Dong Guan

Yangzhou – A Perfect Portal into China’s History, Culture and Cuisine

Asia, Asia Pacific, Culture, History, Travel

Travelers wishing to truly understand China’s rich history must venture beyond the opulent gateways into the real China, a land shaped by wealth and war, to the city of Yangzhou. Located just north of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province, Yangzhou offers modern comfort, exotic beauty, distinctive cuisine and historic sites that reflect the grandeur of the past and the promise of the present. Yangzhou is a city of 6,000,000 that sits in the middle of China’s richest province. The city is famous for feminine beauty, imaginative gardens and artistic handicrafts that include lacquer and stoneware, bamboo carving, cutlery and block printing. Knives and cleavers made in the city are so finely honed that cooks can slice a 1-cm-thick bean curd into 30 paper-thin shreds without breaking a single one.

Because of its fertile soil, abundant water and temperate climate, Jiangsu Province is known as China’s “Land of Fish and Rice.” In Yangzhou, the ancient Southern capital, the riches of Jiangsu are expressed in the design, construction and careful maintenance of magnificent urban gardens…

Geyuan Garden

Yangzhou’s Gardens of Delight

Asia, Asia Pacific, Culture, History, Travel

Because of its fertile soil, abundant water and temperate climate, Jiangsu Province is known as China’s “Land of Fish and Rice.” In Yangzhou, the ancient Southern capital, the riches of Jiangsu are expressed in the design, construction and careful maintenance of magnificent urban gardens built by rich merchants centuries ago. Yangzhou gardens are designed to inspire, painting, poetry and calligraphy as well as friendly conversation and reflective thought…

New Songdo City

Dawn of the Aerotropolis

Asia, Asia Pacific, Business

Dawn of the Aerotropolis By David DeVoss By David DeVoss Just outside Korea’s Incheon airport there are two roads leading to downtown. One heads east to the Korean capital of Seoul more than an hour’s drive away. The other angles south over a short causeway to New Songdo, a decade-old airport city that is known…

Access-to-Asia-Cover

Avoiding Faux Pas in Asia

Asia, Book Review

Avoiding Faux Pas in Asia By David DeVoss Rules regarding cultural interaction are simple. So why do we stumble so often when meeting clients in Asia? Often it’s because we assume all Sinitic cultures are the same. Or fail to remember that, despite its large Chinese population, a country like Malaysia is historically Islamic. Inadvertent…

sushi

Cuisine as Statecraft: Japan’s Paleo Diet

Asia, Asia Pacific

The Japanese, stuck in a deadly epidemic of Covid-19, confronted by an unpopular Olympics end experiencing waning geopolitical influence, are pushing past these frustrations with a new government-led campaign to sell the world—and their own children—on their country’s distinctive traditional cuisine. They’re not talking about shrimp tempura, California rolls, or spicy tuna sashimi. No, the traditional washoku cooking that is becoming Japan’s new new thing consists of umami-flavored fish, soya, mushrooms, and seaweed steeped in dashi, a liquid made by boiling desiccated kelp with dried tuna shavings. It is, for some, an acquired taste.