A growing number of taxis on Beijing’s busy streets are electric. The electric taxis may be better for the environment, but practical problems remain. Some cabbies say finding a charging post can be difficult and inconvenient. It takes about seven hours for a full charge, and about 90 minutes for a “quick charge.” Fully charged, […]
Visitors to China’s Old Summer Palace can now look beyond the physical bricks and mortar and see Yuanming Yuan (圓明園) in its original glory. Digital restoration of the place is finally completed after 15 years’ work – researching historical documents, completing thousands of drawings and digital models – by an 80-member Chinese team, to give […]
State-owned Xinhua Bookstore turns 80 this year. It was established in 1937 by the Communist Party of China in the wartime revolutionary base of Yan’an in Shaanxi province. Its logo is calligraphy written by Mao Zedong in 1948. It is the largest and only book retail chain that covers the country. Today, there are reportedly […]
Peking University announced plans to open a new campus in Oxford, England in 2018. The university says its HSBC Business School bought a medieval campus in Oxford from the Open University in Britain. Near-term plans include building the Peking University Oxford Center and Shenzhen Oxford Innovation Center. This purchase marks the first independent attempt by […]
Archaeologists rediscovered more than 1,500 Buddhist tablets and stone sculptures under Shiye Street in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, following the rediscovery of a lost temple, the West China City Daily reported. The ruins of Fugan Temple, a well-known Buddhist temple dating from the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-589) to the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), were […]
I have finished my Buddhist studies with wise senior Buddhist nuns in a nunnery on top of a hill. Time to take the final exams – attend a Nepali wedding! A word of caution: Do not take the same curriculum –this ‘exam’ only happens once in a blue moon! It just so happen that the […]
Hokkien, on the tongues of Tsinoys, has grown and evolved, taking on a life of its own. Sometimes words simply fail us. With some creativity, Tsinoys have strung together words to form colorful phrases that simply hit the bull’s eye. Here are some expressions unique to Hokkien as favored by Tsinoys. 個個猛 kê kê bi-eng […]
Growing up in Binondo, I always wondered about other Overseas Chinese communities. What fascinates me is the integration process – how they combine their culture with that of the country they now call home. So, whenever I visit a country that has a Chinatown, I check it out. When I visited Japan this year, I […]
My father grew up in Davao but left in the late 1930s to study in Shanghai. When he returned in 1947, he decided to settle in Manila where he married. My sister and I were both born and raised in Manila. I was about five when I took my first plane ride, my mother bringing […]
“The Angry Christ” is a play by Floy Quintos that follows the creation of Alfonso Ossorio’s iconic painting – from conceptualization up to the reveal of the finished obra maestra. The story opens with a short background of the painting and a brief summary of Ossorio’s childhood before he came to the family sugar mill […]