3

4

6

8

24

25

26

28

ASIAN ARTS & CULTURE SPECIAL

10

16

19

Weekend Journal onlineSee slideshows of Malacca’s heritageand India’s Chinese diaspora, plus

view a video of our latest City Walk—Hong Kong—atWSJ.com/Travel

For more on Japan’s all-malecheerleading squad Shockers, see

WSJ.com/Sports

S. Karene Witcher EditorJessica Yu News graphics directorDavid Chan Art director

Mary E. Kissel Taste page editoremail wsjaweekend@wsj.com

WSJ.com Cover: A 1930s photograph foundtorn and discarded in a Malaccabuilding (Lim Huck Chin and

Fernando Jorge)This page: Ng Ah Kee at the Sin

See Tai barbershop in Malacca (LimHuck Chin and Fernando Jorge),top; Shockers cheerleading team(Steve West), left; ‘Pies de Plomo(Zapateado Luz),’ by Rubén RamosBalsa (Rubén Ramos Balsa), right

eople often think of vintageclothesasbargain-priceddis-coveries. So it may be hard

to fathom the excitement of NewYork collector Juliana Caironewheneightdresses fromanow-ob-scure designer emerged recentlyfrom a New Jersey basement.

But in the rarefied world offashioncollecting, thenameof themysterious couturier MadameGrès has its own allure. Ms. Grès,who worked from the 1920s intothe1980s,definedthemodernGre-cian goddess gown. “She’s such acritical designer that anything byher is significant,” says AndrewBolton, assistant curator of theMetropolitan Museum of Art’sCostume Institute in New York.

The eight dresses includea tealsilk-jersey goddess gown, amulti-hued ’70s caftan-like number anda rust kimono-sleeved dress.

Today, Ms. Grès is more col-lected thanworn. For serious fash-ion collectors, clothes are art, andthe perspiration and skin oils ofbodies are dangers. While thereare plenty of women who buy andwear vintage fashion, some of therarest pieces go to private collec-tions and museums such as theLouvre in Paris. These days, themarket is lively, fedbyLondonauc-tionsandprivatedeals,withpricesrising at times to $20,000 ormorefor 20th-century garments.

Filling such collections is asmuch about scavenging as shop-ping. Many of the best pieces aresitting inpeople’s closets or in for-gotten storerooms. Often, they’remildewed, faded or altered—their value diminished. The Metregularly scours eBay looking toflesh out its fashion collections—and finds things, Mr. Bolton says.

Ms. Cairone, a soft-spokenmother of twins, started out buy-ingvintage haute couture towear.But when her collection spilledout of her closet into the rest ofher New York apartment, she setup a booth at a trade show to selloff a few pieces. One thing led toanother, and a few years back, sheopened a boutique, called Rare

Vintage, in New York City.The prices at Rare Vintage

range from a fewhundred dollarsto $10,000. One day earlier thisyear, the shop’s long rack of cou-ture gowns and dresses includeda pale blue and gray Valentinogoddess dress and a Chanel dresstrimmed with ostrich feathers.

She has stumbled along theway—once she bought what shethoughtwasaGrèsgown, butonlythe bodice was original. A “Dior”shewassent turnedoutnot tobe—details such as the brand of zip-per, which was YKK rather thanthe expected Éclair, were the tell-tale clues. Her reputation grew:She dressed Angelina Jolie in aflowing Hermès gown for Janu-ary’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.

A month ago, Ms. Cairone re-ceived an email from a vintage-clothing appraiser inviting her tosee several suits and dresses byChristian Dior and Madame Grès.Ms. Cairone high-tailed it out to asmall homeoutsideNewYorkCity.

It was the Grès dresses thatdrewher.MadameGrès, bornGer-maine Krebs, was once as well-knownas her contemporary CocoChanel, but Ms. Grès designedonly handmade haute couturethat sold first as the label “Alix”and later as “Madame Grès.”Without a juggernaut corporateinvestor and global ready-to-wear lines, Ms. Grès, who died in1993, disappeared into obscurity.

The Grès dresses, Ms. Caironewas told, were purchased in Parisin the 1970s and 1980s by awealthy New Yorker and thenpassed on to a family employeeabout 10 years ago. The employeepassed the dresses to her daugh-ter, who called an appraiser.

To Ms. Cairone’s disappoint-ment, one had been altered into asuit, erasingmost of its value. Butthe other eight dresses were innear-perfect condition. She esti-mates she’ll sell them for be-tween$5,900 and$10,000 apiece.

The following week, Ms.Cairone was seated next to Mr.Bolton at the Metropolitan Mu-

seum of Art’s Costume Instituteball, and she mentioned her find.Mr. Bolton expressed interest intwo of the dresses, and the Metinspected them for a week. Themuseum declined to comment onany possible acquisition.

Ms. Cairone continues to dis-creetly reach out to other poten-tial buyers. But she is aware thatshe may be condemning thedresses to decades in a museumarchival box. The other day, shedressed carefully in themorning,

without putting on lotion orscent. She then headed to RareVintage and tried on a multihuedteal and red dress. “There’s apart of me that feels clothingshould have a warm body insideit,” she says.

How a rare collection of vintage gowns was found

Dresses by Madame Grèsshow her signature draping,left, and kimono sleeves,right; New York vintagecollector Juliana Cairone,center, at her store

Rare

Vintage

(dresses);Ku

rtWilberding

/WSJ

Tokyonational cheerleadingcompetition in Japana few months ago pit-ted teams of youngminiskirted women

against one another.The winners, though, looked a

little different.For one thing, the 24-mem-

ber Shockers squad dresses inbaggy shorts and T-shirts. Foranother, it consists entirely ofmen. Shockers bested 14 all-fe-male teams to win the maincheerleading category, impress-ing the judges with a dynamic2µ-minute routine that in-cluded back flips and airbornesplits. It was the team’s secondchampionship at this event inthree years.

“It was so exhilarating,” says

20-year-old Daiki Kanai, whostarted cheerleading two yearsago. “Our hard practice finallypaid off.”

American-style cheerleadingis increasingly popular in Japan,but—as in other countries, in-cluding the U.S.—all-male teamsare rare indeed. Founded fouryears ago by an enterprising col-lege student, Shockers hasgained nationwide fame show-ing its athletic moves on televi-sion. But the members have abroader mission: to help bringthe spirit and fun back to an ac-tivity that has turned increas-ingly rigid in Japan.

Organized cheering or oendanhas deep roots in Japan. Menclad in white gloves and tradi-tional black school uniformswith high collars sing and chant

at the top of their lungs in unisonat sporting events like collegebaseball games. They are accom-panied by drums, and wave alarge school flag that they con-sider sacred. It’s serious busi-ness—smiling is a big taboo.

Littlewonder thatwhenAmeri-can-style cheerleading, with itssmiles and lively pop songs, ar-rived in themid-1980s,manyJapa-nese were captivated. The newstyle quickly spread, and today thecountryhasmorethan300squads,some with members in their 70s,though most are made up of fe-male high-school and college stu-dents who cheer for their schoolsports teams. (Shockers is an ex-ception in this, also—it cheersmostly at events like festivals, aswell as the annual competition.)

Yohei Kano, who founded

Shockers at Tokyo’s prestigiousWaseda University in 2004, saysit was initially a whim—hethought it would be fun and he’dgain attention by leading agroup of men waving pompoms.But once he saw female cheer-leaders practicing, he was takenby the skills required.

“It’s thrillingwhen you nail theacrobatic moves,” says Mr. Kano,now 23, who played varsity base-ball in high school. “Cheerleadinghas elements of both entertain-ment and athleticism, and that’swhat appeals to me.”

This being Japan, memberssay they have also found a spiri-tual side to the sport. “By synchro-nizing not only ourmoves but ourhearts, cheerleading has helpedbuild our characters,” says NaokiKitou, a founding member.

Shockers beganwithMr. Kanoand four other students. Theytrained at least three evenings aweek, often in a nearby park un-der streetlights, at times sneak-ing into an all-girls high school topractice with its cheerleadersand their coach.

New members started trick-ling in, including former soccerand basketball players, and bythe time ofWaseda’s school festi-val that autumn, Shockers had 10members. Their performance atthe festival, in front of 5,000 curi-ous observers, put Shockers inthe spotlight. Invitations came into appearonTV showsand toper-form in a halftime show at a pro-fessional soccer game.

The Shockers team focuses onmoves that take advantage oftheir physical strength. In one,

In Japanese cheerleading, one squad stands apartIn Japanese cheerleading, one squad stands apart

several men form a tight circleand together toss a smaller team-mate four or five meters in theair, catching him just before hehits the ground. A still showiermove is the “Scorpion,” in whichthree members hold up a fourth,who stands on one leg and ex-tends the other leg behind hishead—similar to the Biellmannspin position in figure skating.Only two teammembers can pullthat off, though.

The team also stands out withits uniforms: black T-shirts andshorts with yellow lightningmarks with matching black-and-yellow pompoms. “Black and yel-low are often used to represent awarning against danger. So, wewanted to say, ‘People, beware ofus!’” Mr. Kano says.

International students atWaseda say they were skepticalabout Shockers at first. “Cheer-leading and men—I wasn’t surewhat to think,” says AlishaSmyth, a graduate student fromAlaska who says she had neverseen an all-male cheerleadinggroup at home. But after watch-ing Shockers in action, she saysshe was impressed that theywere “much more athletic thanfemale cheerleaders.”

Other recognition cameharder. Shockers was rejected by

the Foundation of Japan Cheer-leading Association, the300-member organization thatruns the country’s largest cheer-leading competitions. The JCAsays it has no rules against all-male squads—one all-male high-school group is a member—but itdoes have one against unap-proved media appearances. Thatmade Shockers’ heavy TV expo-sure a problem. JCA declined tocomment further.

The rejection keeps Shockersout of JCA’s many competitions,preventing it from facing offagainst the nation’s top squads.But Mr. Kano found a smallercheerleadingbody,USAJapan, or-ganized by the U.S.-based UnitedSpirit Association, that gaveShockers a chance to take onother non-JCA squads. It’s USAJapan that holds the annual USANationals competition thatShockers won in March.

That win continued a strongrecord at the USA Nationals: In2005, Shockers placed secondout of 20 teams in freestyle, inwhich teams can freely composetheir own moves. The next year,the members came in first placein the most challenging cate-gory, cheerleading, which re-quires completing a series ofspecified elements including

dance, jumps and difficult stuntswithin 150 seconds. After losingin the semifinals last year, Shock-ers recaptured the title at thisevent in March.

To keep in shape, Shockersmembers normally practice threetimes a week and do additionalworkouts to hone their skills. Butfor the two months before thecompetition, they increased thatto five or six days a week, threehours a day. The smaller mem-bers constantly watch their dietsso they don’t get too heavy fortheir peers to support.

Mr. Kano, the founder, gradu-ated from Waseda in March andstarted a career as a reporter ata Japanese newspaper. (As a se-nior, he didn’t participate in theMarch championship.) His oldteammates, though, continue toestablish fresh goals, includingspreading all-male cheerleadingand eventually competing in acheerleading event in theU.S.—though to do that, theyhave to wait for an all-male cate-gory to be created.

“I want the team members tokeep challenging themselves topursue a pioneering spirit for aslong as they can,” he says.

Naoto Okamura is aTokyo-based writer.

Go, Shockers!Shockers, go.Shockers say, “Black.”Shockers say, “Yellow.”OK!Black and yellow.Black and yellow.Let’s go.Shockers go for loveand peace.

Go for loveand peace.

SteveWest

here’s a Vietnamesequip about the noodledish pho that—roughly translated—goes, “Without rice

(com) we will die. But havingeaten rice, we still prefer pho.”The phrase contains a cheekydouble-entendre: Com, the coun-try’s everyday staple food, is alsoa metaphor for wife, while pho—the more special dish—repre-sents the mistress.

This hot, steamy soup, whichblends rice noodles, sliced meat,herbs and spices, is a traditionalbreakfast dish formanyVietnam-ese, but it is also a popular mealat any other time of the day. Formany, it is the culinary symbol ofVietnam—similar to Spain’spaella, Korea’s kimchi or HongKong’s dim sum.

In the years following thewar with the U.S., as the countrystruggled to recover, the simpledish was a luxury, a specialtreat. “Pho was too expensivefor us back then,” remembersbank-training consultantNguyen Quang Khai, a 39-year-old who grew up in a northern

Vietnam village (and moved toHanoi as a student). “Mymotherwould only buy it for us whenwe were sick.”

These days, bowls of pho areserved in Vietnamese restau-rants from Paris to Palm Springs.But to get a real taste of this fa-mous noodle soup there is butone place to go: Hanoi.

The HistoryPho is a northern Vietnamese

dish. It originated in the north-ern city of Nam Dinh in the RedRiver Delta, where an industrialzone for textiles was estab-lished at the beginning of the20th century. Workers didn’thave time to return home forlunch, as was the custom, saysDidier Corlou, owner and headchef of Hanoi’s French-Vietnam-ese restaurant La Verticale. Sopeople began to sell noodlesoups in front of the factories.

For several decades, pho re-mained a northern dish. Thischanged in the mid-1950s afterthe defeat of the French, whohad colonized Vietnam sincethe late 19th century, and the

subsequent partition of thecountry. In the Communist-ruled north, many private phorestaurants were forced to closeand were replaced by govern-ment-run eateries. NorthernVietnamese fleeing the Commu-nist regime introduced the soupto the southern provinces.

For a long time, pho was soldby roving street hawkers who

carried a wooden pole holding abucket on either end on theirshoulders. One bucket con-tained a pot for the broth and anearthenware stove, called a cof-fre-feu in French. Some culinaryexperts say this is the origin ofthe word pho, which is pro-nounced just like the Frenchword for fire—feu.

Mr. Corlou, who served for

14 years as the executive chef ofHanoi’s famous Sofitel Metro-pole hotel and has writtenthree Vietnamese cookbooks,says this noodle dish bears a re-semblance to the popularFrench beef stew, pot-au-feu.One ingredient of both theFrench stew and the Vietnam-ese noodle soup—grilled shal-lots—isn’t typically found in

rnest Hemingwayhad a reputationfor a prodigious

thirst—and no one didmore to play up the heroic

magnitude of his drinkingthan Hemingway himself.Whenever someone made the

pilgrimage to Havana to be intro-duced to the novelist, Heming-way would meet him at La Flor-ida bar, affectionately known asthe “Floridita.” And there, withmuch bravado, Hemingwaywould boast of the quantity of al-cohol he could consume in theform of Papa Dobles—the doublefrozen Daiquiris made to his par-ticular specifications.

Hemingway biographer A.E.Hotchner’s experience was typi-cal. When the first round of giantDaiquiris arrives,Hemingwaypro-

claims them to be “the ultimateachievement of the daiquiri-mak-er’s art,” adding that he “made arun of sixteen here one night.”

“This size?” Mr. Hotchnerasks, incredulous. The bartender,with a nod and the simple state-ment “House record,” confirmsHemingway’s triumph.

Few drinks have achieved thefame of the Papa Doble. And fewdrinks have been so regularlyklutzed up. In particular, anynumberof cocktail books have de-scribed the Floridita’s specialHemingway Daiquiri as beingmade with lemon juice. Not onlyis this peculiar, given that limejuice and rum have always beenthe defining constituents of anyDaiquiri, but it doesn’t taste verygood. How did this strange no-tion become so widespread?

Cocktail scholar Philip Greene(a government intellectual-prop-erty lawyer in Washington) wasable to track down the source ofthe mistake: a translation errorin a bilingual recipe booklet theFloridita itself published in 1937as a promotional giveaway. TheEnglish-language recipe calls forthe “juice of 1/2 lemon.” But theSpanish original next to it speci-fies “Jugo 1/2 limon verde”—thatis, not lemon but lime.

It’s an error that has been re-peated for decades. Nearly 10years ago, Michael Palin ofMonty Python fame filmed a tele-vision special chasing downHem-ingway’s adventures, and at onepoint he sat himself down at theFloridita bar to work his waythrough a succession of PapaDobles. Unfortunately, he de-

scribed the drink as “basicallyrum, lemon and sugar overcrushed ice, with a Maraschinocherry”—not only passing on theone error but compounding itwith several more of his own.

A fanatic for desiccation in hisdrinks, Hemingway allowed nosugar in his Daiquiris. Part of thereason was that it was harder toput them away in quantity: “Ifyou drank that many with sugarit would make you sick.”

Perhaps even more wrong-headed is Mr. Palin’s instructionto add a maraschino cherry. The“maraschino” in the Floridita rec-ipe is not a processed fruit but,rather, a colorless liqueur madefrom marasca cherries grown onItaly’s Dalmatian coast. Mara-schino liqueur is subtle and elu-sive, and a sly way to give an oth-

This simple bowl of noodles isa Hanoi specialty

Vietnamese cuisine, he adds.Also, beef generally wasn’teaten in Vietnam until after theFrench arrived.

Most likely, pho has also beeninfluenced by the cuisine of Viet-nam’s northern neighbor, China.Some of the soup’s ingredients—rice noodles and spices such asstar anise and ginger—are alsofound in Chinese dishes.

Regardless of its sources, inthe eyes of the world, includingthe people of Vietnam, pho is aquintessentially Vietnamese dish.

The SettingThousands of Hanoians start

their day with a steaming bowlof pho, eaten while crouched ondwarf-size plastic stools incrowded eateries, often sitting

at low tables on the sidewalk.Typically, the soup is pre-

pared right there, on the pave-ment. (Pho is always eaten atstalls or restaurants because itis too complicated and time-con-suming to prepare the broth athome).

The shop owner takes longwhite strands of rice noodles,called bánh pho in Vietnamese,from a basket, dips them into acauldron of boiling water heatedby a charcoal stove and then putsthem into a bowl. Thin cuts ofboiled meat are added. Pho bò,noodle soup with beef, is themost commonphodish, but it canalso be prepared with chicken,fish, duck and vegetables.

Garnishes—such as springonions and fresh green corian-der—are sprinkled on top be-fore the cook takes a scoop ofclear broth from another caul-dron and pours it into the bowl.The broth, which ismade by sim-mering bones, charred onionsand spices, takes many hours toprepare and is usually cookedthe day before.

Then the dining ritual begins.Diners squeeze in some lemon,add chilies, salty fermented-fishsauce, pepper or herbs, and mixthe soup with chopsticks. Thebroth is finished off with the helpof a porcelain spoon. No oneleaves before using the manda-tory toothpick.

The JudgmentThemore basic it is, the better.Pho is street food—everyday

food—and isn’t served duringparties, weddings or other fes-tive occasions. “It’s a simple,practical soup that you can eat atall times of the day,” saysMr. Cor-lou. “It represents true culinaryart because for me, simplicity iswhat is best. It is the simplicity

of Vietnam, of Hanoi, which is inthis soup.”

Some people judge a goodbowl of pho by the quality of themeat, which should be freshand lean. Others have differentcriteria. “What is most impor-tant is that the broth is clear,”saysMr. Nguyen, the bank-train-ing consultant. “If there are bub-bles of fat on the surface, Iwon’t eat it.”

The SourcesStreet pho

The best way to find a good,traditional pho eatery is to sim-ply walk along the streets of Ha-noi and find a place frequentedby a great number of locals. Orask any one of the ubiquitousmo-torbike taxi drivers (called xe omin Vietnamese) to take you to hisfavorite pho spot. Some of thebest-known street eateries arePho Thin at 13 Lo Duc St., Pho BatDan at 49 Bat Dan St. and PhoTau Bay at 202 A Pho Hue St.Most serve either the traditionalbeef or chicken pho. A bowl usu-ally costs about $1.50.

Pho24If you prefer to eat in a more

fancy and air-conditioned envi-ronment—where you can sit at aproper table with adult-size

chairs—then Pho24 is for you.Launched in 2003 by a business-man from Ho Chi Minh City inthe south, the chain now hasmore than 40 outlets through-out Vietnam, as well as a fewoverseas in countries such asSouth Korea and Indonesia. InHanoi, you will find these fast-food restaurants all over thecity, for example in Vincom CityTowers, Hoan Kiem District( 84-4-222-5203) or 1 HangKhay, Hoan Kiem District( 84-4-936-5259). Pho24serves chicken pho and a varietyof different pho bo dishes suchas beef noodle soup with tripe,or with soft beef tendon. Onebowl is about $1.50.

La VerticaleMr. Corlou has created imagi-

native new pho dishes, mixingVietnamese andWestern culinarytraditions for his restaurant,which is in abeautiful Frenchcolo-nial villa. Try his pho with oceanand red seaweed, or with duckfoie gras or Norwegian salmon.One bowl costs $9, or for $16 youcan sample all three noodledishes. (La Verticale, 19 Ngo VanSo St., 84-4-944-6317)

Claudia Blume is a HongKong-based writer.

erwise unsugared drink just ahint of sweetness. (It bears no re-lation to thenasty Day-Glosyrup inwhich to-day’s wretchedcocktail cherriesare packed.)

And then thereis the crucial in-gredientMr. Palinleft out—grape-fruit juice, an in-gredient in manyof the originaldrinks concoctedby Constante, theFloridita’s fa-mous barman.

Even so, fol-low the 1937 Spanish-languagerecipe correctly and you mightfind it surprisingly bland. The

problem is that the flavor getssnowed under by the mounds of

shaved ice. Thatmay be just theway Papa liked hisDobles: They “hadno taste of alco-hol,” he wrote,“and felt, as youdrank them, theway downhill gla-cier skiing feelsrunning throughpowder snow.”But it may be thatin practice thedrink was made alittle differentlyfrom the pub-lished recipe.

Mr. Hotchner drank innumera-ble Papa Dobles at the Floriditawith Hemingway, and he paid at-

tention to Constante. “A PapaDoble was compounded of twoandahalf jiggers of BacardiWhiteLabel Rum, the juice of two limesandhalf a grapefruit and six dropsof maraschino,” Mr. Hotchnerwrites. That’s four times the limejuice of the 1937 recipe, and farmore than the scant teaspoon ofgrapefruit juice originally calledfor. I don’t know which recipe isthe truest, but I like the resultswhen you split the difference,combining the 60 milliliters ofrum specified by the original rec-ipe with a little bit of extra citrus.

The texture is also important.Hemingway put it this way: “likethe sea where the wave fallsaway from the bow of a shipwhen she is doing thirty knots.”

Email me at eric.felten@wsj.com

Drinking like Hemingway, in one easy lesson

New

scom

(pho);Stockfood(Daiquiri)

Papa Doble

60 ml white rum30 ml fresh lime juice15 ml fresh grapefruit juice8 ml maraschino liqueur350 ml to 500 ml shaved ice

Pour in a blender and combineat high speed until the drink isfoaming. Serve in a large cocktailglass, champagne saucer, orgoblet. Note: Maraschino liqueuris not the same as syrup from acocktail-cherry jar. Fire any liquorstore that tells you otherwise.

n Hong Kong, words suchas conservation and heri-tage have only juststarted to seep into peo-ple’s consciousness. In

fact, in recent decades, the cityhas changed beyond recogni-tion, and many traces of its pasthave disappeared forever.

Today, Hong Kong is a curiousmix of ultramodern glass-and-chrome skyscrapers, run-downbuildings from the 1950s and’60s and a small residue of ele-gant colonial structures. Butwhat the city lacks in historicbuildings and architecturalbeauty, itmakes up forwith atmo-sphere and a vibrant street life.

Only a few meters away fromhectic Queens Road in Central,for example, lies one of HongKong’s most diverse and fasci-nating areas. There, you can get

a glimpse of traditional HongKong life, poke around art galler-ies and antique shops and ex-plore one of the city’s trendiestentertainment districts. Be-ware: You’ll have to walk upsome steep roads, so leave yourhigh heels at home.

12:30 P.M. LUK YU TEA HOUSETo get a feel for old Hong

Kong, start your walk with a dimsum lunch at the city’s most fa-mous traditional tea house. (24Stanley St., 852-2523-5464).Opened in 1933, Luk Yu TeaHouse captures the ambience ofthat era with its ceiling fans,stained-glass wall decorationsand quaint wooden diningbooths for two.

If you arrive before 11 a.m.,dim sum delicacies are servedby trolley; after that you can or-

der from a menu in English.Lovers of the macabre may be

intrigued to learn that Luk YuTeaHouse is infamous for an exe-cution-style murder that tookplace here in 2002. After finish-ing his breakfast, amainlandChi-nese hit man calmly paid his bill,thenwalked over to thenearby ta-ble of a local businessman, prop-erty tycoon Harry Lam, andkilled him with a single gunshotto the head. (The hitman, YangWen, was later caught and sen-tenced to death by a court inneighboring Shenzhen.)

1:30 P.M. POTTINGER STREETAND GOOD SPRING HERBALPHARMACY

Walk along Stanley Street to-ward Cochrane Street. On theway, you will pass PottingerStreet, a picturesque steep lane

with worn-out steps that islined with wooden stalls andshops offering everything youwill need for your next costumeparty. Choose from colorful wigsand feather boas, and fancy cos-tumes for pirates, princesses andeven zebras, as well as an arrayof scary masks.

At the corner of Stanley andCochrane Streets, stop for ahealthy cup of “smart flower” or“bitter 24 varieties” herbal tea,served from giant copper urnsat one of Hong Kong’s oldest andmost beautiful shops for tradi-tional Chinese medicine, theGood Spring Herbal Pharmacy(8 Cochrane St.,852-2544-3518).Time seems to have stood still

at the medicine shop, whichopened almost a century ago.(Employees even use an abacus

to calculate the bill.) At woodendesks, practitioners check pa-tients’ pulses and examinetongues; consultations in Englishare available and cost HK$40(about $5).

Watch howmysterious ingre-dients are chopped and weighedon old-fashioned scales beforethey are packed into paper par-cels. Some of the more exoticitems used are on display in theshop windows, including driedseahorses, dried geckos (smalllizards) and deer tails.

2 P.M. CENTRAL STREET MARKETWalk up Cochrane Street and

turn right onto WellingtonStreet. Continue along Welling-ton until you reach GrahamStreet. Then turn left and makeyour way up the hill. Suddenly,youwill find yourself in themid-

Searching for art, culture and history in a quickly changing metropolisAnn

ieBissett

©2008 Four Seasons Hotels Ltd.

T H E B E S T P L A C E

T O S P E N D T I M E I S

W H E R E I T S T A N D S S T I L L .

Summer with Four Seasons Packages. With our special summer packages,

there’s no better time to vacation with us. For more information contact your travel

consultant, visit www.fourseasons.com/summer08 or call (65) 6232-5926. From within

Hong Kong call (800) 96-8385.

When life feels perfect.

dle of one of Hong Kong’s oldestand most colorful wet markets.

The Central Street Market,which stretches to nearby PeelStreet and Gage Street, has beenaround for more than 160 years.About 130 hawkers sell vegeta-bles and fruits, fresh meat andlive fish, dried mushrooms,freshly made noodles and so-called hundred-year-old eggs.

Locals and expatriates alikecome here to shop or have a chator a cheapmeal at one of the sim-ple eateries on Gage Street.

The historic market is underthreat. Hong Kong’s town plan-nerswant to demolish the area tomake room for yet more high-rise buildings. The move hassparkedoutrage amongmany res-idents, who feel that the demoli-tion would destroy the area’ssense of community.

2:30 P.M. HOLLYWOODROAD

Continue on GrahamStreet until you reachHol-lywood Road with itsplethora of antiqueshops. Turn right.

After the Commu-nist takeover inChina and espe-ciallyduring theCul-tural Revolution,Hollywood Road be-came a focal point inthe trade of statues,ceramics and otherartifacts from themainland. Familiesfleeing turmoil inChina sold their pos-sessions in shopsalong this street to fi-nance their newlives in Hong Kong.

These days, mer-chandise on offerranges from expen-sive collectibles toaffordable repro-ductions. Manyshops specialize in

antique furniture,while others sell expensive

fine china, old scrolls and rarebooks.

Walk along the Western sec-tion of Hollywood Road untilyou reach tiny Shin Hing Streeton your right.

This charming lane, with pot-ted plants placed decorativelyon its narrow steps, stretchesdownhill from Hollywood Roadtoward Gough Street.

It is easily overlooked—you’ve found it when you see theAncient Chinese Art gallery atthe corner—but offers a few artgalleries, restaurants and shopsthat are worth exploring.

There’s Amelia Johnson Con-temporary Art (6-10 Shin HingSt., 852-2548-2286), a ceram-ics gallery called Earth Home(G/F Po Lung Building, in rearlaneway between Shin Hing andMee Lun Streets,852-2547-0102), Qing Bar and

Restaurant (Asian food, 3 MeeLun St., 852-2815-6739) orLot 10 (Mediterranean food, 34Gough St., 852-2813-6812).

3 P.M. UPPER LASCAR ROW ORCAT STREET

For more affordable souve-nirs, walk down Ladder Street,which is further down Holly-wood Road, and immediatelyturn left onto Upper LascarRow.

Lascars were sailors of In-dian and Arab origin who

worked on British opium andtea clippers in the 19th century,and they frequented this areaback then. Oddly enough, how-ever, it’s better known as CatStreet. The pedestrian-onlylane is filled with curio shopsand stalls selling items such ascheap jewelry, statues of Chair-manMao and copies of his LittleRed Book.

Walk to the end of the laneand rejoin Hollywood Road.Turn left.

4 P.M. MAN MO TEMPLEHead toward Ladder Street.

On the corner is one of HongKong’s oldest and most impor-tant temples.

Wreathed in fumes from san-dalwood incense coils that aresuspended from the roof, beauti-ful Man Mo temple reveres twindeities. Man is the god of learn-ing and literature, Man Cheong,while Mo refers to a Cantonesealternative name for Guan Yu,the god of war.

If you want to know what thefuture has in store for you, con-sult one of the temple’s fortunetellers.Master Ng does consulta-tions in English. The sessionslast about half an hour and costHK$500 (about $65).

Afterward, take a break nearthe temple at the Pressroom res-taurant (108 Hollywood Rd.,852-2525-3444), which offers

afternoon tea from 3 p.m. to 6p.m. on weekends. You can alsohave coffee and cake—or acheese platter with wine—atthe Pressroom’s deli next door,which doubles as a cozy French-style bistro.

5:30 P.M. CENTRAL POLICESTATION AND VICTORIA PRISON

Head toward Central on Hol-lywood Road until you reachthe 19th-century, British-look-ing former central police sta-tion, one of the few physical re-minders of Hong Kong’s colo-nial past.

The adjoining Victoria Prisonon Old Bailey Street with itshigh granite walls was HongKong’s first jail. Built in 1841,when Hong Kong became a Brit-ish colony, the grim-lookingprison held inmates until theend of 2005. There are variousplans to conserve and revitalizethe complex by turning it intoan arts hub.

Explore some of the art galler-ies at this endofHollywoodRoad,many of which specialize in well-known—and highly prized—con-temporary Chinese artists.

7 P.M. SOHOLike New York and London,

Hong Kong also has its SoHo dis-trict, which here means “Southof Hollywood Road.”

It is a trendy neighborhoodwith international restaurantsand bars, hip boutiques and artgalleries, but you can still find oldneighborhood shops selling suchitems as Chinese paper lanterns.

You no longer need towalk up-hill—just step on the Central Es-calator along Shelley Street. This800-meter escalator—theworld’s longest—runs from Cen-tral Market in Des Voeux Road upto the city’s Mid-Levels residen-tial area and is the central spinefrom which SoHo radiates.

Get off at Staunton Streetand have predinner drinks atFeather Boa, a quirky, plushlounge with an odd array of fur-

niture left over from its previ-ous incarnation as a furnitureshop. Try its famous strawberrydaiquiris. There is no sign out-

side—keep an eye out for the“Everyday Fun Dry Cleaning”shop next door (38 Staunton St.,

852-2857-2586).Then wander along Staunton

Street or hop on the escalatorup to Elgin Street to find a res-taurant to your liking. Shelleyand Peel Street are also a gour-met’s paradise. There is some-thing for every taste in SoHo—Chinese, Italian, Indian or Mid-dle Eastern—you name it.

After dinner, to ease your ach-ing feet, finish the evening with

a relaxing foot massage atHealthy Foot (16 Elgin St.,852-2530-0096). A 45-minute

foot massage, followed by a

15-minute neck and shouldermassage, costs HK$188 (about$24). Or try Joy Ocean (40 CaineRd., 852-2810-0186). A45-minute foot massage costsHK$138 (about $18).

Claudia Blume is a HongKong-based writer.

After having breakfast at the Luk Yu Tea Housein 2002, a hit man calmly paid his bill, walkedover to the table of a wealthy local businessmanand killed him with a single gunshot to the head.

Next Month’sCity Walk:

Hanoi

ith much of Asia racing to build ever

bigger and more sprawling cities,

historical sites and traditional arts and cultures are

rapidly disappearing. Sometimes all

that is left are memories and what

was captured through a

photographer’s lens.

In our occasional series, Vanishing

Asia, Weekend Journal has been

exploring efforts to preserve the

region’s past. In this special issue,

we highlight efforts by

professional and amateur photographers to

record what is being lost—perhaps forever.

W

Photography by Lim Huck Chin and Fernando Jorge; Getty Images (camera)

onservation architect Lim Huck Chin stands in

front of a 300-year-old “shophouse” in Mal-

acca Town’s historic core and points out the

telltale signs that this building, on a street

zoned as a heritage conservation area, has

been turned into an aviary where wild swiftlets’ nests are

cultivated to make birds’ nest soup, a Chinese delicacy.

The frontdoorof 133HeerenSt. hasbeensealedand thewin-

dows boarded shut. Only the front portion is still standing; be-

hind the crumbling façade, a squat concrete structure looms,

with fist-size holes that allow swiftlets to fly in and out. A re-

cording of steady bird chirps wafts out, attracting new swift-

lets. (Inside, it’s likely thatasteadymist isbeingsprayed tokeep

the humidity high, simulating a swiftlet’s natural nesting site.)

A closed-circuit television camera monitors the front of the di-

lapidated façade, a sign toMr. Lim that someonewants to keep

prying eyes from what’s happening behind the sealed door.

That’s because the aviary is illegal: Under Malacca’s con-

servation laws, any renovations in the city’s core heritage

zone require government approval, and must follow strict

guidelines aimed at preserving these buildings. But the doz-

ens of “birdhouses” like 133 Heeren are an open secret. The

recorded chirps and the flitting swiftlets tell any passerby

what’s going on behind the façade.

“If they allow this to continue, what is the future of tour-

ism here?” asks Mr. Lim, exasperated. He notes Malacca has

applied to Unesco for World Heritage status—a decision is

expected as early as next month—but asks, “What’s the

point…when you allow this to go on?”

Malacca, capital of the state of Malacca in west peninsular

Malaysia, is one of Asia’s oldest and most-storied port cities,

and its old town, part of thecoreheritage zone, is bothamecca

for tourists andaplacewherepeople still live andwork.Centu-

ries-old shophouses, built by Dutch and Chinese settlers, are

still family homes to Chinese clans who settled here hundreds

of years ago. Designed to house a business on the ground floor

and a residence upstairs—although many in Malacca were

purely residential—these long homes feature lofty ceilings

and two or three open interior air wells that let sunlight and

rain fall on indoor gardens. Historically, they were decorated

with gilded carved wooden screens and ornate frescos.

Across the river is more history: The ruins of St. Paul’s

Church and Porta de Santiago, the gate to a fort built by the

Portuguese,who ruledMalacca from1511 to 1641, standnext to

the Stadthuys and Christ Church, built by the Dutch, who de-

feated the Portuguese and ruled until 1795. (The British, who

took over in that year, eventually destroyed most of the fort.)

But the city’s heritage is under pressure. Defying the con-

servation laws, private owners and developers make unau-

Left to right, the broadest home on Heeren Street is today used to produce birds’ nests for soup; St. Peter’s Church was built in 1710,though the interior reflects a 1916 renovation; a carved wooden vent above a door at Christ Church, which dates to 1753.

Airwells, such as this one at 111Heeren St., provide light andventilation to deep interiors.

thorized alterations, sometimes knocking buildings

down entirely, to cash in on mass tourism or alterna-

tive industries like lucrative bird-nest production. Tra-

ditional tradesmen—like goldsmithsandblacksmiths—

are moving out after generations of passing building

and craft from father to son, to be replaced by trinket

shops, pubs and karaoke bars.

Mourning the losses,Mr. Lim, who is fromPenang,

and Fernando Jorge, a Portuguese conservation ar-

chitect, spent six years researching and photograph-

ing hundreds of old buildings. In 2006, they pub-

lished their findings as a book, “Malacca: Voices

From the Street.”

Mr. Lim, 44 years old, fell in love with old Malacca

when he was hired in 1997 to help restore the Cheng

Hoon Teng temple, Malaysia’s oldest Chinese temple.

Mr. Jorge, 37, was drawn to Malacca’s historical con-

nection to Portugal. For their book they interviewed

more than 200 residents, as well as descendants of

former residents, to unravel the histories of dozens of

buildings. They visited archives in Lisbon, London,

the Hague, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, poring over

colonial-era maps and documents.

The book failed to slow the destruction. Some of

the buildings they photographed are gone or irrevoca-

bly changed. A theater built in 1887 on Java Lane by

Tan Hoon Guan, one of the leading Chinese business-

men of the day, was torn down in 2001. The property

has been vacant since.

“It’s depressing,” saysMr. Jorge. “Each timewe go

to Malacca we feel like we are visiting a friend in

prison who’s done nothing wrong and is being pun-

ished for no reason.”

During their research, Messrs. Lim and Jorge

found treasures that had literally been discarded

with the trash. “We picked up Dutch window brack-

ets thrown into drains by contractors,” says Mr.

Jorge. “We found painted wood frescos, relief stucco

work, granite carvings.”

The two examined one house that they believe be-

longed in the 17th century to the top Chinese general

in Malacca. They found carved, gilded wooden

plaques that commemorated a wedding in the house

at that time—and that some long-ago owner had used

to repair the kitchen ceiling. A university expert in

China, towhomMessrs. Lim andJorgehad sent photo-

graphs and detailed scale drawings, dated the build-

China-born 50-year veteransof Tay Miang Guan LiquorShop in 2002: the late TayHung Leng, left, son of thefounder, and senior staffmember Tay Kim Wha

Far left, wall paintingsand porcelain figuresdecorate the Cheng HoonTeng, Malaysia’s oldestChinese temple; left, thefacade of an abandonedshophouse built in theearly 20th century

ing to the early Qing dynasty, in the late 17th century.

The owner shrugged off these findings, unsure of

how they could benefit him or his family, and went

ahead with plans to sell. Messrs. Lim and Jorge sent

the government a dossier, complete with colonial-

era documents and maps and the university expert’s

opinion, and urged that the house be saved. They got

no response.

The house was sold and gutted; painted bright yel-

low, it now houses a small restaurant.

Another house, the site of a goldsmith business

from the late 19th century to 2000, was stripped of its

wall mirrors, painted glass panels and polished wood

cabinets to accommodate a fast-food outlet.

There are notable exceptions (see the trip plan-

ner). Some property owners have restored their heri-

tage buildings to their former glory, and turned

them into restaurants, galleries and small hotels.

But between 2001 and 2004 alone, Badan Warisan,

the Heritage of Malaysia Trust, determined at that

time that therewere 68 complete and partial demoli-

tions in Malacca’s core heritage zone—and more

than 60 traditional tradespeople, including jewelers

and herbal-medicine practitioners, moved out.

“From casual observation, we’ve noted that both

demolitions and the loss of traditional trades have

continued,” says Mr. Lim.

Part of the problem is money: Residents can’t af-

ford to maintain or renovate old buildings and will

take offers from buyers keen to cash in on tourism.

And many modern-day Malaccans are simply un-

aware of the history around them. For some, the long-

time family home is just a crumbling old building.

“Whenwe talked to people, we found that their un-

derstanding and sense of the value of their property

just wasn’t there,” says Mr. Lim. “They would be liv-

ing in a structure that’s hundreds of years old, and

just can’t see why a carving or a column is precious.

Their view was, ‘Just strip it and paint over it.’”

Mr. Lim believes the government should offer in-

centives and funds to encourage renovation and en-

courage tradesmen to stay. “Tourists want to see au-

thenticity,” he argues. “They’ll buy traditional

crafts; they’ll buy gold. They don’t just want to see

stalls selling trinkets.”

Zaini Nor, who as mayor from 2003 until early this

year oversaw much of what’s happened in Malacca,

says it can’t be done. “That is private property, not

government property,” he said in an interviewshortly

before his term ended in February. “It’s not fair to col-

lect taxes, then give it to private individuals.”

Still, the government does manage to fund large

projects that seem at odds with heritage conserva-

tion. In 2003, themunicipality repainted shophouses,

most privately owned, to try to brighten them up.

Each street got a color—one all in yellow, another in

blue, another in red—with 300-year-old and 50-year-

old buildings both getting the same shade simply be-

cause they stood side by side. Frescoes, ornate carv-

ings and art nouveau tiles that graced doorways and

facades were painted over. Some 1930s buildings had

been finished with a nubby material called Shanghai

plaster; the paint job destroyed the surface. Owners

have since repainted some buildings, but onmany, or-

nate detailing remains obscured.

In 2004, officials proposed a $6.4 million,

110-meter-high tower at the base of St. Paul’s Hill. An-

swering objections that it wasn’t in keeping with the

look and feel of the historic area, the state of Malac-

ca’s Chief Minister Mohamed Ali Rustam told the lo-

cal press that he “didn’t see how the tower would

spoil the charm or affect heritage sites close to it…

The 110-meter tower can also be painted tomatch the

colors of the other buildings near it.”

After workers preparing the site in 2006 dug up

more ruins of the area’s Portuguese fort, though,

the tower was relocated. Malacca decided instead

to build a replica of the fort there, and workers are

now cementing new bricks imported from Burma

Left, these rear sections of buildings on the road calledRiverside, some dating to the early 1800s and all standing onthe foundations of the Portuguese fort, were among thosedemolished in 2003 for a government tourism project; right,Chan Kin Wah’s timepiece-repair shop on Jonker Street wasfounded by his father in the ’20s.

The Leong San Thong, abenevolent associationfor one Chinese clan, builta ceremonial hall that’sstill used by members 80years later.

over the historical find.

In another attempt to draw tourists, Malacca is building a

large wooden water wheel attraction on the river. Malaccans

didn’t historically use water wheels, but after seeing one on a

recent trip to Jordan, the chief minister decided it would

make a good addition back home.

“The whole issue of authenticity just doesn’t seem to

matter in Malacca,” says Mr. Lim. “It’s all about history for

entertainment.”

The government seems similarly cavalier about the bird-

houses, as Malaccan K.C. Lee and her husband could attest. In

December 2002, they bought a derelict shophouse on Heeren

Street, which they lovingly renovated, furnishing it with an-

tiques and old artwork. So when their next-door neighbors at

No. 74 demolished the back of their building last year to put a

birdhouse behind the run-down façade, the couplewent to the

conservation department to complain. But nothing was done.

When the neighbors tore out a wooden beam from the com-

mon wall between the houses, it punched a hole through the

Lees’ side. The couple plastered the hole over. Already termites

have moved in, and the couple worries about water seepage

and the possibility of disease from the bird waste piling up be-

hind the wall. Then there is that mechanical chirping all day.

(The sound is switched off for the night, when the birds sleep.)

Mr. Lim reckons that more than 14 houses on the short

street have fallen prey to suppliers of birds’ nest soup. Many

in Malacca believe that some government agents take bribes

to let this happen, but government leaders deny the charge,

and say they’re doing what they can to stop the trade.

“It’s not allowed,butwehavetogive themtime tomoveout,”

MayorZaini said inFebruary.Butaccording toHeerenStreet res-

idents, some of the birdhouses have been there for three years

or more. Under the new mayor, Yusof Jantan, the pace of en-

forcement hasn’t picked up much steam. Residents say swiftlet

operators continue in the old city’s heritage core. “We are in the

process of relocating bird-rearing activities in the conservation

area on a case-by-case basis,” Mr. Yusof said in a statement.

So while the government pursues the heritage listing from

the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organi-

zation, and says it is doing its best to preserve theold city, some

residents say not enough has been done. “A big piece of history

is already lost, and we’re losing more,” says Chan Kin Wah,

whose family has run a timepiece-repair business on Jonker

Street in the old quarter for two generations. “We can’t do any-

thing much. People voice their opinions, and nobody listens.”

City and state leaders continue to approve development

projects that leave heritage buffs aghast—such as a modern

glass-and-chrome shopping mall at the base of St. Paul’s Hill.

The mall, which opened early in 2007, bisects the core heri-

tage zone, sitting between the Dutch and Portuguese ruins

and the river that fronts the old town. When contractors be-

gan work on the mall in 2003, more ancient ruins from the

Portuguese fort were unearthed. That didn’t stop the mall,

which sits flush up against these ruins, givingMcDonald’s pa-

trons a view of partially unearthed pieces of the fort wall.

On a recent visit to Malacca, Mr. Jorge took photos of the

wall. He shook his head at the sight of plants and a fountain,

added as decorative features; both will speed erosion. Then

he walked over to the second newly discovered part of the

fort, and snapped a photo of workers laying new bricks on top

of it. “When you find a ruin,” he said, “you just keep the ruin.”

Cris Prystay is a Singapore-based writer.

Trip plannerVisitors to Malacca can easily cover the centralhistorical districts on foot. The relatively small oldquarter can be covered in half a day, and thehistoric Dutch and Portuguese buildings, churchesand forts are a short walk across the river.

Highlights of the old quarter include the ChengHoon Teng (25 Jalan Tokong), Malaysia’s oldestChinese temple; the Baba and Nonya PeranakanMuseum (48/50 Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock), a goodexample of an ornate Peranakan—which pertains tothe culture of locally born people of Chinese ormixed Chinese and Malay descent—heritageshophouse; and an 18th-century Dutch shophouse (8Heeren St.) that has been redone as a modelconservation project by Badan Warisan Malaysia, thecountry’s heritage society.

Where to stayThe five-star Majestic Malacca is a wonderfullyrestored 1920s-era Straits Chinese art deco mansion,a short cab ride to the old quarter. Rates range from$250 a night for a deluxe room to $650 for a suite.

1881 Jalan Bunga Raya60-6-289-8000

Web: www.majesticmalacca.com

The quaint Heeren House is a restored Peranakanshophouse in the old quarter. A twin room with aMalacca River view goes for $46 a night.

1 Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock60-6-281-4241

Web: www.melaka.net/heerenhouse

The Snail House is a bed-and-breakfast in anold-quarter heritage shophouse that’s been lovinglyrestored by Serge Jardin and his wife, K.C., who isfrom Malacca. Guests get a taste of life in a traditionalshophouse that is still a real home. Rates range from$117 a night for two people to $221 for six.

76 Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock60-6-286-8598

Email: thesnailhouse@yahoo.com

Where to eatNancy’s Kitchen (7 Jalan Hang Lekir) offers the city’smost-traditional Peranakan food, residents say. Trythe beef rendang and ayam buah keluak, a traditionalchicken dish served in a mildly spicy sauce.

Famosa Chicken Rice Ball (28-30 Jalan HangKasturi, off Jonker St.) specializes in what the namesuggests: balls of flavored rice, a local specialty,served with chicken.

For those who love hawker food, localsrecommend the satay—barbecued meat on skewerswith peanut sauce—at Lung Hun Refreshment onthe corner of Lorong Hang Jebat and JalanKampung Kuli.

ToursMalacca is a tourist town, and literally dozens oftour operators can be booked through the MelakaTourist Information Centre ( 60-6-763-5388).

Badan Warisan’s 8 Heeren St. Heritage andInterpretive Centre offers a booklet for a self-guidedtour of old-quarter trades and crafts ($2.50). Staffat 8 Heeren St. can also provide guided architecturaltours of the quarter, if arranged in advance.( 60-6-281-1507; 8heeren@badanwarisan.org.my).The center is closed Sundays and Mondays.

The Majestic Malacca offers guests free guidedhistorical walking tours. The proprietors of SnailHouse offer a range of mostly half-day tours, likewisefree for guests. Others can join for about $60.

The steps from Bridge Street toTan Hoon Guan Bridge, namedfor the merchant who helpedbankroll it in 1887.

Teresa Tan, right, and hersister-in-law, Mrs. Li YingLiang, at Ms. Tan’s beautyparlor in Chennai. Followingthe 1962 Sino-Indian conflict,many Chinese womenbecame hairdressers tomake extra money for theirfamilies. Today, they’vecarved a niche forthemselves in this field. It iscommon for Chinese familiesacross India to run arestaurant or a dental clinicand a hair salon in tandem.

New Delhi

he panoramic lens takes them all in: from a 93-year-old woman who fled to India

on foot after WorldWar II fromwhat was then known as Burma, to a 23-year-old

man in Bangalore who defied his parents to become a dancer in the refined south

Indian tradition of Bharatanatyam. United by a thread of history, these Indian-

Chinese have persevered through turbulent times and carved out diverse lives in

cities and towns across India.

Their stories of assimilation, survival and loss have engrossed Vidura Jang Bahadur, a soft-

spoken 32-year-old photographer who lives in New Delhi. During the past three years, he has

encountered dentists, noodlemakers, tannery owners, teachers, hairstylists, lawyers, chefs, com-

puter programmers and others who trace their heritage back to the late 18th century. That is

when a Chinese sailor named Yang Dazhao is believed to have landed in Calcutta, now known as

Kolkata, and then recruited his countrymen to comework as laborers, according to Ellen Oxfeld,

an American scholar who studies overseas Chinese.

Today, however, their numbers are dwindling. As elders perish, some of the younger Indian-

Chinese are joining relatives who have migrated abroad, mostly to Canada and the U.S. Mean-

while, both mainstream schooling and intermarriage have played a role in marginalizing Chi-

nese cultural traditions. Modern development projects are displacing heritage buildings along

with the traditional tanneries that once provided a steady livelihood. Such factors have fueled

Mr. Bahadur’s quest to document the Indian-Chinese before their fragile worlds completely fade

from view.

Toting a Chinese-made backpack on trains, buses, motorcycles and rickshaws, Mr. Bahadur

has covered plenty of ground and taken thousands of pictures. He calls the project “Home,” em-

phasizing that the Indian-Chinese shouldn’t be viewed as outsiders. His goal is to move beyond

the typical communal images of dragon dances and other festivities to reflect individual percep-

tions of identity, especially in living spaces and work environments.

ManuAnand

TEXT BY Margot Cohen

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Vidura Jang Bahadur

VIDURAJANG BAHADUR

The Kim brothers, who liveand work in their New Delhishop, are among the fewHakka families that stillmake custom, handcraftedshoes. When theHakka-Chinese first arrivedin India in the early 1900s,many took up shoemakingbecause they saw anopportunity—it was a craftthe local Hindu communitylooked down on.

Ko Ko, at nearly 93 years old, in her house in Chennai. Sheand her late husband, who was a dentist, walked from whatwas then Burma to India in the early 1940s in search of abetter life. They moved from one place to another beforefinally settling in this seaport city in southern India.

The Ma family has lived inChennai for more than twogenerations. Like manyChinese from Hubei, theywere known for theirexpertise in setting teeth.Originally itinerantdentists who traveledfrom town to town, theywould set up shop for afew weeks before movingon. The family settleddown during the 1960s,when India establishedtravel restrictions onChinese residents.

“For me, ordinary life is far more interesting than something dramatic, like an event,” says

Mr. Bahadur.

Likemany Indians,Mr. Bahadur grewup knowing next to nothing about theHakka, Cantonese

and Hubeinese communities scattered in India. He had never visited Kolkata, site of a famed

Chinatown and home to about 3,500 out of the estimated 11,000 Indian-Chinese who remain in

this country of more than a billion people. In fact, it wasn’t until Mr. Bahadur decided to blithely

follow a friend to China in 2001 that he met an ethnic-Chinese from Kolkata and learned of In-

dia’s Chinese diaspora. He first taught English in Qingdao, thenwent to Beijing to study Chinese.

After returning to India in 2005, Mr. Bahadur says he initially felt a sense of dislocation. He

relished the chance to chat in Chinese and show Indian-Chinese people photos of China on his

laptop computer. Those images broke the ice and led him to pursue his project seriously in early

2006. He figures it is now about two-thirds complete and he aims to bring it to an end by

mid-2009 with a book launch and exhibition.

In his travels,Mr. Bahadur learned thatmigration fromChina accelerated in the 1930s and ’40s

because of political upheavals. Fanning out from Calcutta, families in search of stable incomes

settled in Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, and smaller outposts in the northeast. Dentists were a

particularly itinerant lot, moving frequently to find new sets of molars in need of attention.

The 1962 Sino-Indian war that grew out of border disputes between China and India im-

posed fear on the communities. More than 2,000 Indian-Chinese were interned in a camp in

Rajasthan state. Others were jailed or abruptly fired from factory jobs, and 2,500were repatri-

ated to China, according Ms. Oxfeld, author of the India chapter of “The Encyclopedia of the

Chinese Overseas.”

“That left such a deep scar on the elders. They didn’t want to talk about it to the young genera-

tion,” explains Jennifer Liang, a Kolkata-born Indian of Cantonese descentwhonow runs a volun-

tary organization for rural development in Assam state.

In the face of such silence, Ms. Liang says that Mr. Bahadur’s project could help reclaim the

history of these injusticeswhile highlighting the contributions Indian-Chinese havemade to India.

Margot Cohen is a Bangalore-based writer.

The Yee Hing Club isone of the few Chineseclubs remaining inKolkata. Set up alongthe lines of ethnicity,community andsurname, the clubsoffer Chinese a placeto spend time witheach other, often for adrink, or to eattogether, or to gamble.

Lawrence Liang, anethnic-Chinese lawyerin Bangalore, believesthat to his generation,the “concept of aChinese ‘homeland’ isan imaginary one,a construct of anation based onpopular culture.”

StephenSh

aver

(Zhang

);Zh

angWei

(3)

Beijingven as this capital cityand its citizens hurtletoward modernization,there are many whowish some things

would stay like they were. ZhangWei is one of them.

On any given day, 31-year-oldMr.Zhangcanbe foundwanderingthrough a Beijing hutong, one ofthose centuries-old narrow lanesthat once filled the city center.Armedwithacamera, theamateurphotographer walks the lanes,snapping the clay-tiled roofs andthewoodendoorwaysof thecourt-yard homes that line the alley-ways. Sometimes, he finds onlyrubble where once families had ahome. Other times, he catches thedestruction on film as it happens.

He’s seen it before: His family’scourtyard home—where theZhangs lived for 80 years—wasrazed by a bulldozer to make wayfor a five-story office building androad in June 2000. Since then,Mr.Zhang has devoted himself to pre-serving Beijing’s hutongs the bestway he knows how, with a cameraand his Chinese-language Website, www.oldbeijing.org. He evenquit his job at a public relationsagency in late 2002 to focus full-time on the Web site.

“I just wanted to use this Webpage to mourn for my old home,where I left allmychildhoodmem-

ories of growing up,” says Mr.Zhang, who photographs Beijinghutongs by day and loads the im-ages onto his Web site at night.

Not so long ago, hutongs werethemain arteries of life in Beijing.They spread out fromthe city cen-ter—the Forbidden City—andserved as community meetingplaces, markets, playgrounds androads for all who lived there. Thishutong way of life—which ispresent in other Chinese cities, in-cluding nearby Tianjin, but isunique to Beijing in its concentra-tion—is quickly disappearing. Oldcourtyard homes, or si he yuan,and hutongs are being torn downto make way for shiny office tow-ers, modern apartment blocks,shoppingmalls andnewroads.Ac-cording to a nonprofit hutong-preservation group, the BeijingCultural Heritage Protection Cen-ter, Beijing had more than 3,000hutongs in the1950s.Thegroupes-timates that only 1,000 remain.

“Some of the hutongs havegone forever,” says Mr. Zhang.“That’s why Iwant to record themin the pictures.”

Little did he know that manyothers would be drawn to hiscause. On weekends, 20 to 30 peo-ple—foreign and local, studentsand professionals—join Mr. Zhangin the hutongs, snapping photosfrom different angles. Taking pic-tures in groups “is a kind of pro-

test,” says Mr. Zhang, whose Webpage currently hosts more than120,000 photos of about 700 hu-tongs invaryingconditions—refur-bished,crumblinganddemolished.The site drawsnearly20,000view-ers a day, says Mr. Zhang, and has16,000 registered members.

Chen Li, a 37-year-oldmanagerat a local branch of internationalhome products retailer Ikea, is aweekend regular. “In the old-beijing.org, there are many kindsof people coming together withdifferent purposes,” he says.“Some are more interested in ar-chitecture, some are lovers ofBeijing culture, some are just fansof photography.”

Mr. Zhang’sWeb site hasn’t yetsaved any hutongs from destruc-tion, but the group has raisedawareness. “What we are tryingto do is to catch people’s hearts,”says Mr. Zhang.

The effort has cost him. In the

past five years, Mr. Zhang has runthrough 300,000 yuan (about$44,000) in savings. Nowadays,he has to ask his parents, both ofwhom are retired, for pocketmoney (about 25 yuan a day).

“I amsurewhat I amdoingnow

will be justified by history,” hesays. “No matter if it’s hutongs,courtyard homes, or even the an-cient walls…I just think we shouldget them protected for our chil-dren, and our children’s children.”

—Sue Feng

Zhang Wei, top, and his photos of hutongs today. From left to right: A crane prepares to demolish a courtyard home in downtownBeijing; a hutong in the midst of being demolished in January 2006; an as-yet untouched gate along Wenchang Hutong

Amateur photographer Zhang Wei fights tosave Beijing’s hutongs with a camera

American journalist and au-thor Pete Hamill picks his favor-ite books about cities.

GothamBy Edwin G. Burrows and MikeWallace, Oxford, 1999

Every great city is a palimpsest,an old text upon which new textsare inscribed before the old textis completely erased. My nativeNew York is one of those cities.This long volume (1,383 pages) isamong the most valuable I own.The authors adhere to scholarlyexactitude but never lose sight ofthe driving narrative that ledeventually to the city in whichNew Yorkers now live. The au-thors remind us that we had thegood fortune to be established bya company (the DutchWest IndiaCo.) and not a king or a religioussect. The Dutch left us a numberof gifts, the most important ofwhich was tolerance. In our dailylives, for those who have lived inNew York for generations or whoarrived last week, one fact is tri-umphantly clear: We live peace-

fully in a grand, imperfect city ofpeople who are not like us. Thisbook helps explain why.

A Time in RomeBy Elizabeth BowenKnopf, 1959

Across a long life (1899-1973), theIrishwriter Elizabeth Bowen pro-duced novels and memoirs thatare dense with a sense of place.By the time she decided to writeabout Rome and her stay therefor several months in the 1950s,she knew that there was only oneway to experience the city: Read—thenget out of the house. “Knowl-edge of Rome must be physical,sweated into the system, workedup into thebrain through the thin-ning shoe leather,” she writes inthis marvelous portrait. Bowen isnot afraid to admit her ignorance,but through a combination ofchance meetings, daily wander-ings and the sheer luck of gettinglost, Bowen feels Rome emerging,with all its mysteries, all its an-noyances and, above all, its thrill-ing and humbling sense of time.

Where the Air Is ClearBy Carlos FuentesObolensky, 1960

Carlos Fuentes’s first novel (pub-lished in Spanish in 1958) is set intheMexicoCity I knew in 1956-57,when I was a student there. Iwalked some of these streets,passed some of these fine houses,dangerous cantinas and dark, se-ductive nightclubs. But I was astranger, a young gringo with in-fantile Spanish and very littlemoney, and I could never knowthese places the way Fuentes did.After reading “Where the Air IsClear,” I surely knew them better.And just as living in Mexico Citymade me see New York moreclearly, sodid thisworkof high lit-erary art. Each time I return to itand start reading again, it’s like anew book.

ParisBy Andrew HusseyBloomsbury, 2006

Everybody is here in this historyof the “secret city” of Paris:Knights Templar, flâneurs, great

whores, artistic visionaries, char-latans, revolutionists, variousNa-poleons, Balzac and Camus, flat-out criminals, and even Joan ofArc. After reading “Paris,” youwill never seeEurope’smostbeau-tiful city, or its people, the sameway. A few years ago, when read-ing the book, I reminded a friendthat one reason I love Paris is thatit was founded by Celts, from awandering tribe called the Parisii.They saw the Île de la Cité, pro-tected by a flowing moat on allsides. Their wandering was over.

Invisible CitiesBy Italo CalvinoHarcourt, 1974

In this delightful work of fiction,the Tartar emperor Kublai Khansits talking with Marco Polo, theyoung traveler from Venice,about cities—55 in all. Both seemto know that every city begins itslife as a work of the imagination.

Mr. Hamill is the former editor ofthe New York Post and Daily

News. His books include the novel“North River” (2007).

Corbis

By Joseph Rago

By Lee Lawrence

Ceramics, bamboo, lacquer-ware—these are quintessentiallyJapanese materials. But Japan isquickly gaining a reputation forbeing at the cutting edge of an en-tirely different medium: glass art.Top U.S. galleriesroutinely includeJapanese works intheir glass showsandseriousglass col-lectors worldwideare steadily addingJapanese artists totheir collections.

This may come as a surprise,not least because glass art has arelatively short history in Japan.The Japanese have historicallyviewed the transparent, hardma-terial as foreignand somewhat ex-otic, and they have only recentlymade utilitarian glass part of ev-eryday life. ThePortuguese intro-duced glassblowing to Japanesecraftsmen in the 18th centuryand, although Nagasaki glass-blowers made highly prized ves-sels, larger-scale production onlysprang up in the 19th century, lay-ing the groundwork for top-qual-ity cut glass in the early 1900s.

This sense of “otherness” hasworked in the medium’s favor. Inthe 1920s and 1930s, an artistnamed Toshichi Iwata wasamong the first in Japan to seeglass as an artisticmedium, creat-ing fluid, color-rich vessels. An-other prominent glass artist, Kyo-hei Fujita, developed under Iwa-ta’s tutorship and earned interna-tional fame for glass boxeswhose gold and red surface pat-

terns are reminiscent of Japa-nese lacquerware. Not long afterU.S. artists launched the contem-porary glass movement in the1960s,Mr. Fujita and 50other art-ists established the Japan GlassArtcrafts Association headed byHisatoshi Iwata (son of Toshichi

Iwata). Since 1972,the Association hasbrought artists to-gether, staged exhi-bitions and dissemi-nated informationabout this art form.

In addition tothe Association, Ja-

pan today boasts 16 glass art pro-grams—many in universities—along with workshops in institu-tions like the Niijima Glass Cen-ter south of Tokyo. Regular inter-national exhibitions have also im-ported American, European andAustralian glass artists to leadclasses and demonstrations.

This has resulted in an expand-ing population of energetic Japa-nese glass artists, attracted inpart by themedium’s lack of long-standing traditions and the cre-ative freedom this affords. Atally by Atsushi Takeda, authorof “Contemporary Glass Artistsin Japan” (Asahi Glass Co.,2003), lists some 300 artists cur-rently active, many of themwomen. The range of work is as-tonishing. Kazumi Ikemoto cov-ers every millimeter of his ves-sels with surreal scenes, whileToshio Iezumi’s abstracts refractlight through laminated plateglass, drawing lyrical plays ofline. Artist Michiko Miyake cre-ates tightly patternedwall instal-

lations, a far cry from TakeshiFukunishi’s textured, often erup-tive sculptures in cast glass.

This creativity isn’t generatingmany sales yet in Japan, but it isexciting collectors and museumsin the U.S. “All of a sudden itseems there is a lot of strongworkcoming out of Japan. I feel that inJapanese glass now there is astrong, original voice,” says TinaOldknow, curator of contempo-raryglassat theCorningMuseum—one of the world’s most compre-hensive glass collections, based inCorning, NewYork.

Others echo thishigh praise. JuttaPage, glass curatorat the Toledo Mu-seum of Art in To-ledo, Ohio, regardsJapanese artists as“a lot more adven-turesome” thantheir counterpartselsewhere. Andwhen the Pitts-burgh (Pennsylva-nia) Glass Centershowcased 17emerging Japaneseartists, members ofthe InternationalGlassArtSociety re-sponded with sur-prise and wonder—and openedtheir wallets. “Everything wasunique,” says Randi Dauler, co-founder of the Pittsburgh-basedContemporary Glass Collectors. Attheshow,sheboughtavesselbyYa-suko Kita, andMs. Oldknow addedan abstract work by YoshiakiKojiro to her museum’s collection.

In Japan, at least one curator

shares thisenthusiasm.At theHok-kaidoAsahikawaMuseumofArt inHokkaido, Yoriko Mizuta curatedtwo landmark glass shows in 1997and 2003 and has juried countlesscompetitions in Japan. Still, publicappreciation for glass is low thereand “the number of collectors hasnot grown so much.”

Economic stagnation is partlyto blame, but there is another,more fundamental explanation:“Maybe Japanese prefer clayrather than transparent, brilliantglass,” she says in a telephone in-

terview fromHokkaido.Thisdeep-seated preference may explainwhy Japan never developed asconsistent a traditionofglassmak-ingas it did ceramics. Two leadingglass galleries in Tokyo, GalleryNakama andGallery Kai, are drop-ping art glass this year, accordingtoMs.Mizuta. Andwhile glass cu-rators like Ms. Oldknow and Ms.

Page are bolstering their collec-tions of Japanese art, Ms. Mizutahas not been able to secure finan-cial support for additional shows.

Ms. Mizuta believes youngergenerations, living in the glassand metal environments of mod-ern cities, may be developing “asympathy for contemporaryglass objects.” But “younger peo-ple are not so rich.” So while thequality of Japanese glass “hasgrown very much,” it still lacksan appreciative audience.

In the U.S., on the other hand,“we have a won-derful base ofglass collectorsand many size-able collectors’groups,” saysNew York galleryownerAlice Chap-pell, who beganshowing Japa-nese glass artover two decadesago. Collectors’groups organizelectures, demon-strations, studiovisits, trips,hands-on work-shops—all to edu-cate members onthemedium. This,

in turn, fosters appreciation andthe willingness to pay thousandsof dollars for works that show in-novation, creativity andmastery.Which explainswhymanyAmeri-can collectors today are settingtheir sights on Japan.

Ms. Lawrence is awriter based inBrooklyn, New York.

I confess to enjoying appall-ing movies. It takes a kind of re-verse genius to make somethinglike “Gigli” or “You Got Served.”There was such possibility, then,when M. Night Shyamalan’s hor-ror film “The Happening” blewinto box offices last week on agale of critical denigration; “theworst film since ‘Gigli,’” some-one even called it.

But “The Happening” is no“Kangaroo Jack.” It’s appallingall right, not as entertainmentbut in the literal sense of genu-inemoral obscenity. Fewma-jor studio releases are sothoroughly pro-death,so deeply anti-hu-man.We have ar-rived at astrange mo-ment inAmer-ican pop cul-ture whenmovie-goersspend two hours inthe theater being in-formed thatwe all deserve to die.

The “happening” ismillions ofmen, women and children killingthemselves, usually in creativeways, as when a zookeeper in-vites lions to chew off his limbsand a lady offs herself by French-kissing the toaster. The deaths,first believed to be terrorism, are

actually acts of nature. Trees arereleasing an airborne neuro-toxin, as revenge against man-kind for global warming, pollu-tion andnuclear power. The geno-cide, we are told, is condign pun-ishment for our ecologicalcrimes.

The conceit extends a meta-phor Al Gore proposed in his

2007 No-bel lec-ture: If“we

have be-gun towage waron the Earth

itself,” whywouldn’t the Earthfight back? By theend of the film, thedwindling band of sur-

vivors—whose moresensible response wouldhave been to blanket theworld’s forests with Agent

Orange—repents, and is thusspared hideous death. In a recentinterview, Mr. Shyamalan, bestknown for “The Sixth Sense”(1999), said that “The Happen-ing” is intended to “wake every-bodyup” and “get back to the cor-rect relationship with nature.”

Obviously it isn’t Hollywood’sfirst environmental disaster

flick. Think of 2004’s “TheDayAf-ter Tomorrow,” where all it takesis the CO2-induced obliterationof the East Coast for DennisQuaid to learn how to be a betterdad. But catastrophic climatechange in that movie was a sim-ple plot device that could be re-placed easily enough with, say,space aliens. “The Happening” ishonest-to-Gaia green agitprop:Like the Lorax, Mr. Shyamalan isspeaking for the trees.

Environmentalism’s seam ofmisanthropy traces back to JohnMuir, who founded the SierraClub in 1892, andprobably toTho-reau. We’re just another species,the thinking goes, or would behadour iniquities notmadeus un-worthy of a place in the ecosys-tem. The existence of Homo sapi-ens is an affliction and cause forprofound shame.

Today the position persistsalong the fringes of the “deepecology” movement, where ad-herents can still be found chant-ing, “Four legs good! Two legsbad!” But the message also hassomemainstream appeal: A best-selling book last summer was“The World Without Us,” inwhich science journalist AlanWeisman gleefully imagined hownature would respond if manabruptly went extinct and how

great it would be for the planet.“The Happening” merely takesthismisanthropy to its logical ex-treme.

Of course, most mainstreamgreens limit themselves to nag-ging on behalf of Mommy Na-ture. Yet amid themuch ado aboutglobal warming,the people prob-lem is asserting it-self with a neo-Malthusian ven-geance. Almost ev-ery element ofmodern life is reducible to car-bon. Like it or not, a higher popu-lation leads inexorably to moreanthropogenic greenhousegases.

The Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change ranks demo-graphic proliferation as a “driverfor emissions.” British environ-mental minister Hilary Benn—most recently spotted endorsingcarbon rationing cards as a set ofnew sumptuary laws—noteswith approval that “family plan-ning is the ultimate carbonoffset-ting scheme.” Even though PaulEhrlich’s “population bomb” hasbeen defused again and again,Jeffrey Sachs, Jared Diamond,Bill McKibben and others havecome to similar conclusions.

Since population control ledto such PR disasters of the late20th century asmass forced ster-ilizations under Indira Gandhiand China’s one-child policy, itmakes people queasy. Instead,the greens, when not plumping

for massive car-bon tax-and-reg-ulation schemes,focus on behav-ioral alterations—like taking publictransit or install-ing the correctlight bulbs. The

weight given to consumer-driven change, however, meansthat the people problem can’thelp but seep out into the cul-ture at large. Having kids is themost carbon-intensive choicemost people will ever make.

Not surprisingly, more than afew of the recent handbooks for“green living” recommend think-ing seriously about children. TheSierra Club says that the idealnumber is two. Messrs. Weismanand McKibben say it’s one. Mr.Shyamalan seems to think it’szero. It can’t be long before we’rebeing offered another helpful“tip”: Kill yourself.

Mr. Rago is an editorial pagewriter for the Journal.

Environmentalistsfind their

dream movie.

‘Cutting-edge’work, but

mainly boughtby foreigners.

Yoichi Ohira’s “Nostalgia” series.

CorningMuseum

ofGlass

M.E.C

ohen

BeijingCIRCUSSplendid: In a show produced specifi-cally for a run during the Olympics,government-established ChinaNational Acrobatic Troupe presents 13dramatic acts, from flips and tumblesto plate-spinning and juggling. Theacrobatics include a ballerina standing“en pointe” on a man’s outstretchedelbow, a pyramid of performersbalancing stacks of wineglasses ontheir feet and a “human peacock”created by 24 acrobats piled onto twomoving bicycles.

Poly Theatre, Poly Plaza,14 Dongzhimen South St.,Dongcheng District; July 4 to 10and Aug. 1 to 7, 7:30 p.m.Admission: 80 yuan to 1,280 yuan.86-10-6417-7845

Web: www.piao.com.cn

Hong KongDANCESylvia: London’s Royal Ballet revivesthe long-lost Frederick Ashton 1952choreography (a tribute to 19th-centuryFrench ballet) for this Léo Delibes workfrom 1876. Sylvia is a nymph who’scaptured by the huntsman Orion. Heattempts to woo her, but she resistsand waits for her true love, a shepherd.Will Eros, the god of love, step up andgive her a hand?

Grand Theatre, Hong Kong CulturalCentre, 10 Salisbury Rd.,Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon;July 17 and 18, 7:30 p.m.Admission: HK$180 to HK$880.852-2734-9009

Web: www.urbtix.hk

EXHIBITIONChina’s 1911 Revolution: China’s lastdynasty, the Qing, collapsed in 1911 asthe Wuchang Uprising—a rebellion ofrevolutionaries in Hubei who werediscovered by police—set off theXinhai Revolution. Within months, SunYat-sen would take the helm of thenewly christened Republic of China.American photographer Francis

Eugene Stafford captured images ofthat time, and the 60 in thisexhibition include shots of ordinarylife as well as of the burning ofHankou and of battles betweenimperial and revolutionary forces.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen Museum,7 Castle Rd., Central; to Nov. 19,10 a.m. to 6 p.m., to 7 p.m.Sundays, closed Thursdays.Admission: HK$10.852-2367-6373

Web: hk.drsunyatsen.museum

Kuala LumpurMUSICALDisney’s Beauty & the Beast: This isthe first Malaysian production of ashow that bagged nine nominationsfor Tony Awards on Broadway andhas been seen by 25 million peopleworld-wide. The stage version of theDisney animated film tells the tale ofsmart, strong-willed Belle. To save herfather, she accepts imprisonment byBeast, a gruesome, ill-temperedanimal who’s actually a handsomeprince burdened by a curse and badlyin need of love. Familiar tunes include“Be Our Guest,” “Belle” and the titlesong.

Plenary Hall, Kuala LumpurConvention Centre, Kuala LumpurCity Centre; to July 3; 3 p.m. and8 p.m., no 3 p.m. show June 27,no performances June 30.Admission: 90 ringgit to350 ringgit.60-3-2241-9999

Web: www.ticketcharge.com.my

MacauTHEATERLittle Donkey: Amsterdam’s TheatreTerra presents this musical show forkids, based on characters from apopular Dutch book series andfeaturing life-size puppets. LittleDonkey, rebuffed by his best friend,Yakky the Yak (who wants to playwith a new kid who has lots of toys),hunts for some socks missing fromthe clothesline after a storm, and

learns the stork they belong to isn’tscary after all. He also learns to sharehis best friend. The Sunday afternoonshow is in English; the rest are inCantonese (but with English songlyrics); all shows offer English andChinese surtitles.

Small Auditorium, Macao CulturalCentre, Ave. Xian Xing Hai, NAPE;July 11 to 13, 8 p.m., additional3 p.m. show July 13 in English.Admission: 140 patacas.853-2855-5555

Web: www.ccm.gov.mo

MelbourneMUSICALWicked: “The Wizard of Oz” gets akind of prequel: the tale of how twoyoung women in the Land of Oz grewup to gain the titles of the GoodWitch and the Wicked Witch of theWest. Based on a novel by GregoryMaguire, “Wicked” became a huge hiton Broadway with its retelling, inwhich green-skinned Elphaba—destinedto become the Wicked Witchsquashed by Dorothy’s house (or isshe?)—is shown to be the true hero.In college she even befriends thebeautiful, popular Glinda (destined tobecome the Good Witch), though therelationship has its ups and downs.

The Regent Theatre,191-197 Collins St.;June 27 to Aug 24, (previewperformances to July 11),various times,no shows Mondays or Tuesdays.Admission: A$79.90 to A$125.9061-132-843

Web: premier.ticketek.com.au

SeoulCONCERTThe Twelve Cellists of the BerlinPhilharmonic Orchestra: These 12musicians—usually part of the musicaltexture of a full orchestra—strike outon their own here, producing the richand surprisingly varied sounds of a12-cello choir. The two programs differslightly, but both evenings will include

a pair of tangos by Astor Piazzolla,Julius Klebgel’s “Hymnus” and EdithPiaf’s signature tune, “La vie en rose.”

Seoul Arts Center,700 Seocho-dong, Seocho-gu;July 10 and 11, 8 p.m.Admission: 30,000 won to140,000 won.82-2-3774-2671

Web: www.sac.or.kr

ShanghaiDANCEThe Butterfly Lovers: The ShanghaiBallet presents this Chinese folk taleabout a student romance. The heroineis initially disguised as a boy so shecan receive schooling, but quickly fallsin love with a good friend and fellowclassmate. They travel back to herhometown together, but tragedy

Top, Sydney: The Message Sticks Film Festival will mark 25 years of WarlpiriMedia—aboriginal TV; above, Tokyo: a Kabuki costume from ‘Kazari’

Message

Sticks

Film

Festival

(WarlpiriM

edia);Mitsukoshi(costum

e);J

oanMarcus(‘Wicked’);Ru

bénRa

mos

Balsa(‘Pies

dePlom

o’)

ensues when her family insists shemarry another classmate, anill-mannered and cruel boy.

Opera Hall, Shanghai Oriental ArtCenter, 425 Dingxiang Rd.,Pudong District;June 28 and 29, 7:15 p.m.Admission: 100 yuan to 500 yuan.86-21-6217-2426

Web: www.culture.sh.cn

SingaporeEXHIBITIONTransient Light Whispering Breeze:Spanish multimedia artist RubénRamos Balsa, who exhibited in lastyear's Venice Biennale, collaborateswith Singaporean sound artist YuenChee Wai in a show whose themesinclude the nature of time. Amongthe site-specific works on display is alight bulb that contains what appearsto be a pair of dancing feet.

The Atelier, National Museum ofSingapore,93 Stamford Rd.;to July 13, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.Free admission.65-6332-3659

Web: www.nationalmuseum.sg

SydneyFESTIVAL

Message Sticks Film Festival2008: This festival chooses

from among the latestworks by Australia’saboriginalfilmmakers. Thisyear’s lineup

includes “River of No Return,” adocumentary about Frances Djulibing,a Yolngu woman from a remotecommunity in North East ArnhemLand, who aspires to be theindigenous Marilyn Monroe. A handfulof shorts will also be shown, amongthem “Yolngu Guya Djamairr,” a lookat how a reinterpretation of a dancefrom “Zorba the Greek” by 10aboriginal dancers became aninternational Web sensation.

Sydney Opera House,Bennelong Point;July 5 and 6, various times.Free admission;for guaranteed seating,day passes A$20 to A$30.61-2-9250-7777

Web: www.sydneyoperahouse.com

TokyoEXHIBITIONKazari: This exhibit explores theobjects and routines involved inkazari, the act of adorning, as anancient ritual that still permeatesJapan’s modern culture. It extendsfrom the clothes and accessoriesthat people wear to decorations andceramics used in festivals. Items ondisplay include an Edo-periodhandscroll and pitcher, both ornatelydecorated, an early 20th-centuryKabuki costume, and an intricatelycarved helmet in the shape of

“shachi,” a fierce-lookingmythological fish.

Suntory Museum of Art,9-7-4 Akasaka, Minato-ku;to July 13. 10 a.m. to8 p.m., to 6 p.m.Sundays and Mondays,closed Tuesdays.Admission: 1,300 yen.81-3-3479-8600

Web: www.suntory.co.jp/sma

Tour: AsiaDANCERiverdance: This lively, popular showof traditional Irish step dancing hasbeen around for more than a decade.The act is characterized by the iconiclong line of performers tap-dancingin almost-unnaturally perfect,fast-paced sync—with upper bodiesheld still. The dancers haveperformed to sold-out andrecord-setting audiences in Europe,North America and Asia, and videosand CDs of performances have

topped U.K. charts; one won aGrammy in the U.S. If you want tocatch a show, book fast. Tokyoperformances are sold out, and onlya few seats remain for Beijing.

Osaka: Osaka Festival Hall,2-3-18 Nakanoshima, Kita-ku,Osaka-shi, Osaka-fu; July 8 to 13,

various times (July 11 show issold out).Admission: 9,000 yen to11,000 yen.81-6-6362-7301

Web: www.hipjpn.co.jp/pcBeijing: Opera House, NationalCentre for the Performing Arts,

2 Chang An Jie;July 24 to 27, 7:30 p.m.,additional showJuly 26, 2:30 p.m.Admission:780 yuan to 980 yuan.86-10-6417-7845

Web: www.piao.com.cn

Far left,Melbourne:

‘Wicked’upturns ‘The

Wizard of Oz’;left, Singapore:‘Pies de Plomo

(Zapateado Luz),’ byRubén Ramos Balsa from

‘Transient LightWhispering Breeze’

IsmaelR

oldan(illo),Sing

aporeArt

Museum

(painting)

eng Zhengjie, 40 years old, was an art teacher in middleschools and universities in his native Sichuan province beforehe moved to Beijing in 1995 to devote himself to creating art.

He is now best known for contemporary paintings of Chinese womenwho sport bright red lips and turquoise hair. InMay, one of these por-traits fetched $145,000 at a Christie’s auction in New York.

As Mr. Feng’s work gets more attention around the world, it hasbeen shown in several prestigious galleries, including in a group exhi-bition at Veronique Maxe Gallery in Paris in 2003 (“Femmes deChine”) and a solo exhibition at Marella Gallery in Milan in 2005.

What he says he would really like, though, is to have a solo exhibi-tion at a world-class museum. His favorite venues are listed below.

Tate Modern, London

“The museum itself is apiece of art,” says thepainter. It was built in 2000in an old industrial buildingin the heart of London. Tohave a solo show here, saysMr. Feng, would be acareer-defining momentbecause the museum setsa high bar: It has“international influence.”

The Singapore ArtMuseum, Singapore

“The SAM aims atpresenting thecontemporary artworks inthis region, and atpromoting arts education,exchange, research anddevelopment. I have longbeen paying close attentionto this museum…My stylematches its constantly(evolving) artistic approach.”

Artist Feng Zhengjie’s favorite world-class museums

Solomon R. GuggenheimMuseum, New York

This museum is owned andoperated by a privatefoundation that also ownsthe Bilbao, the DeutscheGuggenheim in Berlin andthe Peggy GuggenheimCollection in Venice.“Standing in the middle ofthe (building’s) huge spiral,you can see the sunlightshine in.”

The Museum of ModernArt, New York

MoMA has recently beenrevamped and expanded ina multimillion-dollarrenovation in midtownManhattan. An artist whois able to do a soloexhibition in this museum,says Mr. Feng, has attaineda high accolade in theinternational art world.

Centre Pompidou, Paris

The Centre Pompidou wasdesigned by Richard Rogersand Renzo Piano, both ofwhom have since won thePritzker Prize forarchitecture. “Standing infront, you can clearly seethe movements ofescalators and water pipes.That gives you a strongvisual sense of vitality andcreativity,” says Mr. Feng.