STDs for New Year in China
Chinese migrant workers are testing themselves for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as millions return home to their spouses for the annual Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, state press said yesterday.
China is in the throes of a massive urbanization process, which has seen up to 140 million migrant workers leave their home towns -- and often their spouses -- as they travel to cities in search of work. This means that many often engage in extra-marital sex, the China Daily reported.
"Around seven to eight people are coming to have venereal disease check-ups everyday, up from the usual two to three cases a day," Lu Haoqiang, at the Guangzhou Medical College told the paper. Lu said most patients had not been infected, but some of the workers still wanted to take the test results home to show their wives.
300 million Americans and counting
Sometime this month, somewhere in the US, a couple -- most likely Hispanic, with Spanish as their mother tongue -- will conceive the 300 millionth American, the New York Times has reported.
The prediction is based on the latest census statistics, which show the US population closing in on 297,900,000. With a baby being born every eight seconds, someone dying every 12 seconds and the nation gaining an immigrant every 31 seconds, the population clock ticks over one numeral roughly every 14 seconds.
Taking into account seasonal deviations -- birth rates normally peak during the summer -- the watershed 300 million mark should be reached in nine months. "You end up with a number in October," the Times quoted demographer and Census Bureau official Katrina Wengert as saying.
The US population passed the 200 million mark in 1967 and is currently growing at an annual rate of 1 percent -- the equivalent of the 2.8 million residents of Chicago.
A `Fulla' figure sells best
Move over Barbie, veiled is beautiful. The physical ideal of Muslim girls increasingly includes the hijab, as evidenced by toy shops' best-selling doll "Fulla" and the string of showbiz stars opting to cover up. The dark-eyed and olive-skinned Fulla has replaced her US rival's skimpy skirts with more modest "outdoor fashion" and Barbie's blonde mane with an Islamic veil.
"Fulla sells better because it is closer to our Arab values: she never reveals a leg or an arm," says Tarek Mohammed, chief salesman at a Toys R Us branch in Mohandessin, one of Cairo's more upmarket neighborhoods. The Arab answer to Barbie has been selling like hot cakes for Eid Al-Adha, the most important holiday in the Muslim calendar, not least because it is cheaper than its American rival, although both are made in China.
Street food is in for top chef
He's among an elite coterie of chefs who command the sort of respect usually accorded royalty, but when Thierry Marx comes to Hong Kong there's only one place you'll find him searching for a meal.
"I hit the street as soon as I come here," says an excited Marx. "There is nothing like street food, especially in Asia. It is so very important to the development of different cuisines -- I get so much inspiration from the street."
For Marx, named last year's chef of the year by gastronomic bible Gault Millau, there is no such thing as "slumming it" when it comes to food. "You cannot ignore what is on the street," says the two-and-a-half star Michelin chef, in Hong Kong for a brief spell in the kitchen at the plush Sheraton Hotel's Oyster Bar.
"That's where new ideas are tried and tested. Wherever I go on my travels I make sure I know what is being eaten by the ordinary people."
HK has designs on fashion
Renowned Hong Kong fashion designer Vivienne Tam believes the Chinese territory could become a global style powerhouse with a little help from business and government. Tam, who along with Sino-Irish designer John Rocha put the former British colony on the fashion map in the 1990s, called for the city's rich property developers to offer cash and internships to nurture local talent.
"A lot of the time [young designers] can't afford the rent -- if you are not an international brand it's hard to get a good location -- but landlords have so much money, it's time to give back to the community," Tam told the South China Morning Post.
Tam is in Hong Kong ahead of fashion week, the sprawling trade show where the couture world gathers to find Chinese sewing factories and manufacturers to put together their latest collections. The New York-based designer, who is credited with helping to introduce traditional Chinese flourishes to mainstream fashion, said it was vital for would-be designers to get first-hand industry experience.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s