
Dec 4th, 2008 at 11:00AM: Yes, I will put a shamed expression on my face and admit that I felt a bit of excitement when I heard that Guns and Roses was releasing a new album. Come on, I was an awkward, pimple-ridden junior high-schooler when Axl and Slash were still at the top of their game. I thought that they were the shit. Well, the new album, which was actually made by Axl Rose and a bunch of session musicians, is ...Xinjiang Journal: Sixteen hours in China's Wild West
Oct 1st, 2008 at 9:30AM: 3:05 pm. The plane from Beijing has barely landed, and I'm already on my phone. The screen flashes 5:05 pm, and for a moment, I fear I've missed the ballgame, that I've flown 2,400 miles to the heart of China's wild west-roughly the distance between New York and San Francisco-for empty bleachers and discarded foam fingers. Then, I remember that there are two worlds here in Xinjiang, each with its ...Taiwan's road signs will make more sense next year
Sep 21st, 2008 at 10:30AM: When I lived in Taiwan, I normally didn't have a clue where I was going. The signage was not particularly helpful. I didn't read Chinese, and, outside of Taipei, that's mostly what you saw. Even when there were signs in English, there was an inconsistency with how street names were spelled.
Ask people to spell a word phonetically, and you'll see variation. In Taiwan, up until recently, there were ...Using an online translator to come up with an English name for your restuarant is a bad idea
Aug 3rd, 2008 at 1:00PM: Let's assume for a minute that you own a restaurant in China. Then we'll assume you don't speak a word of English, but you don't care because you have Internet access, and have found a great online translation site. The Olympics are coming, along with millions of hungry tourists who'll want to try your food, so you do the right thing and pop your restaurant name into the translation site, and have ...Mickey Sets a Course for Shanghai
Aug 2nd, 2008 at 12:00PM: Mickey Mouse has been planning to bring Disneyland to Shanghai for some time now. Details have been sketchy and the project has been put on the shelf several times. But people in one village are banking on the billionaire rodent to eventually get things off the ground. According to Shanghaiist, business people and home owners in Jinjia have been building on to current structures and establishing ...Expedia survey rates the world's worst tourists
Jun 25th, 2008 at 8:30AM: The French, Indians, and the Chinese have been voted as the world's worst tourists by a group of 4000 hoteliers, in a survey conducted by online travel search engine Expedia. On the other hand, the best tourists are 1) Japanese 2) British and Germans. Yup, looks like the annoying and continuous photo taking of everything in sight by the Japanese, and the drunken stag parties of the British and the ...
