Chinese New Year

The link below gives a nice look at how the Chinese New Year is celebrated in Beijing.
{It made me a little homesick.}
As one friend wrote, "you can almost smell the fireworks!"

Xin Nian Kuai Le!!

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/01/23/world/asia/100000001306948/year-of-the-dragon.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=VI-E-FB-SM-LIN-TIE-012312-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

Halus Obama

With so few articles coming without a charge from the NYTimes these days, this lengthy magazine piece on President Obama's Indonesian upbringing, and reflections on his mother is worth reading!

I liked this paragraph:

“I think this is one reason he’s so halus,” Bryant said of the pres­ident, using the Indonesian adjective that means “polite, refined, or courteous,” referring to qualities some see as distinctively Javanese. “He has the manners of Asians and the ways of Americans — being halus, being patient, calm, a good listener. If you’re not a good listener in Indonesia, you’d better leave.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/magazine/mag-24Obama-t.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

Reading...

Three International related NY Times op-ed pieces I found interesting this week:

WikiLeaks and the Diplomats

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opinion/30tue1.html

From WikiChina

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/opinion/01friedman.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

Speaking in Tongues

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/speaking-in-tongues/

Skeptical No More . . .

Yes, it's another news article link.

(But this one is much shorter!)

I knew it was good for you.

I just wish they had the results of Traditional Chinese Medicine massage (which would emphatically not be in the "light massage" category.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/health/research/21regimens.html

Girls...

I put this link, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/world/asia/21gender.html?_r=1, on my Facebook page earlier this week, because the article and it's topic, and the fact that I have three daughters, really resonated with me. It's a long piece, and one I had both of my older girls read.

So far, E only got half way through... its a meaty article, and long, especially for an eight-year-old. But MGJ has read it, and had some time to digest it. (She and I both read Three Cups of Tea a year or so ago.) I'm curious to learn more of her perspective, which out of respect to her I won't post here (my kids are forever letting me know what I can and can't blog about!)

But I'm curious about your perspective. Any thoughts out there on this topic and article?

Sobering

If you read any international news piece this week, make it this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/asia/10koreans.html

The piece opens with this sentence:

"Like many North Koreans, the construction worker lived in penury."

I had to look up penury.

pen·u·ry (pĕn'yə-rē)
n.

1. Extreme want or poverty; destitution.
2. Extreme dearth; barrenness or insufficiency.

[Middle English penurie, from Latin pēnūria , want.]

Sit down with a box of tissues and a globe and read about what's going on in this little nation that's about the size of Ohio. Read about the people who live just a fraction of an inch from us (the Johnson's in China) on a map, but light years away in every other respect.

It's a sobering piece. With difficult questions. (And not many answers.)

Go ahead. Read about their penury on that part of the peninsula.

Cut and paste it into your browser and see that our biggest concern can't simply be their tyrannical leader... but the destitution and looming starvation that is happening just across the Yellow Sea.