Category: Asia

July 4th, 2012 by remkodeknikker

Min-Sik Choi is the godfather of the Korean actors guild. He established himself as a cult hero with his role in Oldboy (2003) and I Saw the Devil (2010).

At the Lincoln Center during the the New York Asian Film Festival 2012, Mr. Choi appeared as the leading guest of the festival speaking in Korean. Toward the end of Nameless Gangster, Mr. Choi sends his son to the US with the words ‘English makes you number 1’ and perhaps Mr. Choi is too big for Korea too. With his role in Nameless Gangster or The Golden Age of Crime he proves himself the leading actor transcending Korean cinema.

The director Jong-Bin Yoon is a fan of both Martin Scorsese and Mr. Choi, and the protagonist’s name Ik-hyun Choi (played by Mr. Choi) refers to Mr. Choi, according to the producer. Min-Sik Choi and Jung-Woo Ha (playing the role of Hyung-bae Choi) play two characters whose mind and muscle combine Read more of this article »

Posted in Korea, Movie Reviews

December 4th, 2006 by remkodeknikker

In his project 100×100 Michael Wolf photographed 100 rooms in Hong Kong’s oldest public housing estate.

Posted in China, Mini Posts

March 6th, 2005 by Oyosa

Detention-life was tasteless and all detainees felt lonely in this small world, especially once there was no handwork to do. The materials we normally used for our work hadn’t arrived and no one knew how to kill their time. So it was that one morning in March 2002, some of us were playing cards, while others read some outdated newspapers and magazines.

With a few of the more intellectual inmates, I talked about an incident that had happened at Linshui airport in Hainan province one year ago. A Chinese warplane and an American plane had crashed into each other. One of the inmates had worked at the airport as an air force mechanic two decades ago.

Suddenly people started shouting. They’d seen a mouse and immediately began trying to seize it. A few minutes later the mouse was caught and then was hung downward by a string on the steel line, which we ordinarily used to hang our damp clothing to dry. It still struggled, squeaking floundering tones, “ji, ji, ji.”
“I’ll beat you dead! Beat you dead! The police beat me as brutally as I’ll beat you,” one young man yelled waving a short plastic stick in his distorted hand.

Others started yelling and the mouse soon died from the savage beating by detainees, who found revenge in their rage at the way they had been treated themselves. The inmates began talking noisily about police torture previously undergone by them. Read more of this article »

Posted in China, Fiction

February 21st, 2005 by Shawkat Haider

You are far away
Amid all the splendors of Sakura
And murmurs of colossal Spring;
Merging hopes in azurine sky
With the vast unseen meadows.

I can hear the whispers
Touching Toronto skyline
Saving last dews at the gates of dawn. Read more of this article »

Posted in Japan, Poetry

February 21st, 2005 by Lanie Shanzyra P. Rebancos

1.

Like grandma’s quilt-
patches of colors on the
hillside.

Smell of toasted leaves
at my backyard-
lingers.

Talking to his self
on his dining table-
squirrel. Read more of this article »

Posted in Philippines, Poetry

December 6th, 2004 by Sultana Raza

Long white robes
sarees, shalwars
steaming Indian food
incense, flowers
heavily perfumed roses
white bindis
between eyes
blue, green or gray
tears
glistening or
coursing down
music
dulcet, sweet, soft
reaching high Read more of this article »

Posted in India, Poetry

August 30th, 2004 by Dipak G. Parmar

The Ganesh Festival is a ten-day festival celebrated with great pomp and festivity. This festival falls in late August or early September. It begins on the fourth day of Bhadrapada Shukla Paksha and concludes on the fourteenth day of Bhadrapada Shukla Paksha, as per the Hindu calendar.

During British rule over India, freedom fighters were prohibited from gathering in public places. To circumvent this restriction, India’s revolutionary freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak, popularly known as Lokmanya Tilak, organized the Ganesh Festival in Maharashatra in 1894, promoting it as a public festival. During the Festival, they performed stage shows and used other means to keep alive and spread the need and importance of freedom, while also creating a social solidarity among the people. Today, its celebrations are held throughout all of India, and more particularly in Maharashtra. This Ganesh festival is considered an essential part of Maharashatrian life and they celebrate it wherever they are, whether inside or outside of India. It is a festival for worshipping Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles and conqueror of the soul and mind. All Hindus worship Lord Ganesha before any important function, praying to the Lord to remove all obstacles to prosperity.

This custom springs from the mythological story of God Shiva and Parvati who had remained childless for a long time after the birth of their first son Kartik. While Lord Shiva went to the Himalayas for tap (religious austerity), Parvati, in order to avoid loneliness, created a statute of clay in the form of a son and using her divine power instilled life into Ganesha. Read more of this article »

Posted in India, Op-Ed

June 14th, 2004 by John Dwyer

Camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Herat, Afghanistan, have been in existence since the mid-1990s. Because of the long drought that beset Afghanistan, IDPs were flocking to urban areas and it was for those IDPs that the camps were formed. Subsequently, victims of destruction caused by the chronic wars and those who had fled their villages because of ethnic tensions, arrived at the camps. All were poor and most were landless.

In 2002, I coordinated activities within three IDP camps. Our purpose was to enable the IDPs to have a stable and safe environment that provided them life’s basic provisions, while they awaited the time when they could return to their villages of origin.

Surveys were being conducted by international organizations in many of the IDPs villages of origin to determine what was needed to enable returnees to live both peacefully and decently. These surveys investigated the living conditions, security, water availability, land availability, food distribution and other important survival factors. The surveys were not fully completed when I left the camps. Returns, however, were taking place. Rain was falling in many areas, and crops were beginning to flourish again. Read more of this article »

Posted in Afghanistan, Op-Ed

April 3rd, 2004 by May Ng

Afraid to sleep lest the nightmare might begin again
Lulled by the magic show, called Ceasefire,
Put on by the chameleon government of SLORC, SPDC…
The calm before the storm is always the bad news for you little children of Burma who have lived in a shipwrecked state for too long.

Comforted by the mistaken notion
That it could never be too bad for us Burmese
Who could always get used to the hardships, deprivations, tortures and military domination
In my inescapable nightmares
Where all of you are forever in agony and we ourselves and everyone ceases to care.
From my vantage point of view I see the optimism of the free world slipping further and further out of reach
from the political chaos of Burma

Afraid to sleep lest the nightmare will come again
I saw the dead faces of the living generals of Rangoon
Under their tight brown masks hardly covering their vacant greedy minds
Inescapable bad dreams where so much blood had shed since they took power Read more of this article »

Posted in Fiction, Myanmar

February 24th, 2004 by Aliakbar Campwala

Describing myself, I am the thin slim 100,000 rupiah note that was printed years ago in a government workshop. The day I was born, I was transferred to a bank with a bunch of my friends who were one-by-one leaving for the free world.

Having a picture of Sukarno and Hatta on my body, I thought I would be treated with more respect than my other low value friends. I was always proud of my paper quality which was so superior to them and ranking the highest among them gave me a feeling that I would be treated more carefully and with more respect by my owners. But fate had her own plans.

The day came close when I was stripped out from my bunch and was handed over to my first owner who carefully kept me in his wallet. I had no idea of what would be the outside world,but I was ready to face destiny. And from then on, I am being exchanged from one wallet to another enjoying their sometimes stinking, sometimes good leather all the time.

Describing my till today life experiences, I would mention that I enjoy the best hospitality when I am in the pockets of poor people who take care of me like I am their newborn kid. Even though they hide me in clothes and cupboards for a long time, they exchange me only when they are in a really urgent need to get something in exchange for me, and most of the time it’s school fees, or I would enter into a warung(small shop selling household items),or land in one of the stinking wet traditional vegetable markets. Read more of this article »

Posted in Indonesia, Op-Ed