I’ve already shown you how the Mayans’ colorful traditional clothes were made — now you can see how the local women and girls wash them, on the shores of the beautiful Lake Atitlan.
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Vintage Washing
Tag: culture
KABUL — It took me eight days to convince 37-year-old Gul Rukh to let me conduct this interview. The Afghanistan woman living in Kabul feared talking openly about her waitress job at the Mumtaz Mahal Wedding Hall. “I earn $200 a month at the hotel,” she says. “I am very happy doing my job, but I am treated very badly by society, my relatives and neighbors for doing it. They scoff at me and believe working as a hotel waitress is not a good job for a woman. But when my husband became disabled, I had to find work to […]
Animal rights activists have attacked an annual Dog Eating Feast, which asks the larger question over values in modern China.
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No Words, No Harm
I took this picture of Jain women, who had apparently taken a vow of silence, near the famous Taj Mahal. But what I remember best is that, since their religion advocates non-violence and deep respect toward all living things, several women used a straw broom to sweep before them so as not to crush insects […]
BEIJING — Three years after his imprisonment, still deprived of his passport and shut off in a bubble of official Chinese silence, Ai Weiwei, 57, neverthless appears ubiquitous everywhere else on the planet. The Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition hall in Berlin devoted a huge retrospective entitled “Evidences” from April to July. His last documentary, Ai Weiwei’s Appeal […]
In many countries, musicians were Latin America’s leading social critics and political activists of the late 20th century. Not anymore.
TEHRAN — A member of the Iranian Parliament’s cultural affairs committee says he and his colleagues are “firmly opposed” to any Iranian legislator attending the World Cup in Brazil “for any reason” — primarily because the country should save money. In response to chatter about sending certain members to the global soccer event, Hojjatoleslam Seyyed […]
BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s parliament is set to debate a bill to ban plastic surgery for anyone under the age of 18, in response to reports of its increasing popularity among teens in one of the continent’s more image-conscious countries. The bill, initially presented in March, is ready for debate in the lower house of […]
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Slavic Soul
During our 2001 cruise on the Volga, we got to see some of the many faces of Russia, including the famously melancholic tunes that Slavic music is famous for. It’s a pity the photograph doesn’t allow you to hear the tear-jerking balalaikas and accordions.
BEIJING — Before 2000, public space in China dedicated exclusively to young people was basically non-existent. Rock-loving youngsters, for example, had nowhere to go except for a few small, dark bars. Woodstock represented an unattainable dream. But times have changed since then. First the Midi Music Festival, one of China’s largest rock music festivals, was […]
History of toilets? Inner workings of the kiwi? Lawnmowers? More than you ever wanted to know about things you might not even want to know anything about. Unless you do…
TREVISO — This kind of news is hard to swallow: the historic Beccherie restaurant in Treviso that created tiramisu decades ago, will close its doors March 30. Gone will be the original version of the legendary dessert that has become a worldwide symbol of Italian cuisine. That’s because the economic crisis has been tough on […]
Why can’t the Italian state take better care of one of the world’s most treasured archeological sites? A tour of ancient artifacts, contemporary degradation and out-of-order bathrooms.
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Winding Back Time
Lake Atitlan, in the Guatemalan highlands, is surrounded by villages in which Mayan culture is still prevalent, and traditional dress is still worn. This old woman, winding yarn on her doorstep, is wearing a hat made with a long band of embroidered textile rolled tighlty aound her head. The weavers in the villages nearby produce […]
China tries to come to terms with its not-so-distant past.
-Commentary- For years, major sporting events have been hosted in the superbly wealthy Gulf States. Now, renowned Western cultural institutions are following suit. But these high-minded museums and cultural organizations are encountering a familiar problem. In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the French Louvre, the American Guggenheim and other branches of […]
ROME — Lo Chiameranno Andrea (“We’ll Call Him Andrea“) is the name of a famous film by Vittorio De Sica, where two elementary school teachers who yearn for but are unable to have a child, compensate by giving him this hypothetical name. It was 1972 and the male name Andrea represented the essence of Italy, […]
Your weekly shot of what the Arab world is saying, hearing and sharing.
The troubled Colombian city has become a mecca for street art.
SANA’A — Antar Al-Aldharij pins his opponent down on the mat without using a dagger or a rifle. Yemen“s national judo champion, who trains every afternoon in a gym just outside of the capital, Sana’a, just needs the strength of his arms and bare hands. Al-Aldharij and his teamates share the small room of just […]
MOSCOW — The city of Moscow is covered with graffiti, and proudly so. Members of the “Best City On Earth” project have said they will paint street art on 150 buildings by September. Meanwhile, there is graffiti at the Faces & Laces urban culture festival in Gorky Park, as well as an exhibition of a […]
When the well-meaning environmental concerns of city folk clash with the lives of the poor and indigenous who inhabit South America’s rain forests and mining territory.
-Essay- PARIS – From the Turkish protests in Istanbul to the French anti gay-marriage protests, and from euthanasia rights to fledgling forms of participatory democracy, it is difficult to ignore the growing aspirations of Europeans toward autonomy and freedom of choice. This new individualization dynamic is silently revolutionizing European values. Individualization is the the power […]
In Burundi, what was once marshland is now yielding crops each harvest season.
More and more immigrants think having “Western” features is a secret to success.
An interview with Zhang Xianmin, founder of one of the many independent cultural events that were banned last year by the Chinese government.
AMSTERDAM – Land of tulips, windmills and canals, the Netherlands is always an enchanting country to visit. But 2013 holds some special surprises. Here in the capital, the eccentric and transgressive mix with more classic beauty and history: from the coffee shops and red light district to the many museums and over 7,000 monuments sprinkled […]
Food shortages are almost always a problem of supply, not demand, but don’t tell that to some top Chinese officials maintaining a tight grip on national family planning policy.
TURIN – So it’s like this: after having solved a mystery involving the Pope in Rome and the esoteric world of Leonardo da Vinci in Paris, the new Dan Brown thriller will be set in the streets of Florence, as well as in the pages of Dante’s Inferno. Dan Brown is no master of style, […]
SAINT-NAZAIRE- “Business is slow these days, too slow…” says 34-year-old restaurant employee from Saint-Nazaire in western France, Cedric Derouin. As he dries drinking glasses, he talks about the consecutive closings of dozens of local businesses, the laying off of his only coworker a few months ago. He shares his uncertain future with the workers from […]
LENS – Matthieu Debas, the owner of the “Chez Cathy” bar, is peeling some potatoes for tonight’s French fries. Across the street, he can see the faint lights of the construction site. On Rue Paul-Bert, cars are zigzagging around heavy equipment, lit up by the lights of the diggers. As the inauguration date of the […]
-Essay- After Mo Yan won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, many Chinese people predicted that this would contribute greatly to the expansion of Chinese culture in the world. I sincerely hope so. However, in peaceful times the transmission and penetration of a culture are extremely slow. The Italian Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), was […]
PARIS – Ever seen a human scalp transformed into a drumhead? Or a shrunken head with its lips sewn shut to keep the dead from casting spells from beyond the grave? With their hair uncannily preserved, these centuries-old trophies seem to have retained all their eerie powers. They are some of the key pieces of […]
Why it is time for British art to leave its bad boy behind.
PARIS – At every exhibit opening, he takes off his shirt, sits on a pedestal, his back to the public, waiting for a visitor he will never see and doesn’t want to hear. Turning on his MP3 player in order to block out cruel comments and hurtful jokes is part of the ritual. Tim Steiner […]
NOBELPRIZE.ORG (Sweden) Worldcrunch STOCKHOLM – The 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to 57-year-old Chinese writer Mo Yan. 2012 #NobelPrize in #Literature was awarded to Mo Yan “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.” — Nobelprize_org (@Nobelprize_org) October 11, 2012 The official site of the Nobel Prize describes Mo […]
KIGALI – In Rwanda, getting married has always been a complicated affair. Before anything, the families of the bride and groom sit down for a long negotiation. Once they have exchanged gifts and agreed that the couple should indeed marry, and of course settled on what the dowry will be, the traditional wedding can start. […]
TOKYO – Toru Hashimoto, the young and often controversial mayor of Osaka who shot to fame for his attacks on Japan’s central government and bureaucrats, has chosen a new target — but this time, attracting little sympathy from the Japanese youth. Last March, Hashimoto decided to take disciplinary action against government employees who did not […]
The Royal family, the English pound and driving on the left, none of these British characteristics seem to be in synch with the rest of the world. However, the British don’t particularly care what others might think. Their traditions have a special meaning for them. They are the most complicated, most contradictory, and most interesting […]