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CHANGING ASIA
POPASIA
Luxury rules in
China
Japan's celebrity
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J UN E 17-30 , 2011
THE RETURN OF
FOOD
INFLATION
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on food, desperation and starvation often follow an uptick in the
price of something as simple as
bread or rice.
In China, low income families
would cut their daily meals to just
rice with one dish of vegetables
mixed with a little meat. But that is
already considered a luxury for
those who live in poorer provinces
like Inner Mongolia. Pork prices in
China have risen by one-third since
last year and other commodities
continue to become less affordable.
For the lower-income Chinese,
their biggest fear is that food
inflation would continue its
relentless climb.
Inflation reached 5.5 per cent in
May, which outpaced the recent
high of 5.4 per cent in March and
5.3 per cent in April.
In India, food prices are also
continuing their unprecedented
climb. Food makes up half the
consumption basket of the average
household in India, more if you
are poor.
To combat inflation, India's
central bank has raised interest
rates nine times since mid-March
last year. Still, the food price index
climbed 8.37 per cent in May. India
has also banned exports of grain
and milk products, to make sure
there is enough to meet domestic
demand. It is also trying to fix its
creaky food distribution system,
which is so inefficient that more
than a quarter of grain and farm
produce is lost between the farm
and the shop shelves.
But as inflation rears its ugly
head again, the poor are being
pushed to the edge.
Asia News Network
asianewsnet@gmail.com
PH OTO BY AF P
his issue’s cover story
looks at how inflation
hits many Asian
countries, affecting not
only the poor but the
middle class as well. As The Straits
Times notes, steep surges in food
prices are a global problem that
hits the pocketbooks of consumers
in China and Indonesia. The UN
Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO) index of essential food
commodities has risen by 36 per
cent in the past 12 months.
Consumers in the United States
or Britain can afford to absorb
price rises as they spend only
about 10 per cent of their disposable income on food. But in
Africa or poorer Asian countries
such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka and
the Philippines, where many
households spend 50 per cent to
70 per cent of their total budget
JUNE 17-30, 201 1 • V o l 6 No 1 2
COVER STORY
Inflation Rears Its Ugly
Head, Again P6
Asia’s poor
are being
pushed to
the edge as
prices of
commodities
continue to
climb
POLITICS P17
CHANGING ASIA P26
ENTERTAINMENT P36
Disputed Islands
Tensions surrounding the
contested islands being
claimed by China and
several Southeast Asian
nations threaten Beijing’s
relations with Asean
The China Factor
Luxury rules in China’s new
generation
Canned Dream
Why Bollywood still fails to
get major awards at the
Oscars and Cannes
SPECIAL REPORT P18
Growing Islamic Radicalism
Hard-liner groups are on
a shopping spree at
Indonesian campuses
BUSINESS P28
Going Global
Thailand’s retail
conglomerate creates
a footprint in China
POPASIA P38
Survey Says
Polls as barometers of
Japanese celebrities'
popularity
F E AT U R E S
ARTS & CULTURE P42
Work Hard, Play Hard
South Korean CEOs take
time off
Li Na Makes History!
China’s tennis star sets a
new record for her country
and Asia
In The Service Of The Gods
Most monks enter the
monasteries as children and
move on to other
responsibilities
FOOD 34
TRAVEL BITES P44
EXPLORE P46
Fantastic Feast
Bali offers sublime tastes for
devotees of fine food
Dig In!
Gastronomic delights at
Manila’s restaurants
Beyond The Sacred
Siam Reap has evolved
to become a place with
more to offer than just
Angkor Wat
PEOPLE P41
LIFESTYLE P32
PH OTO BY C HI NA DAI LY
LIFE P22
Jail For The Rich And Famous
India’s notorious Tihar Jail
is now filled with high-profile figures
COVE R IM AG E | P H OTO BY A F P
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COVER STORY
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: A child
watches over a rice pot at a market in
Manila on February 4. A third of
Philippine school children are stunted
because poverty has forced them to eat
too little food for years, according to a
latest government study. Data showed
that 33.1 per cent of 100,000 students
surveyed across the country suffered
from chronic malnutrition.
Food Inflation
Is Back
By Jonathan Eyal
The Straits Times
I
❖❖ LONDON
PH OTO BY A F P
The reasons
behind the
food crisis of
2007-09
period and
that of today
are different.
But the result
is the same:
the poor are
being pushed
to the edge
6•
June 17-30, 2011
June 17-30, 2011
n Tunisia earlier this year, anti-government protesters waved bread loaves,
shouting: “We can’t live by bread and
water alone.” Meanwhile, in Egypt,
Yemen and Algeria, frying pans were
held aloft by demonstrators to convey the
same message.
High food prices were just one reason for
the political unrest in the Arab world. Yet
they remain an important factor. For, with
little arable land and scarce water resources, the Middle Eastern and North African
region imports more food per capita than
any other; Egypt is the world’s single biggest wheat purchaser.
Steep surges in food prices are also a global problem that hits the pocketbooks of consumers in China and Indonesia. The UN
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
index of essential food commodities has
risen by 36 per cent in the past 12 months.
Policymakers are taking note. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited the FAO
headquarters in Rome earlier this month to
discuss improvements in food supplies.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has put
the problem of sharp swings in global food
prices on the agenda of the upcoming
Group of 20 summit of industrialised states.
Everywhere, leaders are scrambling to
find solutions to a phenomenon which, according to the World Bank, has condemned
44 million people to malnourishment, with
serious consequences for political stability.
But there are no quick-fix solutions.
Food price fluctuations happen all the
time and, up to a point, are useful: They
provide important signals to producers
and consumers, helping governments to
shape responses.
However, the global food system breaks
down when confronted by large, unexpected price swings. When uncertainty
increases, risk-averse farmers invest less
in production, creating future shortages.
Meanwhile, poor households are immediately affected.
Consumers in the United States or
Britain can afford to absorb price rises as
they spend only about 10 per cent of their
disposable income on food. But in Africa
or poorer Asian countries such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines,
where many households spend 50 per
cent to 70 per cent of their total budget
on food, desperation and starvation often
follow an uptick in the price of something
as simple as bread or rice.
As World Bank president Robert Zoellick
noted last month, food inflation is “the biggest
threat today to the world’s poor”.
Although the current price spikes superficially resemble those of the 2007-09 food
crisis, there are differences.
During the 2007-09 period, the main
problem was the price of rice which at one
point shot up by 50 per cent. This time,
however, rice supplies are abundant. But
prices of other basic food items such as
cooking oil, meat and dairy products have
registered large increases, while cereals
are 44 per cent more expensive now than
during early last year.
More importantly, while the previous
grain shortage was prompted by ‘traditional’ causes such as droughts in key producing
countries, the current spike is the result of
far more intractable developments.
The first has little to do with agricultural cycles, but with the hike in the price
of fuel. Rising oil prices lead to higher
fertiliser costs, as well as bigger expenditures on running farming machinery, such
as tractors and irrigation equipment. Oil
prices also raise the cost of transporting
food to markets.
And they also encourage the greater use
of food products such as corn and sugar in
the production of biofuels. In the US, up to
a third of total corn output is used for biofuels, and this is expected to rise to 40 per
cent this year. Unsurprisingly, corn supplies in northern and Latin America are at
their lowest level in 30 years.
A second factor is changes in consumption. Each year the world’s farmers must
feed 80 million additional people, and nearly
all of them are in developing countries. The
farming industry has coped well with the
doubling of the world’s population since the
1970s through more intensive and efficient
production. But it is less able to cope with a
new phenomenon: the movement of an estimated three billion people up the food chain.
As families in emerging economies join
the ranks of the middle classes, their diet
expands to items which only a generation
ago were regarded as luxuries. The people
of China, for instance, now consume 2.4
times more meat than a decade ago, and
three times more milk, fruit and vegetables.
Meanwhile, Indian customers have expanded their consumption of similar items
by an average of 30 per cent.
With more people eating meat and as
•7
COVER STORY
PHOTO BY A F P
By Grace Ng
The Straits Times
FOOD PRICE INDEX IN RECENT YEARS
8•
fact that he has no intention of producing chocolate. Still, the price of
cacao went through the roof.
The more prices of food commodities rise, the bigger the temptation of
investors to dabble in future contracts and, as more money pours into
such trades, expectations for even
higher food prices increase. Like the
recent property bubble which destroyed many Western banks, this is a
vicious cycle which ultimately benefits only the speculators.
The chief victims are the world’s
poorest countries, which lack the
resources to dabble in global finance or protect its people from
price surges.
“People don’t eat Nestle SA shares.
They don’t need Treasury bills to
keep their factories running. The
prices of those instruments can jump
around like crazy without it affecting
people’s lives. But when the price of
wheat or copper soars, it makes a big
difference. Some people can’t afford
to eat any more because food is too
expensive,” observed Bloomberg columnist Matthew Lynn recently, on
the growing backlash against commodity speculation.
Even if ways are found to curb speculation, pressures on food production
look set to endure for decades. China—rapidly becoming the world’s single biggest food consumer—has lost
in the last two decades about 8.3 million hectares of arable land, or about
6.5 per cent of the country’s total arable area, through land degradation
and desertification.
Farming is also, by far, the most
water-intensive industry, precisely the
resource which China and many other
countries are increasingly short of.
Add to this the natural growth in the
world’s population, and the implications for future food prices are clear.
In the shorter term, the outlook
much again depends on the weather
in the coming months. At a recent
press conference, World Bank president Zoellick pointed out that with
relatively low global grain stocks, the
world’s poor could be pushed over the
edge should crops be devastated by
another bout of extreme weather.
“We are one shock away from a
full-blown crisis,” he warned.
Protests in Burkina Faso,
Indonesia, Senegal,
Gabon, Cambodia, Jordan,
Cote d’Ivoire, Bangladesh,
Egypt and Haiti
The Pandora’s
Box
FAO Food Price
Index hits
record high
Pakistan hit by
monsoon floods
Drought, fires
decimate Russia’s
grain crop
Countries
introduce
export bans
Lehman brothers
bankrupt, financial
crisis hits
May
2007
Feb
’08
June
’08
MEAL OF THE DAY: A woman lunches on a bowl of soup noodles at a food court in
Beijing on April 6. In March, some supermarkets across China reportedly saw a run on
noodles after one of the famous instant noodle manufacturers announced price hike.
Number of hungry
people over 1 billion
for the first time
Feb
’09
Jan June
’10 ’10
∫∫ CHINA
April
’11
❖❖ Beijing
I
PERCENTAGE CHANGE IN SOME
COMMODITIES SINCE JANUARY 2010
Cereals
44.8%
Crude
oil
40.2%
Oils
and fats
34.2%
Sugar
15%
Dairy
products
14.5%
Meat
14%
Rice
16.4%
44 million
the number of people pushed
into poverty by rising food prices
in the past year
Sources: FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANISATION,
OPEC, INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND,
WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME
June 17-30, 2011
graphic by BY The Straits Times
global production of livestock climbs,
so does the demand for extra corn
and soya beans as animal feed.
Governments have not helped
matters either. For agriculture is
still exempt from the operation of a
free market; every food producing
country maintains export and import quotas, strategic stocks as well
as a variety of hidden and open
subsidies for farmers.
Politicians claim these help to even
out price fluctuations. Still, the ultimate effect is often the opposite.
The European Union’s extensive
subsidies system which goes under
the grand title of a ‘common agricultural policy’ results in unnecessary
food surpluses which distort markets.
By the end of last year, the EU stored
no fewer than 260 million bottles of
wine and 13 million tonnes of cereals
and milk products. Most of it ends up
either destroyed or dumped on world
markets, thereby depressing the revenues of farmers outside Europe.
Over in China, official controls on
vegetable retail prices have contributed to a collapse in wholesale prices,
forcing farmers to leave surplus cabbages to rot in drains.
To make matters worse, financial
speculators are stepping in to make
money out of such difficulties. A decade
ago, the global market in commodity
‘futures’—financial instruments
which allow investors to buy a certain
produce before it even exists, betting
that it would either go up or down—
totalled only US$13 billion. Today,
this stands at over $400 billion.
In his study of the 2008 food crisis,
Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special
Rapporteur on the Right to Food,
concluded that “a significant portion
of the price spike was due to the
emergence of a speculative bubble”.
Since then, matters have only got
worse. Not more than 2 per cent of all
the food contracts currently traded
on commodity markets are bought by
people who actually want to take delivery of the produce; the rest is
merely traded between speculators.
Anthony Ward, a British investor
nicknamed ‘Choc Finger’, is a case in
point. He recently put together a deal
for the delivery of 241,000 tonnes of
cacao, worth $1 billion, despite the
n March, when rumours spread
that Chinese instant noodle giant
Tingyi would raise prices of its
popular Master Kong product,
some supermarkets across China reportedly saw a run on noodles.
While onlookers chuckled at the
sight of white-collar workers and students scrambling to buy their staple
snack before it rose a few cents, China’s top economic planner was not
amused.
Such a frenzy would spark wider
consumer panic about politically sensitive food inflation and “distort market order”, officials feared.
So a survey group sent by the National Development and Reform
Commission to scrutinise Tingyi’s
production costs, declared that “a
price hike is inappropriate” and
warned the company against it.
Tingyi complied.
The episode has highlighted what a
political hot potato rising food prices
have become for Beijing, which fears
rising social instability among the
poor whose food costs can make up
half their income.
So far, they have coped by eating
less.
Yang Qin, 53, recently cut her daily
meals to just rice with one dish of
vegetables mixed with a little meat.
With food prices skyrocketing in
the past year, even such simple fare
is considered a luxury for the school
June 17-30, 2011
teacher and her husband, who live
in the northern province of Inner
Mongolia.
The couple used to be able to afford
bigger portions of meat and more variety in their diet.
Pork prices have risen by onethird since last year, while apples—
which Yang had lamented as expensive when they cost 8 yuan (US$1.2)
per kg—have shot up to over 16
yuan ($2.4).
“Now we spend so much on food
that there is no money left for
clothes—and there’s only the two of
us,” she said of the difficulties in
managing the household budget.
“For those who have children, it must
be even tougher.”
For the lower-income Chinese like
Yang, their biggest fear is that food
inflation would continue its relentless climb.
Inflation reached 5.5 per cent in
May, which outpaced the recent high
of 5.4 per cent in March and 5.3 per
cent in April.
The May figure, a 34-month high,
was largely driven by a rise in food
prices, triggered by a severe drought
in farming heartlands.
These days, jumps in food prices
are no longer as shocking to most
Chinese consumers, having survived
11.7 per cent surge in March and last
October's 10.1 per cent jump--a
25-month record high.
At that time, local media were filled
with reports of shoppers bargaining—and even coming to blows—for
one-cent discounts on costly vegetables and fruit.
Meanwhile, restaurants raised
prices en masse by 10 per cent at
a time.
Officials blamed the food price
hikes on the dreadful weather, ranging from unusually frosty winters to
drought and floods across different
parts of China, that slashed harvests.
The hike in global commodity prices and a depreciating US dollar also
jacked up prices of imported foods.
Caught up in the current misery,
few may recall that an even more
drastic price spiral had hit the country just three years ago, from 2007 to
2008. In February 2008, food prices
had jumped 23.3 per cent, with vegetables and pork spiking 46 per cent
and 63.4 per cent respectively. Part of
that spike was blamed on speculators, who hoarded supplies to force
prices up further.
Then, the global financial crisis
kicked in, followed by a turn in the
weather that helped boost harvests.
Food prices worldwide eased—but
not for too long.
Th i s yea r , f o o d i n fla t i on h a s
returned—and may haunt the
country for a year or more, analysts warned.
While some vegetable prices
dropped drastically as the summer
approaches, other crops such as
wheat may remain expensive with
drought conditions likely to persist in
wheat-growing areas in China.
Additional reporting by Lina Miao
•9
COVER STORY
By Ravi Velloor
The Straits Times
By Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja
The Straits Times
The Rich-Poor Divide
In Curry Pot
open school fields. Exposure to the
elements and to pests often turns
grain that could be milled, into
grain that can be used only as
poultry or livestock feed. Sometimes, large quantities of grain are
simply dumped.
nine times since mid-March last
∫∫ INDIA
“We are getting the private sector
year. Still, the food price index into creating bulk storage facilities
climbed 8.37 per cent in May.
❖❖ New Delhi
and acting as a think-tank on bulk
India has also banned exports of handling and transport of food grain
eenu Dey toils 12 hours a
day in the upscale New grain and milk products, to make and creating temperature-controlled
Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, sure there is enough to meet domes- supply chains,” said K.V. Thomas,
cooking for upper-middle tic demand. It is also trying to fix its minister of state for consumer afclass housewives untrained or simply creaky food distribution system, fairs, food and public distribution.
which is so inefficient that more “We will soon add 15 million tonnes”
too lazy to enter their own kitchens.
As in most northern Indian homes, than a quarter of grain and farm to the country’s existing 87 million
a staple food item is a lentil curry produce is lost between the farm and tonnes of capacity.
made with moong dal, or green bean. the shop shelves.
Fortunately for India, the country
One reason the government has seems set for a normal monsoon this
Prices of moong dal (lentil) have
doubled in the past
year. Last year’s bounyear, says the
tiful rains helped food
39-year-old cook, but
production rise by
that has not fazed her
more than 8 per cent
employers, who conto an estimated 236
tinue to consume the
million tonnes in the
protein at its current
year to March 31. This
price of 90 rupees
year could be even bet(US$2) a kilo.
ter. That is the good
At Dey’s Malviya
news. The bad news is
Nagar tenement
that much of the extra
home in South Delhi,
grain simply goes to
where she cooks for
waste.
her husband and
For now, the buoyant
16-year-old son, it is
economy is masking
a different story.
some of the troubles.
“Most days, instead
Still, Dey notes, even
of moong dal, I use FOOD PROTEST: Activists from India’s Telugu Desam Party shout slogans and rich people are beginmatar dal, which at 28 hold a portrait of ruling United Progressive Alliance chair Sonia Gandhi as they
ning to be care ful
rupees (62 US cents) is stage a demonstration in front of the office of The Chief Rationing Officer in
when it comes to milk.
far less expensive,” she Hyderabad on January 10.
This month, Amul, a
said, referring to yelhuge dairy co-operalow split pea lentil. “Once in a while been powerless to rein in inflation is tive, raised the price of full cream
we buy moong, just so we do not for- that the economy is growing at about milk by 2 rupees to 36 rupees a litre.
get its taste. If I used to buy 2kg of 9 per cent a year, pushing up wages. That is up from 28 rupees a litre a
moong dal a month before, these
Subir Gokarn, a deputy governor year ago. Some households have
days I buy just half a kilo. How else with the Reserve Bank of India—the moved from full-cream Amul Gold
to balance your budget?”
central bank—said in October last to Amul Fresh, which is cheaper by a
Driven by the red-hot economy, year that a near 40 per cent increase fifth but has less protein.
Indian food prices are continuing in average individual incomes over
“In my household, only my son
their relentless climb. And it is the the past five years had probably cre- now drinks milk regularly,” Dey
poor who feel the pain the most. ated an extra 220 million consumers said. “Sometimes when we are realFood makes up half the consump- of milk, eggs, meat and fish.
ly tired, my husband and I share a
tion basket of the average household
The Indian government is also try- glass with a half-boiled egg whipped
in India, more if you are poor.
ing to improve storage facilities.
into it. I wish I had more milk to
To combat inflation, India's cenRight now, grain is sometimes drink but right now that is all we
tral bank has raised interest rates stored under tarpaulin sheets in can afford.”
10 •
June 17-30, 2011
A Tale Of Two Chillies
∫∫ INDONESIA
❖❖ Jakarta
W
hen the price of fresh
chillies spiked early this
year, restaurant owner
Fitra Alim got desperate.
The Indonesian resorted to mixing
cheaper rotten chillies with fresh
chillies to make the spicy sambal for
his Padang food.
“Surprisingly, customers liked it
and now they keep asking for it,” said
the 41-year-old man at his food outlet
on Hankam Road in East Jakarta.
Best of all, the rotten chillies cost
between a quarter to a third of the
normal price of 30,000 rupiah
(US$3.5) a kilogram.
After months of soaring food prices, the harvest period is taking a bit of
pressure off Indonesians such as
Fitra by boosting food supplies.
Consumer prices in Indonesia
rose by 6.16 per cent in April month
from a year earlier, after gaining
June 17-30, 2011
fruit supply: A customer buys fruit from a street
vendor in Jakarta. The Indonesian government has
scrambled to regulate food supply by lifting import duties
on necessities such as rice, soya beans and flour.
6.65 per cent in March, according
to the national statistics agency. It
was the third straight month of
moderating inflation.
“In terms of price increases, we are
having a break now. No doubt about
that,” housewife and Jakarta resident
Yulita Saroso, in her 30s, told The
Straits Times. “But we can’t be sure
how long this will last.”
Rising food prices—a global phenomenon—pushed Indonesia’s inflation rate to 7 per cent in January,
a 21-month high. Prices for Indonesian staple foods such as rice,
soya bean and chillies were among
those affected.
The government scrambled to regulate food supply by lifting import
duties on necessities such as rice,
soya beans and flour. Late last year,
in a rare move, it allowed rice imports
from Viet Nam.
Rising food prices sparked riots
around the world in 2008 and were
partly responsible for the recent un-
rest in Egypt and Tunisia. But the
situation is still manageable in Indonesia, partly because the government
is selling rice at subsidised prices to
people living in poor areas.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who chaired the recent 18th
Asean summit, said member countries had agreed to invest more in agriculture and work more closely on
research so the region can produce
more food.
“The world population is expected
to grow fast from seven billion now,
and will reach nine billion in 2045.
Nations on this earth will face a competitive situation for the scarce resources of daily needs,” Yudhoyono
said in a speech during the summit.
As for Fitra, he likens the creation
of his ‘special’ sambal to the discovery
of wine, adding that customers like
the sour taste.
He now serves two kinds of sambal
on the shelves, the regular and the
improvised kind.
• 11
PHOTO BY A FP
PH OTO BY A F P
M
COVER STORY
By Nirmal Ghosh
The Straits Times
By Hazlin Hassan
The Straits Times
Surviving On
Subsidies
AFP PH OTO/Saeed KH AN
AFP PH OTO/Christophe ARCH AMBAU LT
STREETSIDE MEALS: A
woman waits for customers at her
food stall in Bangkok, Thailand.
Many people are spending around
50 per cent more on food at these
streetside stalls these days.
CHICKEN MEAL: A shopkeeper prepares an order for a customer at his chicken shop at a food
market in downtown Kuala Lumpur. Since 2008, the Malaysian government has been keeping fairly
tight control on petrol and food prices.
Squeezed By Rising Food Prices
∫∫ Thailand
❖❖ Bangkok
F
rom street to street across
this sprawling city of 10 million, Bangkok’s ubiquitous
food vendors tell the same
story—of how they are being
squeezed by rising costs.
Tanyathorn, 44, who has been selling cooked food in Nam Daeng market for 13 years, runs through a quick
list: the price of pork has gone up
from 90 baht (US$3) per kg a few
months ago to 126 baht (more than
$4) today; sugar too, from 12 baht
(39 US cents) a kg to 28 baht (92
cents); and fish sauce, a key ingredient in local food, up from 22 baht (72
cents) to 55 baht ($1.8) a bottle.
She has raised the prices of her dishes
but there is a limit to how often she
can keep doing so. “I lose money almost every day now,” she said, adding
that she had to let a stall helper go.
Unfortunately for Tanyathorn and
millions of others struggling to scrape
by as they toil in the trenches of the Thai
12 •
economy, inflation is likely to get worse.
Varin, 24, an office worker, says
she now spends 150 baht ($5) a day
on her regular streetside lunch compared to just 100 baht ($3.2) less
than a year ago.
Economists say high food prices
are being driven partly by scarcity
arising from natural disasters and
also the recent spike in the price of
fuel, with its knock-on effects on
other goods.
Floods in the upper part of southern Thailand in November last year
and again in March this year, dented
rubber, palm oil, shrimp and fruit
production from the area, pushing
prices up. With animal feed prices
high and pig farms in the area also
affected by the floods, pork prices
went up sharply as well.
According to the government’s department of internal trade, recent
surges aside, some items such as pork
and coconuts have seen their prices
climb relentlessly since 2004.
The price of coconuts has tripled
since 2004. The price of garlic has
∫∫ MALAYSIA
more than doubled.
First-quarter headline inflation
this year was 3.01 per cent. The Bank
of Thailand has forecast inflation of
between 3 per cent and 5 per cent for
the whole year.
Most economists expect prices to
rise sharply in the second half of the
year as the government runs out of
options to help manufacturers keep
prices low, and may be forced to reduce a fuel subsidy that has taken the
edge off the high price of fuel.
The government plans to cut taxes on
oil, again to ease inflationary pressure.
Bank of Thailand deputy governor Atchana Waiquamdee recently
said: “The tax cut can suppress inflation only in the short term as it
can’t stay forever.”
Thanomsri Fongarun-rung, an
economist with Phatra Securities, said
in an interview that the firm’s earlier
prediction of 3.7 per cent inflation for
the year might be exceeded.
“You can see the acceleration in
food prices,” she said. “Raw material
prices are continuing to increase.”
June 17-30, 2011
❖❖ Kuala Lumpur
W
hen the price of petrol
leapt by an unprecedented 41 per cent in June
2008 on the back of soaring global prices, angry protests
erupted at the iconic Twin Towers in
Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur,
where the headquarters of national
oil company Petronas is located.
The hike had caused prices of food
and other goods to climb, driving up
food inflation from 3 per cent in 2007
to 8.9 per cent in 2008.
Food shortages also resulted, as desperate buyers and opportunistic traders emptied shops and stores in fear of
more price hikes. The backlash not
only put increasing pressure on the
government to keep food prices affordable, but also made it think twice
about removing subsidies on essential
goods—even though these continue to
deplete the country’s coffers.
“It’s a vicious circle for a large portion of the population because, on average, the pace of pay rises falls far
behind the pace of the rising cost of
June 17-30, 2011
living, which squeezes the people’s
purchasing power further,” noted
Bank Islam Malaysia’s chief economist Azrul Azwar Ahmad Tajudin.
Even the more ‘ordinary’ inflation
rates of 3 per cent to 4 per cent have left
many Malaysians struggling to cope.
Azrul noted that the man on the
street often finds food inflation greater than what is captured in the consumer price index (CPI) data. “It gives
rise to concerns among many Malaysians that the CPI doesn’t really reflect
the ‘true’ inflation picture,” he said.
Since 2008, the government has
been keeping fairly tight control on
petrol and food prices. While it wants
to cut back on expensive subsidies, it
has been doing it slowly.
It is reducing subsidies for higher
grades of petrol, for instance, but not
for lower grades, which poorer buyers
rely on. And sugar prices are being
raised 20 sen (6 US cents) at a time,
spread over three times last year. Essential items such as cooking oil,
bread, petrol, electricity and rice have
long been subsidised in Malaysia.
Fortunately, the global recession
brought down commodity prices in
2009, particularly those of crude oil.
Food inflation in Malaysia thus
dropped back from the 2008 high to
4.1 per cent in 2009, and to 2.4 per
cent last year.
Analysts expect it to go up again,
but nowhere as drastically as it did
before.
“We expect food CPI to double the
previous year’s 2.4 per cent rise, but it
is not anticipated to hit the high single-digit number that we experienced
during the 2008 price shock,” says
Yeah Kim Leng, group chief economist for RAM Holdings.
The government has noted that it
can do little when prices, especially
those of non-subsidised foods, rise.
In the last two months alone, for
instance, chicken prices have risen by
about 20 per cent because of increasing prices of chicken feed, but the
government said it could not do much
in the open market.
Still, the government has passed
new laws to stop price-fixing and
profiteering.
For Malaysia, stable food prices are
as much about cost as they are about
social and political stability.
• 13
COVER STORY
AFP PH OTO / NOEL CELI S
By Alastair McIndoe
The Straits Times
More Go Hungry
∫∫ PHILIPPINES
❖❖ Manila
F
or low-wage earners in the
Philippines like Ruby Cruz,
a 45-year-old domestic helper in Manila, even small increases in food prices are a worrying squeeze on already-tight
budgets.
The single mother of two schoolage girls spends over half her
monthly income, the equivalent of
US$160, on food—an outlay in line
with the spending patterns of Filipinos stuck with low incomes.
“Food is getting more expensive
so I always shop at a wet market;
it’s cheaper and you can get discounts,” she says.
Consumer prices in the Philippines—where one in four of the 90
million population live on $1 a day
or less—rose 4.5 per cent in April
from the same period last year. Inflation has been rising since last Oc14 •
PIG-OUT: A worker arranges roasted pigs at a store in
Manila. Investment bank Nomura has ranked the Philippines
as the world’s 13th-most vulnerable country to rising food
prices, out of 80 nations surveyed.
tober’s rate of 2.8 per cent, stoked
by higher food and fuel prices.
The Asian Development Bank
projects inflation averaging 4.9 per
cent this year.
The good news so far is that
increases in the price of rice—the
nation’s food staple and a politically
sensitive commodity—have been far
lower than the overall inflation rate.
This is because of a sharp rise in imports last year, creating plentiful
reserves and a record rice harvest in
the first quarter of this year.
But the price of flour—the main
ingredient used to bake the ‘pan de
sal’ rolls which are a breakfast
favourite in the Philippines—has
shot up amid a worldwide increase
in the cost of wheat. Bakers here
complain that a 25kg bag now costs
900 pesos (US$20), compared with
700 pesos ($16) in January.
So how is the government managing the situation?
In a survey conducted in March by
the Social Weather Stations (SWS),
respondents were generally satisfied
with President Benigno Aquino III’s
efforts. His government has rolled
out several initiatives to soften the
impact of rising prices on the poor.
Among them: rice subsidies for two
million families.
Still, economist Benjamin Diokno
said the findings of a quarterly SWS
survey showing that more Filipinos
experienced hunger in the first
three months of this year were a
concern because of the strong performance of the agriculture sector.
And good harvests are no guarantee of food security in a country that
relies on imports of rice and other
basic commodities to feed its burgeoning population.
In its study last year, ‘"he Coming
Surge In Food Prices", investment
bank Nomura ranked the Philippines as the world’s 13th-most vulnerable country to rising food prices, out of 80 nations surveyed.
June 17-30, 2011
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POLITICS
The View
By Coomi Kapoor
The Star
A F P PHOTO/ HO/ PHILIPPINE D E PA RTME NT O F FO RE IGN AFFAI RS
Fasting For A Cleaner Government
Civil society activists are staging hunger strikes to protest
the Indian government's inaction in fighting corruption
❖❖ New Delhi
PH OTO BY A F P
C
orruption and black
money stashed in tax havens have yet again forced
the government of Indian
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the back foot.
It seemed to have scored an own
goal in its handling of the protest-fast
of a leading tele-vangelist, the saffron-robed yoga guru Baba Ramdev,
who was demanding that it takes all
possible steps to bring back the “trillions” stashed away in secret bank accounts abroad.
For nearly six months prior to June
4, the day he sat on his protest-fast
along with tens of thousands of his
followers in New Delhi’s Ramlila
Grounds, the 46-year-old Ramdev
had criss-crossed the country drumming up support for his campaign.
At his daily yoga sessions which
are telecast live by a dedicated channel, Ramdev spoke to nationwide
audiences about the ills of black
money, and blamed the UPA government for doing precious little to
address the matter.
His simple message, couched in an
earthy metaphor, resonated with the
ordinary people. He touched a chord
when he railed against the corrupt politician-businessman-bureaucrat nexus.
The government was already facing
the heat from another civil society activist. Anna Hazare, a former soldier
who had embraced Gandhian ways,
accused the government of going
back on the promise to draft a salutary Lokpal Bill (Ombudsman Bill).
Following Hazare’s fast in New Delhi
in early April, a joint committee of
civil society activists and government
ministers was constituted to draft the
Lokpal Bill.
Meanwhile, a huge tent was put up
at the Ramlila Grounds where the
yoga guru was to sit on his indefinite
hunger strike. Over 60,000 people
from all over the country congregated
16 •
ANTI-CORRUPTION: Indian yoga guru
Baba Swami Ramdev is brought out on a
stretcher on June 10 after his health
deteriorated during a six-day long hunger
strike against corruption.
at the spot when he resumed his fast
on the morning of June 4.
A few hours later, when Ramdev
and 60,000-odd men, women and
children were sleeping under the big
tent with electric fans trying desperately to keep away the summer heat,
some 5,000 men of the Rapid Action
Police Force swooped down on the
Ramlila Grounds. They rudely woke
up Ramdev and asked everyone else
to clear out of the camp.
A very mild resistance was met with
water cannons and tear gas shells and
the use of truncheons. Men, women
and children who had come with their
belongings were forced to flee from
the wrath of the police.
Ramdev, meanwhile, donned
women’s garb and tried to flee but
was caught half a mile from the venue. Bundled into a police vehicle, he
was taken to the airport and flown to
Haridwar, his headquarters some
250km from the capital, and set free.
There was universal criticism of the
police action. The government was
mocked for first being obsequious be-
fore the yoga guru—as one opposition leader said, it had not sent four
senior ministers even to receive the
visiting US President—and then being needlessly ruthless in clamping
down on the peaceful protesters. It
was an assault on the democratic
rights of the people to protest peacefully, critics said.
Meanwhile, the apex court took notice of the midnight swoop, asking the
government to explain the police action.
The government, on its part, sought
to brazen out the bungle. It said
civil society activists could not arrogate to themselves the right to
frame legislation, which was the job
of Parliament. Also, it accused Ramdev of political agenda.
Thanks to the protests, the very
real menace of corruption and black
money had become a hot topic. Economists estimated that up to 50 per
cent of GDP was “black economy”.
That is nearly US$700 billion. Ten
per cent of that underground economy, it is estimated, is taken out under
various channels, including over-invoicing of imports and under-invoicing of exports.
Hanging the keepers of black money
abroad from the next lamp post, as
canvassed by Ramdev, was not a lawful
solution. Existing laws were adequate
provided there was political will.
Without putting a gloss over the issue, the real stumbling block in
cracking the problem of black money
is the rotten electoral system.
It is common knowledge that black
money oils the electoral machinery. If
politicians rely on black money to win
elections, it is unlikely they would
crack down on the generators and
keepers of black money. Unless this
nexus between politicians and corrupt businessmen is broken, precious
little can be done to root out corruption and black money from the Indian economy.
June 17-30, 2011
In a handout photo taken by the
Philippine foreign affairs
department on May 21, a Chinese
salvage and research ship is
shown anchored in disputed
South China Sea waters near the
major Philippine island-province
of Palawan.
Disputed
Islands
T
he South China Sea
islands disputed by
China and several
Southeast Asian countries consist of atolls,
cays, shoals, reefs and sandbars,
most of which have no indigenous
people, many of which are naturally
under water at high tide, some of
which are permanently submerged.
There are minerals, natural gas, and
oil deposits on the islands and their
nearby seafloor.
These are: The Spratly Islands
(claimed in whole or in part by
June 17-30, 2011
China, Taiwan, Viet Nam, Malaysia,
Brunei and the Philippines); The
Paracel Islands (claimed by China,
Taiwan and Vietnam); The Pratas
Islands claimed by China and
Taiwan); The Macclesfield Bank
(claimed by China, the Philippines
and Taiwan); The Scarborough
Shoal (claimed by China, the
Philippines and Taiwan).
Tension has erupted between
China and the Philippines, and
between China and Viet Nam
recently, that threatens Beijing’s
relations with Asean.
• 17
By Philippine Daily Inquirer
By Gong Jianhua
China Daily
PHILIPPINES: Naked Aggression
CHINA: A Real Test
❖❖ Manila
P
hilippine President Benigno
Aquino III told reporters in
Brunei two weeks ago that a
military confrontation between the
Philippines and China would be “no
contest”. In terms of military strength,
China has “a great advantage”, he said.
“Even in a boxing match, there’s one
and half billion of them, (while) we are
barely 100 million.”
All true, of course. But stating the
obvious seems totally unnecessary and
counterproductive, especially at this
time when China seems ready to
flaunt its military strength even at the
risk of looking like the bully in the
block. In an age when colonialism
seems like a distant memory, China
has been signalling its determination
to assert its sovereignty over marine
territories also being claimed by its
neighbours—by force, if necessary.
Pleading helplessness in the face of so
much muscle-flexing could only encourage China to conduct further acts
of intimidation.
Already in the last four months,
Philippine authorities have counted
at least six Chinese military incursions into Philippine territory. And
on at least two such occasions, the
Chinese vessels acted belligerently.
On February 25, for instance, a Chinese missile frigate drove away three
Philippine fishing vessels anchored
on Jackson Atoll by first threatening
to shoot them and then actually firing
three shots into the water. A few
weeks later, in March, Chinese vessels threatened to ram a Philippinecommissioned boat conducting seismic studies at the Reed Bank. Then
in May another Chinese vessel unloaded construction materials in Amy
Douglas Shoal.
These shoals and atolls are less than
100 nautical miles from Palawan
province and well within the 200-mile
exclusive economic zone as defined by
the United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea. As presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda put it, “You are
speaking of western Palawan, you are
not speaking of the Spratlys,” and Palawan is not a disputed area.
What were Chinese military vessels
doing 600 nautical miles from China’s
18 •
nearest coastline and deep in Philippine territory? China is trying to establish ownership over the whole
South China Sea. So what will it claim
next, Manila Bay?
China is so confident that it will
have its way with its smaller neighbours that it has announced that it
would send its biggest oil rig to start
drilling in the disputed Spratlys. It
dismisses its neighbours’ claims to the
Spratlys by saying there is nothing for
them to claim since the area rightfully
belongs to China. And consistent with
this position, the Chinese government
flatly denies that its vessels have intruded into Philippine territory. Chinese officials are saying in effect that
China cannot be accused of intruding
into its own territory.
But even as China intensifies its
show of force, Chinese officials continue to reassure its neighbour that it
wants nothing more than peace. In
Singapore on June 5, Chinese defence
minister Liang Guanglie said his
country was committed to “peace and
stability” in the South China Sea. He
said China would never threaten any
country or “seek hegemony”.
Maybe China has a different definition of what constitutes peace, but fir-
ing shots over fishing vessels and
pushing away research ships are not
peaceful acts anywhere. Which is why
Filipino officials have lately dropped
all diplomatic pretense and has directly accused China of “serious violations
of Philippine sovereignty and maritime jurisdiction”. Foreign secretary
Albert del Rosario has said that while
the Philippines is committed to follow
international laws, the 2002 Declaration of Conduct in the South China
Sea forged by Asean, under which all
the parties agreed to exercise restraint
and refrain from occupying uninhabited areas, was being “aggressively violated”. And because all its complaints
have gone unheeded by Chinese authorities, the Philippines is now bringing the case to the United Nations.
Instead of enjoying it like one former foreign secretary advised in regard to another violation of Philippine
sovereignty, Filipino officials are now
crying rape, and making the whole
world know who is doing it. If China
believes it can ignore the protests of a
small nation with hardly any military
capability to speak of, it may yet think
differently if the international community is sufficiently roused to condemn its naked aggression.
June 17-30, 2011
❖❖ Beijing
V
iet Nam and the Philippines
have been strengthening their
marine forces by pumping oil
from the sea, stationing troops strategically and using oil revenue to
fund their militaries. Their common
strategy in the South China Sea dispute is a great challenge to China’s
principle of “shelving disputes and
seeking common development”.
To maintain regional peace and
stability in the South China Sea, China and Asean signed the “Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the
South China Sea” in 2002. The declaration emphasises the peaceful settlement of the South China Sea dispute and says that all parties should
refrain from activities that could
complicate and escalate the dispute.
China has been strictly abiding by
the declaration, which is the mark
of a responsible country. Though
some other signatory countries have
indicated that they would comply
with the declaration’s basic principles, their actions have been violating them.
The declaration explicitly stipulates a peaceful solution to the dispute but the actions of Viet Nam, the
Philippines and some other countries
are complicating it further. To all intents and purposes, the declaration
has failed to prevent countries like
Viet Nam and the Philippines from
taking actions not conducive to a
peaceful settlement of the dispute. In
fact, some countries are using it as an
“umbrella” to shield their plundering
in the South China Sea and breaking
the “consensus” over the dispute.
In the beginning, the South China
Sea dispute was not referred to any
international or regional organisation. But after the formation of Asean, Viet Nam, the Philippines and
some other countries used it as a regional political platform to coordinate their positions to “speak in one
voice” and gain strategic advantage
against China.
The Philippines has repeatedly said
that the dispute is not just a bilateral
issue between China and the Philippines but a multilateral issue concerning related Southeast Asian
June 17-30, 2011
countries. It has even advocated resolving the issue through Asean, the
International Court of Justice and
the United Nations Security Council.
Besides pumping oil and natural
gas on their own, Viet Nam, the
Philippines and some other countries are sparing no effort in inviting
multinationals to explore and exploit the resources in the South China Sea. They are trying to exert more
political pressure on China by drawing the countries where the multinationals are based into the dispute.
The diversification of the region’s
power structure has complicated the
South China Sea dispute further.
Since Asean member states are its
geographical neighbours, China has
made developing relations with
them one of its diplomatic priorities—Beijing’s efforts to launch a
China-Asean Free Trade Area have
actually been successful.
But the United States has jumped
into the dispute to contain China’s
rise and maintain its hegemony in
the Asia-Pacific region. And since
Japan attaches great importance to
developing ties with Asean to maintain its leading role in Asia, it has
shifted its investment and diplomacy focus to the region.
Asean, on its part, wants to find a
balancing point among China, the
US and Japan. So in the South China
Sea dispute, China, Asean and the
US-Japan alliance form a pluralistic
power structure, with the relationship between any two of them being
complicated.
Since the dispute involves a
number of stakeholders, whose political stance, bottom line, tactics
and sincerity to find a resolution
are quite different, it is easy to
reach a strategic agreement but
very difficult to come to a generally
accepted settlement.
For China, the South China Sea
dispute is an issue of strategic
significance, specifically for two
reasons.
First, China is a large country but
not a formidable sea power. Although China’s exclusive economic
zone and continental shelf are extensive and the coastline of its mainland
and islands is long, they are small in
per capita terms. With only a small
number of disputed islands under its
actual control, China lacks channels
that connect the sea to the ocean.
Second, without a formidable navy
and sufficient emphasis on maritime
interests, China is in an unfavourable position. To become an influential power, China has to transform
from a “continental power” to a
“maritime power”. And the South
China Sea dispute is a real test for it
to achieve that goal.
In essence, the South China Sea
dispute involves sovereignty and resources. China insists on peaceful
settlement of the dispute, but the aggressive actions of some Asean
member states have intensified the
contradictions. An armed conflict
can only undermine the good diplomatic environment and affect the
current strategic opportunities.
C h i na h a s a l w a ys e m p loy e d
friendly and tolerant methods to settle disputes over territorial sovereignty. When it comes to diplomacy,
China keeps a low profile; to resolve
territorial disputes, it “shelves disputes and seeks common development”; and for maritime strategy, it
insists on “offshore defence”.
China has been sincere in developing good-neighbourly relations, promoting cooperation and seeking
common development with its neighbours. It has exercised great patience
and considerable restraint in dealing
with the South China Sea dispute.
But some countries have been repeatedly challenging its interests.
Hence, it is time China took a
comprehensive approach toward the
South China Sea dispute and mulled
a strategic arrangement that would
not only safeguard its territorial sovereignty, but also maintain its overall strategy of peaceful development.
Also, it should guard against the trap
set by some countries—using the
South China Sea dispute—to cripple
its development.
(The author is a professor at the
School of Politics and Public Administration, Guangdong Ocean
University.)
• 19
SPECIAL REPORT
By Nani Afrida
The Jakarta Post
Growing
Islamic
Radicalism
T
❖❖ Jakarta
he tranquility of secular
Sebelas Maret University
(UNS) in Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia, was
shaken recently when the
police sniffed out underground activities tied to an attempt to form an Islamic state.
“We heard later that two of the university students were arrested for
their roles in the NII (Islamic State of
Indonesia) movement,” Berry Nur
Arif, a student, said.
The police arrested Ervin Setiawan
and Mike Vera Susanti—both part of
the university’s teacher training faculty—in nearby Yogyakarta for allegedly recruiting students to the NII.
The NII, founded by charismatic
ulema (Islamic cleric) Sekarmadji
Maridjan Kartosoewirjo in August
1949, is a political movement to turn
Indonesia into an Islamic state with a
full implementation of sharia law.
Although Kartosoewirjo was executed by the military in 1962 for
propagating separatism, his ideas
and teachings have remained alive till
today, and inspired thousands of
20 •
Muslims across the archipelago to
dream of an Islamic caliphate.
Thirteen years since the fall of the
authoritarian Soeharto regime, the
influence of NII and other hard-line
groups has increasingly taken hold
on Indonesian campuses.
Based on The Jakarta Post’s observations at several universities, the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), the
Ikhwanul Muslimin (IM), the Salafy,
the Jihadi and the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) have also been gaining
student support.
These hard-liners can now step up
to compete for recruits with the longstanding moderate groups such as
the Indonesian Muslim Students Action Front (KAMMI), the Association
of Islamic Students (HMI) and the
Muhammadiyah Students Association (IMM).
National Anti-Terrorism Agency
(BNPT) chief Ansyaad Mbai said he
received reports from high-ranking
university officials three years ago
that students were increasingly
lured to the hard-line groups rather
than the moderate ones.
“Such a phenomenon has ignited
AFP photo
Hard-liner groups are on a
shopping spree at Indonesian
campuses
PROTEST: Supporters of radical Indonesian
cleric Abu Bakar Bashir display placards
demanding his release on June 6. The terror
suspect, who co-founded Jamaah Islamiyah,
was profoundly inspired by the NII movement.
concern that these hard-line groups
have been cajoling students into
supporting violence and intolerance,” he said.
The police have recently detained
five graduates for masterminding the
distribution of mail bombs and plotting an attack on a church in Serpong,
Banten. According to Ansyaad, their
leader, Pepi Fernando, became radicalised after joining a prayer group
organised by NII supporters.
The recent incidents mark the
second time university graduates
have been connected to a terrorist
ring. The first was in mid-2010
when a graduate and two students
of the prestigious Syarief Hidayatullah National Islamic University
were convicted and sentenced to
four years in prison for harbouring
the masterminds behind the bombings of JW Mariott and Ritz Carlton
hotels in 2009.
Terrorist attacks in Indonesia have
generally been masterminded and executed by alumni of Islamic boarding
schools, known locally as pesantren.
Lia Marlia (not her real name), a
recent graduate of the prestigious
June 17-30, 2011
Bandung Institute of Technology
(ITB) said hard-line groups have
flourished on the campus in the last
three years.
She said the groups blend with students by holding activities like
preaching sessions and discussions.
“I was a member of one of those
groups. They have something in common, purifying Islamic principles
through sharia. But they are all operating in discreet,” she said.
She also said there were many supporters of the terrorist network
Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) and its aboveground organisation Jamaah Ansharud Tauhid (JAT), which is actively trying to inspire students to
join their fight.
“We usually met (members of the
hard-line groups) during discussions
or street rallies,” she said.
UNS student Berry could not single out the presence of such groups at
his campus, saying that, aside from
the NII supporters, there were others
actively supporting hard-line groups
like HTI and the FPI.
The university’s vice rector for student affairs, Dwi Triyanto, said such
June 17-30, 2011
organisations operated from underground and were not easy to detect.
Central Java, East Java, Yogyakarta and Jakarta are among the hotbeds
of NII followers.
JI co-founder Abu Bakar Bashir,
who resides in Surakarta and is facing trial in Jakarta for terrorism, was
also inspired by the NII.
According to Ken Setiawan, the
founder of the NII Crisis Centre,
there have been approximately 400
reports this year of people who were
involved in the NII, mostly university
students and workers.
“The reports are generally from
Surakarta, Yogyakarta and Jakarta,”
said Ken, a former NII member.
Lecturer Yon Machmudi, of the
University of Indonesia, who is also
an expert in Islamic student movements, said the NII and other hardline groups entered campuses
through informal means.
“For example, besides the NII, the
university also has HTI and the IM
operating to lure students.”
According to Yon, the university
authorities have found that the HTI
and the IM are “safe” organisations
for students, meaning they don’t condone violence.
“Previously, the HTI had a minor
problem with university authorities
when it refused to accept the existing
system and insisted on adopting pure
Islamic principles,” he said.
HTI spokesman Muhammad Ismail Yusanto said the HTI has been
on campuses for a long time and rejected allegations it was attempting
to radicalise students.
“The HTI is similar with the HMI
and the KAMMI, which grew from
student communities. People know
we exist, as we are not sneaking to
campus looking for new cadres,” Ismail said.
“And, more importantly, we are not
hard-liners, we are straight-liners.”
While many experts have pointed
out the presence of hard-line groups
on campuses, questions arose to what
actually inspired the students to join
such groups?
Terrorist expert Noor Huda Ismail
said he was not surprised by the phenomenon, as 50 per cent of the
world’s population was young people
who see some problems differently
than older generations.
“Teenagers are exposed to many resources around them which can influence them to be radical and finally
to be terrorists,” he said.
He also said many students usually
sought Islamic organisations suitable
to them.
“Today, formal organisations cannot respond to many challenges, so
students seek alternatives. This is
when radical groups such as the NII
take the advantage.”
Said Ansyaad Mbai: “Students may
be joining the radical groups because
of frustration in dealing with their
daily lives, hatred for the protracted
global injustice or a penchant to copycat, inspired by previous terrorist attacks,” he said.
• 21
SPECIAL REPORT
By Nani Afrida
The Jakarta Post
By Nani Afrida
The Jakarta Post
NII: The Father Of
Modern Radical
Islam
Groups Active
On Campuses
HANDMADE BOMBS:
Indonesian police officers
display explosives used in
a plot to bomb a church in
Serpong, Banten,
Indonesia. The attack was
planned by university
graduates.
U
nderstanding Indonesia’s
violent jihadist movements that have triggered
a string of terrorist attacks may not be possible
without studying the outlawed Islamic State of Indonesia movement,
known locally as Negara Islam Indonesia (NII).
The NII, founded by charismatic
]ulema (Islamic cleric) Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosoewirjo in
August 1949, is a political movement
intent on turning Indonesia into
an Islamic state, and fully implementing sharia law.
Although Kartosoewirjo was executed by the military in 1962 for
propagating separatism, his ideas
and teachings remain alive today,
and continue to inspire thousands of
Muslims across the archipelago to
dream of an Islamic caliphate.
After Kartosoewirjo’s death, the
military had offered amnesties to
NII’s subsequent leaders in the
hopes that they would cooperate and
relinquish their hard-line ideology.
But NII’s followers remained
united albeit loosely by forging enduring personal relationships
throughout the archipelago, and
passing on their teachings, albeit
straying from Kartosoewirjo’s vision in the process.
Many children of NII leaders and
22 •
stout followers of the organisation’s
early days are still in close contact
with one another.
NII’s founding ideology has
spawned a range of terrorist network, including Jemaah Islamiyah
(JI), and a number of hard-line underground organisations.
The father of chief patron of the
mainstream Prosperous Justice
Party (PKS), Hilmi Aminuddin,
was one of the NII’s top leaders in
its early days.
Terror suspect Abu Bakar Bashir, who co-founded the JI with
his senior, Abdullah Sungkar, was
profoundly inspired by the NII
movement.
The bombing of the Australian
Embassy in Jakarta in 2004 and the
forming of a terrorist training camp
in Aceh in 2010, for example, were
masterminded by a team comprising
of JI and NII members, according to
police reports.
The NII splinters, however, have
also turned into merely profit-oriented groups, including the notorious NII KW9, which is widely believed to be led by Panji Gumilang,
also known as Abu Toto.
Panji is the founder of Al-Zaytun
boarding school in Indramayu, West
Java—Southeast Asia’s largest Islamic boarding school. Panji has repeatedly denied his role in the organisation.
But many experts believe his followers have been resorting to “hypnotism” to recruit new members.
“If you talk about the NII, most
people associate the movement with
the KW9 faction, with its scary stories of brainwashing members,” terrorism expert Al Chaidar of the University of Indonesia said.
“But the NII has other factions
that propagate violence and are
more dangerous compared to the
KW9,” he said.
According to Al Chaidar, who is
also a former NII member, there are
now 14 NII splinter factions operating throughout the country, with
several members linked to terrorist
activities. Half of the factions are
categorised as violent.
The latest one includes the Tahmid Rahmad faction in Malangbong, Aceh, which was allegedly behind the recruitment of university
graduate Pepi Fernando.
The police have alleged that Pepi,
along with four other graduates,
masterminded the recent distribution of book bombs to several noted
figures in Jakarta, and a thwarted
attempt to bomb a church in Serpong, Banten, during Easter.
“NII has a long history, and we’re
still at war with its seemingly proliferating (radical) ideology. It’ll be a
long fight until we can win,” Al
Chaidar said.
June 17-30, 2011
❖❖ JAKARTA
µ Ikhwanul Muslimin
Established: The organisation was
brought to Indonesia in the 1970s by
pilgrims, Arab immigrants and Indonesians who studied in Egypt and the
Middle East.
Members: Around 9 million
Leader: Habib Husein Al Habsyi
The Ikhawnul Muslimin, or the
Muslim Brotherhood, was founded in
1928 by hard-line Islamic scholar
Hassan al-Banna, who advocated a
non-violent political approach for reclaiming Islam’s manifest destiny: an
empire stretching from Spain to Indonesia. While the organisation
mainly operates below the radar in
Indonesia, scholars believe that the
nation’s fourth largest political party,
the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS),
is a public political manifestation of
the Ikhawnul Muslimin.
µ Islam Defenders Front (FPI)
Established: August 1998
Members: At least 50,000
Leader: Al-Habib Muhammad Rizieq bin Husein Syihab
The FPI’s struggle is aimed at
crushing activities deemed unfit by
Islam, such as prostitution, gambling, drinking and atheism. Members of the group have allegedly been
implicated in the use of extreme violence on many occasions, leading
June 17-30, 2011
critics to claim that the FPI has
trumped the rule of law in secular Indonesia. However, the violence allegedly wrought by the group’s members
has been less destructive than that of
Jamaah Islamiyah, the terrorist
group behind a series of bombings, or
Laskar Jihad (Jihad Troops), which
incited a sectarian conflict in Maluku.
µ Salafy
Established: During the 1980s
Members: At least 100,000
Leader: Scattered in small groups
Safady is an orthodox Islamic
group that propagates the teachings
and practice of tauhid (monotheism)
and fiqh (Islamic rulings). Safady has
a splinter faction in the Middle East
that supports violence, though few
such splinter groups or their teachings have reached Indonesia. Most of
the group’s followers—easily recognisable in their veils and turbans—
peacefully preach about a need to return to the pure Islam practiced in
the times of the Prophet Muhammad.
The group has not mixed well with
other Islamic movements, such as
Ikhwanul Muslimin.
µ Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI)
Established: Early 1980
Members: More than 1.2 million
Leader: Hafidz Abdurrahman
Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (the Liberation Party in Indonesia) seeks to
implement sharia by reinstating the
Caliphate by intellectual and political
means without resorting to violence.
The group is the local arm of the international Hizbut Tahrir organisation, which was established in 1953 in
Jerusalem, Palestine. Rallying under
the slogan “Save Indonesia with sharia”, HTI has organised several activities to remind people that an “Islamic
solution” emanating from the “Most
Benevolent and Merciful” is the only
answer for humanity.
µ Jihadi
Established: During the 1980s
Members: More than 2,000
Leader: Unknown due to the group’s
underground nature
The group seeks to implement sharia by reinstating the Caliphate
through violence. The movement was
fuelled by the guerrilla war to stop
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
the 1980s. Members of the Jihadi are
usually comprised of radical members of Salafy and Ikhwanul Muslimin. Osama bin Laden was a member
of the Jihadi, whose followers came
from Afghanistan, Moro in the Philippines, and Chechnya. Members of
the Jihadi in Indonesia include stout
followers of the Darul Islam movement (DI), including Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir’s faction
that later formed terrorist network
Jamaah Islamiyah (JI).
• 23
photo by A FP
photo by W endra Aj istyatama / The Jakarta P ost
❖❖ Jakarta
RADICALS: Supporters
of Indonesian cleric Abu
Bakar Bashir shout
slogans during a protest
in Jakarta.
LIFE
By Rajnish Singh
The Statesman
photo by AFP
PRISON LIFE:
Inmates work in
the bakery section
of Tihar Jail.
Jail For The Rich
And Famous
LOCKED UP: Indian
inmates at the Tihar
Jail sit in their cell, in
New Delhi.
I
❖❖ New Delhi
India’s notorious Tihar Jail is now
filled with high-profile figures
including top corporate honchos
who once made it to the country’s
rich list
24 •
n the '80s super-hit Bollywood
flick, Kaalia, renowned Indian
actor Amitabh Bachchan plays a
hardened criminal who in one
famous scene tells the jail warden that the prison queue begins
where he stands.
The high-profile inmates of Tihar
Jail in the Indian capital New Delhi,
accused in the telecoms and Commonwealth Games scams, however,
have no such luck. They have to queue
up obediently thrice a day to collect
their breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Lodged in the maximum security
prison in connection with the 2G
spectrum scam are former communications minister A. Raja, former telJune 17-30, 2011
ecom secretary Siddharth Behura,
once named the 50th richest man in
India Shahid Balwa, his cousin Asif
Balwa and his partner Vinod Goenka, Unitech’s Sanjay Chandra and
top officials of the Reliance ADAG
Group, Hari Nair, Gautam Doshi and
Surender Pipara.
For irregularities in the Commonwealth Games, organising committee
chief Suresh Kalmadi, and officials
Lalit Bhanot, V.K. Verma, T.S. Darbari and Sanjay Mohindroo are also
in jail. The latest VVIP entrant is
Kanimozhi, an MP and former Tamil
Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi’s daughter, lodged in Tihar’s Jail
number 6, a woman’s ward.
The rich and famous inmates have
all swapped five-star comforts, business class travel and limousine rides
for 10ft by 12ft (3m by 3.7m) cells
with no air-conditioning. Each cell
has a toilet and a television.
Like other prisoners, these highprofile inmates also have to wake up
by 6am, have breakfast at 7am and
then a bath. By 9am, they have to
pick up their lunch, which includes
rotis (flat bread), rice, dal (lentil
soup) and a vegetable dish. Between
noon and 1pm, the inmates are allowed to meet visitors. Till 3 pm, they
can visit the gym and read or watch
television. Around 3pm, a cup of tea
and two biscuits are served. By 6pm
,dinner has to be collected by the inmates. The menu is the same as
lunch. Immediately after dinner,
they are locked up in the cell again.
Sunil Gupta, the jail’s law officer,
said all the high-profile inmates are
allowed to meet visitors twice a
June 17-30, 2011
week and collect a maximum pocket money of 1,000 rupees (US$22)
per visit. That makes it 2,000 rupees ($44) a week, enough to buy
coupons for soft drinks and snacks
from the Tihar canteen.
The director general of prisons,
Neeraj Kumar, said Kanimozhi has
not asked for any special facilities inside the jail and no VIP treatment is
provided for her. “She sleeps on the
floor. It was Raja who requested for
some Tamil newspapers which are
being provided,” he added.
“Kanimozhi has been given a separate cell with an attached toilet. The
cell has a television, fans and light.
She can have south Indian food. This
is not a special treatment as such because we offer many other jail inmates from south India food like idli,
vada and sambar,” added Kumar.
He said former communications
minister Raja spends his day in a 15ft
by 10ft cell in Jail No 1. He sleeps on
the floor using two of six blankets
given to him as a mattress. “Inside
the jail, no one is a VIP. High-profile
prisoners have been extended no extra facilities unless permitted by the
court,” said Kumar.
In Raja’s case, the court has granted him permission to get homecooked food twice a week.
For a high-profile prisoner, Raja
seems to have caused minimal problems for the authorities and made
few demands. “He is cooperative and
we have no issues with him. He follows the jail routine,” said Kumar.
Suresh Kalmadi, an MP, is not getting any VIP treatment either; nor
has he made any special requests.
Prominent inmates at TiharJail:
 Gayatri Devi, once on Vogue’s
Ten Most Beautiful Women list, was
a political prisoner during the
Emergency in 1975
 Atal Behari Vajpayee, former
Indian prime minister, was a
political prisoner during the
Emergency
 L.K. Advani, former Indian home
minister and senior Bharatiya Janta
Party leader during the Emergency
 Charles Sobhraj, serial killer,
escaped from Tihar on March 16,
1986 but was recaptured. He was
released in 1997 but is now serving
a life sentence in Nepal
 Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh,
arrested for kidnapping Western
tourists in 1994 and later convicted
of the murder of Wall Street
Journal journalist Daniel Pearl. He
was released in 1999 in a swop for
passengers aboard hijacked Indian
Airlines flight 814
 A. Raja, former telecom minister,
accused in the 2G spectrum licence
sale scam
 Siddharth Behura, former
telecom secretary, accused in the
2G spectrum licence sale scam
 Suresh Kalmadi, former
Commonwealth Games India chief,
accused of alleged irregularities in
connection with awarding a
Commonwealth Games contract
 Corporate honchos in 2G scam:
Unitech managing director Sanjay
Chandra, Swan Telecom founder
Shahid Balwa, Swan Telecom
executive Vinod Goenka
• 25
CHANGING ASIA
By Rupak D. Sharma
Asia News Network
The China
Factor
While people in the
US and Europe are
tightening belts,
the Chinese are
spending lavishly
on luxury goods
B
PH OTO BY A F P
❖❖ Bangkok
y the time you read this
article, Prada would have
launched its initial public
offering (IPO) in Hong
Kong, through which the
Italian fashion house is expecting to
raise around US$2.6 billion.
The company, run by the husbandwife team of Patrizio Bertelli and
Miuccia Prada, is floating 16.5 per
cent of the shares in the stock market.
It will use the money to pay down
debt of $1.4 billion and open more
stores, mainly in Asia.
It is symbolic that Prada chose
Hong Kong over other well-established financial centres like Milan,
London or New York to make its
market debut. This shows the
confidence the 98-year-old manufacturer of avant-garde ladies handbags,
shoes and apparels has in Asia.
Lately, renowned Western fashion
houses and luxury brands are
increasingly turning east to raise
money.
Last year, French skin care
company L’Occitane generated
about HK$5.5 billion ($708
million) through an IPO in Hong
Kong. Just this month, luggage
maker Samsonite raised HK$9.73
billion ($1.25 billion) by floating its
shares on Hong Kong stock exchange. Other companies like US
leather goods maker Coach and Italian motorcycle maker Ducati are
also planning listings on Hong
Kong’s bourse this year.
26 •
LUXURY RULES: A photographer takes a picture of a Prada logo during a televised press
conference for Prada S.p.A. in relation to its upcoming Hong Kong initial public offering, in Hong
Kong on June 12.
Many Western companies are
rushing to Hong Kong because of its
proximity to China, which is now
filled with nouveau riches.
As China still does not allow
listings of foreign firms on its main
stock exchange in Shanghai, the
wealthy Chinese—looking for
investment options abroad—prefer
to trade foreign shares in Hong
Kong, the closest destination from
home. This factor has played a great
role in turning Hong Kong into the
world’s biggest IPO market, outshining other major financial hubs
like New York and London that are
still recovering from the global
financial crisis.
Past instances show that initial
public offerings of foreign companies are generally well received in
Hong Kong (although Hang Seng is
recenly in correction territory). This
tends to push up the valuation of
the firms, making them even more
attractive to investors.
For instance, each share of Prada
is going to be sold at between 21.1
and 27.7 times the company’s
projected earnings per share for
2011. This is expected to raise the
value of the company to between
$11.5 billion and $15.7 billion,
making it one of the most valuable
fashion companies in the world.
Shares of L’Occitane, another
June 17-30, 2011
Western European company,
are also being traded in Hong
Kong at around 26 times forecast 2011 earnings.
So what is propelling investors to
grab shares of Western luxury
brands so aggressively? The reason
once again is China, which has now
become one of the biggest markets
for luxury goods.
For instance, Louis Vuitton’s
biggest customers are already
Chinese buyers, while Greater China
represents 28 per cent of sales for
Swatch, 18 per cent for Gucci, 14 per
cent for Bulgari and 11 per cent for
Hermes. Even Prada is projecting
sales of around $2.75 billion this
June 17-30, 2011
year, most of which will come from
Chinese customers. It is the same for
luxury car manufacturers like BMW,
which sold 58,506 cars in the first
quarter this year—up 71 per cent—
and Mercedes-Benz, which sold
42,990 cars, up 78 per cent.
China’s contribution to the
revenues of renowned luxury
brands is expected to grow even
further in the coming years with
CLSA, a leading Asia-focused
research firm, predicting Greater
China accounting for as much as
44 per cent of global luxury sales
by 2020, up from 15 per cent now.
One of the main reasons behind
China’s growing appetite for luxury
brands is the average age of Chinese
millionaires, which at 39 is 15 years
younger than their overseas peers,
according to CLSA.
These young millionaires not only
display their wealth by buying
expensive watches, jewellery, apparel
and cars for themselves and family
members but also for others to create
strong relationships, known as
guanxi in Chinese business circle.
Now even middle-income people
have started following in the footsteps of the rich with items like Louis
Vuitton bags and Rolex watches
topping the must-have list. In other
words, luxury has become the new
currency of power in materialistic
China. That’s why world’s major
fashion houses and luxury brands are
rushing to open outlets in the world's
second largest economy.
Radha Chadha and Paul Husband, authors of The Cult of the
Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love
Affair with Luxury, write: “Almost
all countries in Asia start at a point
of some form of subjugation that
leads to a deep hunger for goods
and pushes them towards working
hard to acquire the wealth required
to buy them. This is followed by the
economic growth stage and then a
show off stage, which is where
China is at the moment.
“This is gradually replaced by the
‘fit in’ stage, as in the case of Hong
Kong, when money no longer
becomes the main driving force but
a compulsion to fit in with the rest
of the society. The final stage is
when a country, like Japan, takes
luxury goods in its stride and they
become more of a way of life. This
stage will inevitably give way to a
‘search for meaning’ stage, where
there is disenchantment with
high-priced goods and a greater
stress on value-for-money brands.”
It may take several years for
China to reach that stage, but until
then brand-conscious Chinese will
continue to jostle to luxury goods
outlets generating billions of dollars
in profit for the manufacturers of
luxury goods.
Looks like the party has just
started for luxury goods makers and
will continue in the years to come
unless the Chinese economy makes
a crash landing.
• 27
BUSINESS
Provided by C entral Retail Corporation/A sia News Network
growth rate of 10 per cent per annum
for the last 19 years. Its per capita income stands at over $10,000.
However, Hangzhou’s astounding
growth has not churned enough revenue for Central to negate the loss it
has been incurring since it started
operation. But Tos is not worried.
He knows success hinges on the
company’s ability to win the confidence of clients and he will leave no
stone unturned in generating awareness about Central.
“It will take around three years for
us to fully market our name,” Tos says
pretty confidently. He is also confident about achieving a break-even
point within the next eight years.
His confidence stems from the
DREAM PROJECT: A model of Central
Retail Corp’s Central Embassy project.
Going Global
CENTRAL IN CHINA:
The Central department
store in Hangzhou,
eastern China.
Thailand’s retail conglomerate creates a footprint in China
C
❖❖ Bangkok
hina—the name sets the
heart of many global investors racing. A population
of over 1.3 billion, supercharged development and
rising disposable income of people—
these qualities inadvertently lead
many to fall in love with the country.
One of the latest companies to get
obsessed with China is Central Retail
Corp of Thailand.
Central, which operates dozens of
department stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets and hotels, is one of the
most respected names in Thailand’s
retail sector.
It started its business from a tiny
store in Thonburi area in 1957, and
has now turned into the largest retail
conglomerate in the country, with revenue topping US$3.5 billion last year,
28 •
up 8.2 per cent from previous year.
To further strengthen its position
in the local market, the company has
recently rolled out a 10-billion-baht
($331 million) project called Central
Embassy. It will open in Bangkok in
2013 and will spread in an area of
144,000sq m. It will comprise two
core components: a luxury retail centre and a six-star hotel. These units
will be housed in an iconic architecture, which the company says will be
the pride of Thailand.
Now, the retail giant has decided to
leave its comfort zone and go globetrotting. Last month, it spent 260 million euros ($380 million) to acquire
Italy’s leading luxury department
store, la Rinascente. It now wishes to
expand its business in China rapidly.
The Thai retail giant set its foot in
the world’s second largest economy
last year by opening a swanky department store in Hangzhou.
The store located in eastern Chinese city’s MixC Mall was established
at a cost of around 1 billion baht
($33.1 million) and spreads in an
area of 23,000sqm.
The headline attraction of the store,
which caters to upper-middle class
segment, is branded fashion wear.
And it is pretty much limited to that.
This is unlike in Thailand, where
Central sells everything, including
apparels, to consumer electronics,
sporting goods and grocery items
under one roof.
Tos Chirathivat, CEO of Central
Retail Corp, says Hangzhou branch
also intends to provide one-stop
shopping experience to customers.
“But supply chains in China operate
differently which makes the job (of
June 17-30, 2011
diversifying product range) difficult,”
he tells AsiaNews.
For instance, to get a particular
good, he says, sometimes “one has to
go through three different parties”.
“This is because China is enormous
and you have to deal with different
franchisees in different cities. This
makes the work taxing.”
Central expects to face similar
problems again when it opens two
more stores in Shenyang in July and
August. But these hurdles are not expected to deter the company as it has
seen unlimited opportunities in the
booming economy.
“China is growing at an amazing
pace and I don’t think any country has
experienced this kind of fast-paced
development before,” Tos says, calling
the phenomenon “mind boggling”.
That’s why Central plans to open at
least 2-3 stores every year in various
cities in the next 10 years—although
it has not finalised the locations.
“By then our business in China will
be bigger than in Thailand,” Tos says.
Central, like many other global companies, had decided to generate a footprint in China after seeing the country’s
growth potential and a growing luxury
goods market, which is now the world’s
second largest after Japan.
It officially stepped into the country
three years ago by setting up an office
in Shanghai.
At that time it was planning to use
June 17-30, 2011
Provided by Central Retail Corporation/Asia News Network
Provided by Central Retail Corporation/A sia News Network
By Rupak D. Sharma
Asia News Network
TOP BRASS: Tos Chirathivat (R), CEO of Central Retail Corp with Chart Chirathivat, managing
director of Central Embassy.
first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai,
Guangzhou or Shenzhen as its launch
pad as they are bigger markets, which
means higher revenue and profit levels. But after being unable to find a
suitable location in the mega cities,
and coupled with the problem of rising real estate prices, it decided to
settle in the eastern Chinese city of
Hangzhou.
Hangzhou, with a population of 7.9
million people, is still officially known
as a second-tier city. Yet it’s on a roll
with the economy ticking an average
understanding of consumer behaviour in China’s luxury market which
he says is not different from Thailand’s or any other country in Asia.
He believes that in a globalised
world everyone says the same thing
but in different languages. That’s
why he doesn’t think it necessary to
devise a totally different marketing
strategy for China.
What Central really needs is a loyal
following of customers. Making it
happen is Tos’ job, which puts the
company’s future on his back.
• 29
LIFE
Illustration by Fang Li /C hina Daily
By Chen Xin
China Daily
China’s white-collar workers are burdened by heavy
workload and fierce competition in the job market
Z
❖❖ Beijing
hang Hong has been going
to bed at around 1am at
least thrice a week in recent months. As a real estate broker with a leading
agency in Beijing, he tries to show
potential home-owners as many
properties as he can to increase the
chances of hitting a deal.
“My working hours are from 9am
to 6pm every day. But I have to work
extra, after hours, because that’s
when my clients have the time to
look at an apartment,” he said.
The 25-year-old has been a housing broker for the last three years,
but he’s been facing a tough time
lately. Zhang said he used to sell six
properties a month on average right
up to last year, but now he gets happy if he can sell just one a month.
30 •
Part of the difficulty stems from
tougher laws on home ownership.
In the capital, people without a Beijing hukou (permanent residence
permit) are not allowed to buy
property unless they have paid income tax or social security for five
consecutive years, according to regulations released in February aimed
at cooling down the overheated
property market.
About 65 per cent of the city’s
would-be second-hand property
buyers do not have Beijing residency. Fewer than half can prove they
have paid taxes for the last five
years, according to the Woaiwojia’s
official blog sina.com. Woaiwojia is
Zhang’s employer.
“The market has faced such a
downturn that I sometimes worry
about my future,” Zhang said. The
large portion of his income comes
from the commission he gets once
he sells an apartment. If he cannot
hit deals, he has to depend on basic
salary of 2,000 yuan (US$307),
which only covers living expenses.
There are more than 10 housing
agencies in the community where
his office is located and the competition is fierce.
“Many of my peers have left the
industry, but I want to hold on for a
while,” he said.
A recent survey by online real estate portal Soufun.com showed
that about 46 per cent of some 600
home brokers polled in Shanghai
say they work at least 12 hours every
day and most only take one day off a
week, or just a day off a month.
Real estate brokers are only the
tip of the iceberg where stress at
June 17-30, 2011
June 17-30, 2011
high cost of buying a home or a car,
and these factors push them to endlessly pursue for better incomes.
As this becomes a trend there is
the danger of trying to keep up with
those with bigger houses, better
cars or higher social status, and
they become goals that must be
reached at all costs, said Xia.
To prevent the recurrence of tragedies such as Zhou and Pan, Xia
suggests that the government pass
laws to regulate workloads.
Employers should ensure better
employee welfare, hire more workers to share the workload, ask emPhotos by China Daily
When The Candle
Burns Out
work is concerned. Sometimes, the not sleep well, and lost her appetite
build-up can be fatal.
and the will to socialise.
Public attention was sharply foWhite-collar office workers, jourcused on the dangers of overwork nalists, teachers and doctors are the
recently when two corporate execu- groups that suffer the highest stress
tives in Shanghai suddenly died. levels at work, according to Xu Yan
They were believed to have suc- from the School of Psychology at
cumbed to overwork.
Beijing Normal University.
Pan Jie, 25, an auditor with the
Li Li (not her real name), is a reShanghai office of Pricewaterhouse- porter with a radio station in BeiCoopers died on April 10 after con- jing, and she said she must chalk up
tracting a case of acute cerebral certain amount of work if she does
meningitis that had developed from not want her salary to be deducted.
a flu virus.
“I am anxious every day because I
Although Pan’s company denied have to cover as much news as I can
the connection between her death to earn my full salary,” she said. Ofand work-related stress, her final entries in her microblog recorded her health complaints
which she believed were a result of over work.
A poll conducted by Zhaopin.com, a popular Chinese
job-hunting website, showed
that more than 60 per cent of
white-collar workers in China
suffer from pressure at work,
RELIEVING TENSION: More than 300 migrant
and 70 per cent believe this
workers from 21 enterprises let it all out at a pillow
has negative effects on their
fight in Dongguan, Guangdong province.
lives. Some said they were often depressed.
In another 2010 poll by the Chi- ten, she gets up at 5am for an assignnese Medical Doctors Association ment and stays back until 2am to
and the Chinese Hospital Associa- finish writing the stories. There is
tion, more than 60 per cent of the no such thing as “holiday” in her
white-collar workers in large cities lexicon, since news can break anywere at risk of contracting symp- time—even during weekends or
toms related to poor health.
public holidays.
The symptoms—caused by a
Xia Xueluan, a sociologist with
combination of long hours at work, Peking University, said poor health
lack of exercise and poor diet— results when the worker is no longwere mostly chronic neck and low- er able to cope with the stress. Eveer-back pain, high cholesterol and ryone should pay a lot more attenliver disease, prevalent among t i o n to t h e re ce n t c a s e s o f
white-collar workers.
“overwork-related deaths”.
Jane Wu, a senior auditor with an
“In today’s world, everyone
accounting firm in Beijing, said she has high expectations and wants
works at least 20 extra hours each to earn as much as they can, beweek in order to finish her assign- cause the rising cost of living in
ments. January to April is the busi- big cities. And an imperfect soest period at the office, and during cial security system has made
this time, she ends up working until many people feel insecure about
midnight. Once, she worked 40 days their future,” he said.
in succession without a day off.
People born between the 1970s
“I was so frustrated and depressed and 1980s are sandwiched by the rewhen endless projects kept coming sponsibilities of raising their own
that I almost wanted to quit the job,” children and supporting their parshe said. Because of stress she could ents. They also have to deal with the
DE-STRESSING: A woman smashes an old
TV set at a shop in Shenyang, Liaoning
province. The shop allows people to smash
things up to vent pent-up emotions.
ployees to go for regular health
check-ups and force employees to
take holidays. A social welfare system which provides subsidies for
housing, healthcare and children’s
schooling should be established to
prevent people from becoming
slaves to money, he said.
Overwork can cause more than
just tiredness, said Xu Yan. It can
also lead to inefficiency at work,
anger, depression and even the
desire to commit suicide. It also
lowers the body’s immune system,
leaving it weakened and susceptible to more illnesses.
To deal with the adverse effect
that overwork brings, close attention must be paid to the danger signals.
“If any physical or mental problem occurs during work, one should
immediately stop and take a rest.
Efficiency is lowered when one is
not in a good mental state. It can
only get worse if you ignore the
signs,” Xu said.
• 31
LIFESTYLE
SOUTH KOREA
By Choi He-suk and Shin Hyon-hee
The Korea Herald
KEEN EYE: Hanjin Group chairman
Cho Yang-ho takes a photograph.
W
Photo courtesy of Korean Air
❖❖ Seoul
hen talk ing about
South Korea’s s top
businessmen, stress
may seem to come
with the job. While a
great motivator, stress can cripple not
only physical and emotional health
but also concentration and creative
thinking.
To tackle such risks, CEOs adopt
various strategies. It can be extra work
in some cases, or extreme sports in
others. Whatever it is, all say they
seek ways to help release pressure
from their busy minds.
Hyundai Motor Group chairman
Chung Mong-koo is a well-known
workaholic, who is said to dedicate
much of his “free time” to work.
“He is known to play golf on occasion, but in terms of hobbies or nonprofessional interests, little is known.
Some say that his hobby is work,”
said an industry source, who declined
to be named.
Such reports are backed by group
of fic ials who say Chung makes
frequent visits to production facilities and divides his time outside
the office between those requiring
particular attention.
In contrast, Samsung Electronics
32 •
chairman Lee Kun-hee is known
for having a number of hobbies
and interests.
As the head of the country’s top
company, Lee’s hobbies have been
highlighted in sporadic media reports.
His interests are as diverse as Samsung Group’s business portfolio ranging from keeping dogs and horse riding to movies and collecting cars. His
love of automobiles, both old and
new, is particularly well-known. Lee’s
car collection reportedly includes
around 200 supercars including Ferraris and Lamborghinis as well as rare
classic cars.
Lee is not alone in indulging in supercars, an option open to the select
few among the country’s ultra-rich.
CJ Group chairman and Lee’s nephew Lee Jae-hyun is also said to be a
supercar enthusiast.
However, the interests of the
nation’s super-rich are not limited
to such exclusive pastimes with a
number of business heavyweights
dedicating their free time to some
unlikely activities.
The somewhat striking hobbies indulged in by the country’s business
leaders range from extreme sports to
bird-watching to semi-professional
photography.
Going extreme
While more common sports such
as golf and skiing are popular in general, some of South Korea’s business
elites dedicate much of their spare
time to more unusual options.
Among them is Eugene Group
chairman and chief executive Yu
Kyung-sun, who challenged himself
to run in ironman triathlon races,
which have gained fame for their
grueling length, strict rules and
harsh game conditions.
In 2002, he recorded two hours
and 28 minutes to finish a course
with a 1.5-kilometre sea swim, a
40-kilometer bike and a 10-kilometre marathon in turn with no break.
Yu has also headed the Asia Triathlon Confederation since 2003 and the
Korea Triathlon Federation between
2000 and 2009, according to Eugene.
LS Cable and System chairman and
chief executive Koo Cha-yol is a bicycle enthusiast and serves as the head
of the Korea Cycling Federation.
His interest in the sport goes beyond holding the post. According to
LS officials, Koo cycles to work from
his home in Seoul to the office in
Anyang, Gyeonggi Province two or
three times a week.
However, his real interest lies
June 17-30, 2011
June 17-30, 2011
• 33
Photo courtesy of LS Cable and System
The somewhat striking hobbies
indulged in by South Korea’s
business leaders range from
extreme sports to bird-watching
to semi-professional
photography
Photo courtesy of H yundai H eavy I ndustries
Work Hard,
Play Hard
managing the company.”
in mountain biking.
artist”, Homeplus chief executive
“The chairman participated in the
Lee Seung-han believes managetrans-Alps cycling competition in 2002 Art management
ment is like art.
for the first time as an East Asian,” an
Some corporate chiefs sublimate
“People think art is a state of perLS official said. The competition re- their stress in finding beauty in nature. fection. But artists think art is a state
quires participants to cycle 650 kiloHanjin Group chairman Cho Yang- of imperfection—that’s why they demetres in eight days.
ho has been presenting his acquaint- vote all their passion and energy to
“He still frequently goes moun- ances such as other executives and for- attain the state of perfection,” Lee said
tain biking in Korea when he has eign envoys with a calendar featuring in his blog. “Likewise, we can elevate
the chance.”
photographs he has taken on his trips. management quality to the state of art
Koo says the experiences gained
Throughout his time with Korean by striving for perfection with our
from cycling are also ref lected in Air since 1973, he has flown all around heart and energy.”
his life.
the world, capturing dramatic scenes
Lee’s passion for art had a “signifi“I ref lect on myself and grow on camera.
cant impact” on Homeplus discount
patience as I cycle,” Koo was quot“I travel a lot. But I used to travel, stores, company officials say.
ed as saying in a statement from the finish the work, catch the next plane
“The CEO designed stores’ unique
company’s public relations department.
“By completing the trans
Alps race, I learned never
to give up.”
He is not alone in being
an sport enthusiast.
Koo Cha-joon of LIG
Insurance Co. is a keen
mountaineer who took
part in an expedition
opening a new route on
Mt. Everest, while LSIS
FINISH LINE: Hyundai Heavy Industries
FIT TO RIDE: LS Cable and System
Co vice chairman and
Chairman Min Keh-sik (4th from left) runs a
chairman and chief executive Koo Cha-yol
chief executive Koo Jamountain marathon race with other company
(front) rides with the company’s cycling club
kyun is a scuba-diving exemployees.
members.
pert who has dived more
than 2,000 times.
For Hyundai Heavy Industries back,” Cho was quoted as saying. exterior with a shape of the Big Ben
chairman Min Keh-sik, marathon “Now I find some time to relax, take clock tower in London,” a Homeplus
means more than just a hobby to my camera with me, take one day off spokesperson said.
blow off stress.
and enjoy the sights and take nice
“He also likes paintings so much
His devotion started in the 1950s, photographs.”
that there are more than 10 works on
when he was a high school student.
This year’s calendar showcases the floor in his office because there is
Being an exceptional runner, Min snapshots from Jeju Island, South no more room to hang them.”
was offered to join the national Jeolla Province, Nor way, Tahiti,
Lee also instal led “Homeplus
team but had to stop off because Uzbekistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia Open Gallery” at nine branches in
of his parents’ opposition.
and other places.
western Seoul, Suwon, Gwangyang
But the 69-year-old has kept alive
“I am learning the way to live my and others, in which local artists,
h i s y o u t h d r e a m t o b e c o m e a life again through my grandsons. As students and residents can display
marathoner, by having completed my father did with my son, I am look- their works and view the exhibimore than 200 full courses, three ing forward to looking around the tion free of charge. T he fourth
of which this year.
world one day with my grandsons. f loor of Homeplus’ Jamsil store in
“Anyone can face a crisis in their life, Then I would realise in earnest that southeastern Seoul was made to be
but for me patience that I learned from the world seen through my viewfinder used as a gallery.
marathon became the source to over- has various meanings,” Cho wrote in
“The Open Gallery was aimed at
come crises,” Min told his employees.
the foreword of the 2011 calendar.
appeasing the residents’ cultural
“Life and operating a company
As the pictures are taken by Cho thirst,” the official said. “We’ve been
are no different from running a himself, the gift has special value so receiving very positive responses
marathon. I achieved patience and that it helps solidify his business net- from customers as the galleries were
a dauntless mindset from the ex- work, Hanjin officials say.
designed to embrace all generations
periences, which I’m utilising in
S elf- procl aimed “management from children to housewives.”
FOOD
By Erza ST
The Jakarta Post
Fantastic Feast
Bali offers sublime tastes
for devotees of fine food
D
❖❖ Denpasar
uring the past two decades, Bali has shown itself
to be equal, or even superior, to Jakarta when it
comes to its spread of
great restaurants. From traditional
Balinese and other Indonesian cuisines, to Italian, French, Middle
Eastern, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese,
Greek or even Russian, the world is
on your plate.
It’s survival of the fittest here:
Restaurants must display excellent
consistency and originality, or they
will close quickly.
The following five restaurants are
not only surviving but flourishing
because of their management, vision and, most of all, good food.
What makes Warisan special is
that it was the very first Western
fine-dining restaurant al fresco—in
the middle of the rice fields. After a
long hiatus for renovation, the restaurant reopened last year with a
more up-to-date ambiance. Dayu Sri
is now working with Cetin Candan,
one of Jakarta’s most prominent social figures, as general manager.
In previous years, chefs Doudou
Tourneville and Said Alem were the
fire in Warisan’s kitchen, delivering
the French Mediterranean flavours
that patrons so loved. Their legacy
has been passed on to chef Vincent
Denayer from Brussels, who comes
with an impressive working background, including stints at Cercle
des Nations and the Astoria Pullman Hotel.
Warisan
to an experience of innovative,
modern cuisine.
He calls himself a tough taskmaster.
“I always chase suppliers, farmers, growers, vendors and purveyors for the best and new products,”
he says. “I am almost like a drill
sergeant in the kitchen, barking
out commands for all my cooks to
taste everything, and keeping
spoons on all sections. Tasting a
dish is so important and teaching
my team to cook and season according to my taste preferences is how I
create consistency in here.”
As a reflection of the American’s
lively personality (which has earned
him spots on TV shows), the creations served at Nutmegs are fun,
fresh, tasty and ingredient driven.
Delectable dishes such as foie gras
served on potato puree with star anise balsamic or Angus beef with
mushroom risotto are memorable
long after the dinner has ended.
Chef
Philip
Mimbimi
Mozaic workshop in motion
◊ MOZAIC
◊ SARONG
Jl. Raya Sanggingan
Ubud, Gianyar
Tel: +62 (361) 975 768
PHOTO S PROV ID E D TO T HE JAK ARTA P O ST WE E K E ND E R
Jl. Raya Kerobokan No. 38
Br. Taman
Tel: +62 (361) 731 175
W
e cannot talk about the food
and dining ascension of Bali
without mentioning this legendary
institution. Established in 1989 by
Balinese Dayu Sri and her then husband Gian Paolo, this pioneer has
weathered Bali’s ups and downs. It
has also undergone its own culinary
evolution, evolving from Italian to
Vietnamese and now to French
Mediterranean.
34 •
Jl. Petitenget No. 19X
Kerobokan
Tel: +62 (361) 737809
D
◊ WARISAN RESTAURANT
◊ HU’U BAR & NUTMEGS RESTAURANT
Jl. Oberoi
Petitenget, Kerobokan
Tel: +62 (361) 736 443
T
he restaurants in Bali that are
recognised as culinary institutions seem to hold to the same basic
principles: Use quality products
and maintain consistency. Nutmegs,
part of the famous Hu’u Bar, is undoubtedly one of the finest restaurants on the island. American chef
Philip Mimbimi introduces diners
gustation set menus with or without
wine pairing, and one chef’s special
with wine pairing.
The dishes are made in a minute,
and you have no idea what to expect
on your plate, but whatever it is will
whet your appetite for more. Everything is made with great skill, passion and definitely love.
The decision to go with degustation came in 2004, Salans said, when
Mozaic was invited to become a
member of Les Grandes Tables Du
Monde. It was to ensure that
through set menus “...guests (within
the menu of their choice) had to eat
certain dishes which could be
served to them in a certain progression which could guarantee the perfect meal”.
His passion, motivation and insistence on perfection are at play
every day.
“The only way to keep at the top
is to keep that flame burning inside
of you and your staff,” says Salans,
who is planning to launch a Mozaic
cookbook. “I guess the best way to
do this is by ruling by example. If I
show passion and motivation every
day, the others will see this passion
and follow it by giving back to me
the same energy that I give them.
Obviously it goes without saying
that there is also a fair bit of eating
involved.”
egustation, the latest trend in
the culinary world, has arrived
in Bali. The art of appreciative tasting of various foods, focusing on the
gustatory system and senses, has
been embraced by Mozaic.
The brainchild of distinguished
chef Chris Salans, Mozaic has received numerous media and industry awards; it is also the first restaurant in Southeast Asia to be
recognised as a member of the
distinguished Les Grandes Tables
Du Monde (The Grand Tables of
the World).
There is no a la carte menu at Mozaic. The menu consists of a few deJune 17-30, 2011
H
olding rank with the above
grand survivors are some
“younger” institutions. The food at
Sarong, which opened in 2008, has
already enchanted many palates, including those of the toughest critics.
Chef Will Meyrick has a different
approach to food. The notion of fusion —East meets West—is strong,
leading some to label his cooking
style ‘Pan-Southeast Asian’, although he takes issue with the description.
“Just because I’m white doesn’t
mean my cooking style is PanAsian,” he says. “I’ve lived in Asia
June 17-30, 2011
for over 10 years, cooking and eating out of street market stalls,
warung (traditional stalls) and
hawker stalls. I’m blessed to have
met very humble people in my travels who have given me so much inspiration. The food I cook is not
original; it is taking something from
a simplistic form and putting it into
a more suitable environment for
people to experience it—also with
better quality produce too.”
Sarong oyster
The former chef of Longrain and
Jimmy Liks (in Australia) might
“borrow” some flavours along the
way, but he really knows how to
make his dishes original. We just
can’t get enough of his spicy chicken betel leaf with flat coriander lime
leaf, roasted chiLli and capsicum
relish, not to mention the seared
scallops with green name jihm and
ajwaini fish tikka.
Make sure you leave room for
dessert, which is as beautiful and
eclectic as Sarong’s opulent setting.
they have added more facilities,
such as a private wine cellar, function room (for up to 120 people),
beautiful indoor and outdoor lounge
and a gallery, as well as a boutique
selling jewellery and accessories.
Metis’ grandeur is apparent from
its facade. Still, there is no escaping
the dejá vù feeling that the inside
U-shaped dining area, with its patio
overlooking manicured rice fields,
is similar to the former space.
Food-wise, Doudou and Said have
really done it again, bringing their
unusual flair to French cooking. The
sauces in particular are excellent,
and the preponderance of fresh ingredients crossed with the chefs’
many years of experience is the key
to culinary success here.
During our last visit, the scallops
with foie gras were simply to die for
and the Moroccan lamb rack
mechoui was perfection.
Consistency in Metis doesn’t
come easy. It requires strict quality
control, with each ingredient
checked to ensure it is fresh and up
to the standard. However, like the
other four restaurants in this list,
Metis has to deal with difficulties
such as obtaining fresh imported
quality products because of the new
import regulations.
There are also the everyday challenges of growing traffic congestion
on the island and the lack of human
resources. But with their commitment to good food and service, they
appear destined for ongoing success.
◊ METIS
Jl. Petitenget No. 6
Kerobokan
Tel: +62 (361) 737 888
G
reat things were predicted of
this French haute cuisine restaurant from its opening day. The
reason is simple: The chefs are Said
Alem and Doudou Tourneville— the
dynamic duo that has kept Warisan
in the top three restaurants in Bali
for over a decade.
In this new, more spacious venue,
Metis foie gras
• 35
ENTERTAINMENT
INDIA
By Devraj Singh Kalsi
The Statesman
BUSTED: Bollywood film
‘Peepli Live’ was India’s entry
to the Oscars this year but it
failed to make the cut.
Bollywood
churns more
movies than
Hollywood but
it has failed to
get major
awards at the
Oscars and the
Cannes
36 •
Canned Dream
D
❖❖ Mumbai
espite repeated attempts
over the years, Bollywood
has not been able to make
the cut in Hollywood,
leave aside impressing the
Oscar jury. It is frustrating when
what we believe to be good enough
for the Oscars gets eliminated. Right
from Lagaan to Peepli Live, Indian entries do not figure in the final list of
nominations for the grand prize. We
keep guessing what kind of cinema
actually wins favour. It is strange that
when Indian technicians work in
films made by British directors or
American directors, they win awards
in the US. This anomaly is beyond
explanation.
When one door closes, another one
opens. This has proved true in case of
Bollywood. Brush aside the harrowing experiences in the US, we have
much to celebrate as Indian cinema
has made inroads elsewhere. Cannes
is the hottest destination where Bollywood seems to be accorded a warm,
enthusiastic welcome. For several
years, Aishwarya Rai has walked the
red carpet in alluring dresses for shutterbugs to go click, click, click. Many
other actors have joined her to make
a statement that heroines in Bollywood are glamorous and at par with
beauties from other parts of the
world. While they make a fashion
statement, pose with European master filmmakers, the focus shifts to the
kind of films they act in. They consider their work to be in no way inferior as Bollywood makes films for the
masses, for pure entertainment.
Indian directors—like Shekhar Kapur—who left India to make films
abroad find this festival to be fascinating, a place where those looking for
June 17-30, 2011
artistic satisfaction get an overdose They can reach out with their films.
and those sold on glamour get to hob- The same goes for Bengali films which
nob with the best from across the should explore Cannes, to revive the
world. What Hollywood did not ac- association and fill the void. Bengal
cord them, Cannes provides it all. continues with the tradition of makAnd in plenty. Hence the mad rush.
ing quality films and there are talentMany Indian film personalities ed filmmakers producing good films.
prefer to hang around this place in Gautam Ghose, Buddhadeb Dasgupta
May. They enjoy every moment be- are some names to reckon with, who
cause quality cinema is served here. are constantly infusing visual poetry
Cannes authorities appear keen on and life in cinematic art.
widening the platform so that they
The presence of earthy Paoli Dam
can make the festival and awards in ethnic wear raised quite a few eyemore prestigious in comparison to brows here. Touring with her film,
the Oscars. The most coveted statu- she made a subtle statement that
ette may not remain so covetous if beauty emerges from other parts of
other countries get to participate India as well, not just Bollywood
and represent well here.
where the likes of Mallika Sherawat
Cannes is relatively new ground wear bold Western outfits just to be
for B ol ly wood. But the French like them.
know Indian cinema because of
For a refreshing change, here is an
Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen. Their Oriental beauty with long, cascading
films have been honoured
and these filmmakers have
EPIC: Aamir Khan’s
won awards during their
2002 film ‘Lagaan’
also didn’t get the
lifetime for contribution
Oscar jury’s
to cinema. T he French
approval.
were well aware of the
quality of Indian reg ional c inema and the
wide reach of Bollywood.
Earlier, only parallel cinema created a buzz. Now,
many Indian commercial
directors like Mani Ratnam
utilise the opportunity to
promote their films here. A surprise hair exuding sensuality and making a
winner last year was Udaan, made by forceful statement about beauty that is
Motwane and Anurag Kashyap, and equally appealing. Whether she manthis boosted Indian filmmakers’ confi- ages to bag roles in foreign producdence. Our films can be appreciated, tions or not is a different issue,
feted abroad and since Bollywood is whether her work gets rave reviews
now making offbeat films, there is a or not is a different matter altogether,
good chance of winning at Cannes.
but what matters the most is the fact
Cannes has been a favourite for that she is emerging as the new face
other reasons. Many Indian film peo- of beauty from India and showcases
ple are chosen to be on the jury, be it exotic variety for the foreign eye to
Sharmila Tagore or Nandita Das. It feast on. Leggie beauties in Bollywood
means that Indian directors and actors may crib at her bid to capitalise on
have a say in choosing the best. And Indian style and wear, but what matthe French believe in Indian aesthetic ters is that she has grabbed eyeballs
sensibilities a lot more than what the and it is to be seen whether she reAmericans do.
tains attention or not.
There are lessons for those making
Presence here will possibly cement
middle cinema. If they make good ties and bring people from disparate
movies and showcase it here, they backgrounds together, who want to
stand a good chance of getting it seen make quality cinema. This is the best
by people who enjoy good cinema. place to forge relationships, watch
June 17-30, 2011
films and pursue artistic dreams. It is
inspirational as well as a learning experience.
When the objective is of making
cinema proud, the festival should not
encourage glamour. The truth is that
the exchange of ideas and cinematic
excellence will not suffer if there is an
excess of glamour. It is an integral part
of cinematic tradition to accord
weightage to glamour.
It does not deviate or dilute intent.
In fact, glamour is an add-on that
brings the festival in the news in various countries as the local media finds
it worth talking about the achievement of local celebrities on a globally
respected platform, the place where
art is venerated irrespective of commercial fate and artistes are encouraged to live independently and work
freely without political correctness.
Cannes was always big;
just because Asian presence is increasing, it is
seen as a decline in standards. It is considered to
have become a carnival
sort of an event, to party
and freak out. The truth is
that it is getting bigger because they have located
areas from where good
cinema has emerged in the
past and they are doing
what it takes to nurture
the source. It should in a way weaken our urge to consider the Oscars as
the best in cinema. Many great people have suffered and spent their
lives in this belief and have secretly
pined to lift the Oscar. Winning at
Cannes should give a high, an equal,
if not more than the Oscars.
In some more years, permutations and combinations will
change and many countries will
perhaps come out of the spell of
Hollywood and consider Cannes
as the Mecca of films.
Indian contribution in making this
a reality will be significant. Perhaps
then India will stop sending entries
for Oscars. There are plenty of prizes
elsewhere and there is the Golden
Globe. Stay happy with all that instead of being obsessed with the elusive Oscars all the time.
• 37
By Yasminka Lee
Asia News Network
π FavoUrite entertainer for kids
1. Arashi
2.AKB48
3. Hanya (comedy duo)
4. Audrey (comedy duo)
5. Shimura Ken
6.Tano Shingo
7. Becky
8. Imoto Ayako
9. SMAP
10.Sato Takeru
Survey Says
The Japanese it seems would
find every reason in the book to
conduct polls that may indicate
how hot or cold a celebrity is
T
❖❖ Bangkok
he Japanese love surveys
and it’s very evident when
you watch their variety
shows where they come
up with all sorts of
rankings.
PR and media companies in
Japan also manage to cook up all
sorts of surveys ranging from the
interesting (male celebrities who
ladies want to be proposed to) to
outright funny (how many
AKB48 members’ names do you
remember), or even the mundane
(stars you want to work with).
Nevermind if some of them can be
boring but the Japanese love them
and the non-Japanese find them
entertaining anyway.
And judging from the results of
these various surveys, it is safe to say
that the following are the most
popular stars in the Land of the
Rising Sun’s constellation: Arashi
(male pop group composed of Ohno
Satoshi, Sakurai Sho, Aiba Masaki,
Ninomiya Kazunari and Matsumoto
Jun), actor Mukai Osamu, AKB48
(female pop group composed of 48
members that we do not have
enough space for), model-actress
Kitagawa Keiko and actor-singer
Fukuyama Masaharu.
Here are some of the quirky
surveys made recently:
π Role models for young boys
π Male celebs who ladies want to be
proposed to by:
1. Fukuyama Masaharu
2. Mukai Osamu
3. Takenouchi Yutaka
4. Ikuta Toma
5. Sakurai Sho (Arashi)
(Survey done by Platinum Guild
International among women aged
20-49 years old.)
38 •
1. Fukuyama Masaharu
2. Narimiya Hiroki
3. Mukai Osamu
4. Kimura Takuya
5. Sakurai Sho
6. Ninomiya Kazunari
7. Koike Teppi
8. Domoto Tsuyoshi
9. Sato Takeru
10. Sakurai Kazutoshi
10. Odagiri Joe
(Oricon surveyed 200 teenagers
and 200 young men in their 20s.
Fukuyama Masaharu ranked high
and was chosen because of his style
and coolness.)
π Most wanted husband
1. Mukai Osamu
1. Fukuyama Masaharu
3. Sakurai Sho (Arashi)
4. Sato Takeru
4. Miura Haruma
6. Matsumoto Jun (Arashi)
7. Tamaki Hiroshi
8. Ichiro (Suzuki Ichiro)
9. Kato Seishiro
9. Ishikawa Ryo
(Survey done by toy maker Bandai
among 1,500 boys and girls ages 3 to
12, with the help of their guardians.)
The reason cited by kids on why
they like Arashi, which took 23.8 per
cent of the votes, is because the
group can dance well and are good
at variety shows.. Most parents,
meanwhile, commented that their
kids appear mesmerised and sit still
whenever they watch AKB48.
Male
1. Aragaki Yui
2. Ueto Aya
3. Inoue Mao
4. Horikita Maki
5. Ayase Haruka
6. Takei Emi
7. Kitano Kii
8. Aibu Saki
9. Toda Erika
10. Nagasawa Masami
(Oricon surveyed 900 employed
people between the ages of 20 and 40)
June 17-30, 2011
Male
1. Mukai Osamu
2. Fukuyama Masaharu
3. Sakurai Sho
4. Yamashita Tomohisa (NEWS)
5. Okada Junichi (V6)
6. Kimura Takuya (SMAP)
7. Sato Takeru
8. Tsumabuki Satoshi
9. Mizushima Hiro
10. Tamaki Hiroshi
11. Inaba Koshi
12. Oguri Shun
13. Motoki Masahiro
1. Kitagawa Keiko
2. Miyazaki Aoi
3. Ayase Haruka
4. Sasaki Nozomi
5. Aragaki Yui
6. Shibasaki Kou
7. Sawajiri Erika
8. Matsushima Nanako
9. Takeuchi Yuko
10. Kuroki Meisa
11. Ueto Aya
12. Amuro Namie
13. Toda Erika
π ‘Ideal new employees’
Female
π Male and female celebrities with
ideal face
Female
(Survey was executed by five
broadcasting programmes in October
last year and participated in by more
than a thousand women.)
1. Mizobata Junpei
2. Miura Haruma
3. Saito Yuki
4. Ishikawa Ryo
5. Sato Takeru
6. Okada Masaki
7. Koike Teppei
8. Sakurai Sho (Arashi)
9. Mukai Osamu
10. Oguri Shun
π CelebritIES people want to work with
π Celebrities people want to spend
Christmas with
Male (chosen by women)
1. Arashi
2. Mukai Osamu
3. Fukuyama Masaharu
4. Okada Junichi (V6)
5. Ikuta Toma
Female (chosen by men)
1. Yu-ka
2. Yuuki Maomi
3. Ishihara Satomi
4. AKB48
5. Inoue Waka
(Cosmetic brand shu uemura surveyed 500 men and women in
November last year.)
June 17-30, 2011
(Survey done by NTT’s Internet
portal “goo” that asked their own
users through their popular mobile
polling service.)
π Celebrities who are ‘ideal bossES’
1. Amami Yuki
2. Tokoro George
3. Kitano Takeshi
4. Sato Koichi
5. Hoshino Senichi
6. Ichiro (Suzuki Ichiro)
7. Akashiya Sanma (tie)
7. Tamori (tie)
9. Maya Miki
10. Fukuyama Masaharu (tie)
10. Tachi Hiroshi (tie)
(900 respondents in their 20s-40s)
1. Becky
2. Arashi
3. Ueto Aya
4. AKB48
5. Tokoro George
6. Ayase Haruka
7. Akashiya Sanma
8. Fukuyama Masaharu
9. Shinohara Ryoko
9. Mukai Osamu
(“an”, a job seeking information
service, surveyed 1,477 people
online.)
π Idols that are ‘gods’
1. AKB48
2. Perfume
3. Shoujo Jidai
4. Matsuda Seiko
5. Morning Musume
6. KARA
7. Nakagawa Shoko
8. Mizuki Nana
9. Yamaguchi Momoe
10. Berryz Koubou
(Recochoku held a survey in October last year and asked respondents:
“Which idol do you think of as
god?” A total of 2,307 votes were
taken.)
π How many AKB48 members do you
actually remember?
1. 1-5 members (18,336 votes)
2. 6-10 members (8,271 votes)
3. None (5,925 votes)
4. 11-20 members (3,490 votes)
5. Over 21 members (2,598 votes)
6. All members (993 votes)
7. All members including graduated ones (752 votes)
(Goo Ranking held the survey
through mobile Internet and 40,365
people participated on how many of
the 48 members of the popular
female theater/idol group they
remember. Some even remember
those members who already left the
group.)
asianpopdom@gmail.com
• 39
PEOPLE
By Li Wenfang
China Daily
By Yu Yilei
China Daily
Tending
To The
Heads Of
State
Li Na
Makes
History!
China’s tennis star sets
a new record for her
country and Asia
Sworn to singlehood, a
Chinese woman served
Singapore leaders for four
decades
Photo by Zou Zhongpin/C hina Daily
s a nanny and domestic
help for five decades,
Ouyang Huanyan has
worked for some pretty
big hitters.
Lying in a wooden chair and
watching a soap opera in her village
in south China is a far cry from her
days in Singapore taking care of the
prime minister’s children.
“The work was not too hard and
we were like part of the same family,” she said, displaying photos taken with the family of former prime
minister Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore.
Then an 18-year-old girl, Ouyang
left her home in Xixi village in
Guangdong province and boarded a
boat in 1934 to follow her aunts and
sisters overseas.
She first spent nine years as a domestic help for Tan Kah-kee (18741961), a prominent businessman,
overseas Chinese leader and philanthropist in Singapore.
“My family was poor,” she said.
After her father’s death, her mother
had to feed three sons and three
daughters.
“When our ship arrived in Sin40 •
gapore, I felt alienated. The dock
was shabby, not as I had desired,”
she recalled.
As time went by, Ouyang got accustomed to life in the city state.
Later she started working for the
Lee family, where she would remain
for 40 years, tending to the children
and cleaning the home.
As prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew
would oversee the separation of
Singapore from Malaysia in 1965
and become its first leader.
In the meantime, Ouyang was
overseeing his children, especially
his daughter, Lee Wei Ling.
She also remembers watching his
son, Lee Hsien Loong, grow from a
baby to a young man heading off to
pursue studies overseas.
He has followed his father’s footsteps and is now Singapore’s prime
minister.
Enjoying her independent life in
Singapore, Ouyang became a zishunu in her 40s.
Literally translated as “tying up
their own hair”, zishunu were women who took a ceremonial vow to
remain single.
In the Pearl River Delta during
the later Qing Dynasty (1644-1911),
when the silkworm-farming industry was booming, many women became more economically independent and favoured the freedom
outside the binding of feudal marriages, and so became zishunu.
The practice began to decline after the 1911 Revolution and the
founding of the People’s Republic of
China in 1949. Ouyang is one of the
few dozen zishunu still alive.
She returned to the mainland
with her elder sister in 1986 and decided to take care of her sister after
she fell ill, despite repeated invitations from the Lee family to go back.
It took more than three years for
Ouyang to get used to life on the
mainland after she returned.
Now, she gets up at 6am, buys
vegetables and meat and offers incense to ancestors and gods every
day. Three nephews and a domestic
help assist her.
She enjoys watching TV, especially drama series with ancient themes,
and playing mahjong with fellow
villagers—including other zishunu.
“My friends in Singapore asked
me to visit them but I am not going,
not at my age,” she said.
Zheng Erqi contributed to the story
June 17-30, 2011
A LE XAN DE R K LE I N/AF P PH OTO
A
❖❖ Shunde, Guangdong
W
❖❖ Beijing
hen Francesca Schiavone of Italy kissed
the women’s singles
trophy at Roland
Garros last year, becoming the first Italian woman to
win a Grand Slam title, Li Na, who
was beaten by Schiavone in the
fourth-round, said: “If she can do
that, maybe I can do that too.”
So when Li took on Schiavone
once again in the f inal at the
French Open on June 3, she simply
would not let her golden opportunity slip away.
And she did it in the best possible
way.
Watched by tens of millions of
fans on TV back in China, Li hammered the defending champion 6-4,
7-6 (0), bringing China and also
Asia its first Grand Slam title.
After Schiavone
sent a
backhand long,
Li screamed
with delight
and fell to the
ground. Then she
picked herself
up, skipped
towards the
net, gave her
opponent a big
hug and then
basked in the
pa ss io nate a p plause of the spectators at Court Philippe
Chatrier.
“I was so happy
when she hit the last
ball out that I almost
June 17-30, 2011
cried. I tried to control myself not to
cry,” Li said. “I have played professional tennis for 12 years and I am so
happy that my efforts have paid off.”
Sharpened by her previous Grand
Slam f inal experience—at the
Australian Open where she lost to
Belgian Kim Clijsters—Li displayed
a kind of all-conquering maturity
that helped her to catch up with
Schiavone at 6-6 in the second set
and force a tiebreak, which she
went on to win 7-0.
“I was nervous but I didn’t want to
show my opponent. So I was cheating (faking) a little bit,” Li said.
The 29-year-old Wuhan native
paid special gratitude to her husband, Jiang Shan, who served as her
coach before Denmark’s Michael
Mortensen joined her team in May.
“Although he (Jiang) is not my
coach any more, I want to give many
thanks to him. He always understands me and tolerates me...
Thanks for accompanying me all
the time.”
With the victory, Li will reach No.
4 in the world, equaling the previous
Asian record set by Japan’s Kimiko
Date-Krumm in the early 1990s.
Her triumph is expected to provide a major push to a sport already
rising fast in China.
“Everyone in China should be
very excited,” she said. “I hope after
the young people in China looked at
my match today that they will want
to do even better than me in the
future.”
The result was exactly
what Stacey Allaster, chairman and CEO of the WTA,
has been expecting for some
time now.
“I congratulate Li Na on
this historic victory, which
is a credit to her incredible
skill, determination and
perseverance in winning
China’s first Grand Slam.
Her win today will inspire an
entire generation of young
girls to play tennis and
propel the sport to new
levels of global popularity and growth,”
said Allaster.
∏ All About Li Na
∫∫ Language
Li Na likes to speak in the dialect of
her home city, Wuhan, the capital city
of Hubei province in Central China, on
and off the court, partly because her
husband, Jiang, also comes from Wuhan. Li, who has a bachelor’s degree
in journalism from Wuhan’s Huazhong
University of Science and Technology,
also speaks English quite well.
∫∫ Sponsors
Li Na became a hot target for international brands after she made it to
the final of the Australian Open. Apart
from her apparel sponsor, Nike, and
racquet sponsor, Babolat, Li has added a string of big brands to her sponsorship list, including Rolex, HaagenDazs and SpiderTech.
∫∫ Knee injury
Li Na always wears tape on her right
knee, which has been operated upon
three times. The injury was so severe
that Li considered retiring from the
game in 2009. She still flies to Germany from time to time for examinations of the joint. She said her knee is
fine now, but she wears the tape as a
precaution against further injury.
∫∫ The man behind her
Li Na’s repeated jokes about Jiang
Shan during the Australian Open unexpectedly put her husband in the
spotlight. Their romance started 13
years ago when then 16-year-old Li
gave a box of chocolates to Jiang
when they both played for the Wuhan
provincial team. They tied the knot in
2006.
∫∫ Tattoos
Having a tattoo is rare among Chinese athletes. However, Li has two tattoos - a rose and a heart above her left
breast and a butterfly on her lower
back. Li said the rose-and-heart tattoo
represents her love for her husband
and she says she has thought about
getting rid of it after being asked so
many times about its meaning.
—Tian Chi/China Daily
• 41
CULTURE
CHINA
By Peng Yining
China Daily
In The Service
Of The Gods
Most monks enter the monasteries as children,
serving their teachers for the first several years
and depending on progress, moves on to other
responsibilities
P
❖❖ Lhasa
42 •
busy with cooking and cleaning.
Penpa is Kunde Ling’s youngest
monk. His main task is to keep the
monastery’s 1,800 butter lamps lit
from 6:30am to 7pm.
Losang, an official involved in the
management of Kunde Ling, says that
in old Tibet, at least one son from
every family became a monk as a
mark of respect to the monastery.
Sending a child to the monastery was
also a way for poor families to give
him a good start in life, Losang says.
As Tibet’s economy improves, the
number of Kunde Ling’s monks has
fallen to 42 from 80 in the 1990s.
Penpa says he became a monk partly
because his family is too poor to afford schooling for both him and his
18-year-old brother.
Every night, after completing all his
chores, he gets about two hours to
study the scriptures before going to
bed at 10pm. “I like chanting the
scriptures, although I do not understand them fully,” he laughs.
Lama Kelsang, 21, came to Kunde
Ling in 2005 when his sick parents
died. He still has the English textbook
that he once used in school, and occasionally goes through it. “Maybe
someday I can use them,” he says.
Along with four other young
monks, he is in charge of cooking.
Every morning around 10, after serving all monks with tsampa (roasted
flour) and butter tea, Kelsang will ascend the monastery’s roof to strike a
gong, signalling to senior lamas to
start their prayers.
The older Lamas will then stroll
out of their dormitories, located
around the chapel, and head to the
dark main shrine, leaving the young
monks to work outside.
Tenzin, 17, is preparing the oblaJune 17-30, 2011
tions of tsampa. He shapes the flour
into little pagoda-like figurines and
paints them red. He is soon joined by
other young monks.
They all sit in a circle on the floor
and solidify the yak butter that will
be used on the little tsampa pagodas.
The monastery has no television,
Internet or cell phone. There are no
books or magazines, except religious
texts. Monks are not allowed to leave
the temple without permission.
Gasi, 18, is decorating the pagodas
June 17-30, 2011
with butter, when his friend Trinley,
20, gives him a playful nudge, messing
up the butter petals. They both collapse giggling, like little children, and
are admonished by Phuntsog Tengye,
a 50-year-old lama. He tells them to
work quietly, at which Trinley rolls
his eyes and the others snigger.
Tengye came to Kunde Ling when
he was 19. Now he reads the scriptures from 6:30am to 7:30pm, in the
dim light of butter lamps in front of a
statue of the Avalokitesvara Buddha.
Most monks
enter the monasteries as child r e n . Fo r t h e
first several
years, they have
t o s e r ve t h e i r
teachers. The
intelligent ones
learn the scriptures and are allowed to take the
examinations. The successful ones
are appointed to high offices in the
monastery. The rest will continue
to perform the daily chores.
“Every year, Kunde Ling sends us
to Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple or
temples in Xigaze prefecture to meet
eminent lamas and living Buddhas,
and learn from them,” Trinley says. “I
respect them deeply and hope someday I will be a great lama like them. It
is my honour to serve the gods.”
• 43
P hotos by F eng Yongbin / C hina Daily
enpa is up at 6am. Shivering
in the icy morning winds in
Lhasa, the 16-year-old lama
cocoons himself in a baggy
crimson sports sweater.
Having been in the Kunde Ling
monastery for just five months, Penpa
is yet to earn himself a lama’s traditional clothes.
O n e o f L h a s a’ s f o u r f o r m e r
royal temples, Kunde Ling is the
city’s best-kept secret. Its gleaming
roofs are wel l hidden from the
street and its entrance is protected
from the hordes of tourists.
Of the monastery’s 42 monks, 10 are
in their late teens and early 20s. They
are tasked with most of the temple’s
chores. While the older lamas,
wrapped in their red cloaks, sit
crosslegged in the chapels, chanting
the scriptures, the young lamas get
TRAVEL BITES
PHILIPPINES
By Jofelle P. Tesorio
Asia News Network
Bulalo
Crispy pata
Chicken inasal
Lomi
Ensaladang talong
Dig In!
Manila’s restaurants offer a variety of
Philippine and international cuisine
“I
❖❖ Manila
will miss the fried rice
with longganisa (Filipino sausage) of Jollibee,” said a Malaysian
friend when she left
Manila for the nth time. She has been
coming back to the Philippines’ capital for studies and for work and every
time she leaves, she often says how
much she will miss Filipino food.
The first thing she does upon landing
in Manila is to eat fried rice with longganisa at the famous Filipino fast food
chain Jollibee. If she arrives after
breakfast, she would opt for a chicken joy (deep-fried chicken).
Most foreigners (who are not vegetarian) would instantly fall for the
breakfast meals served at Jollibee.
Whether it’s the fried rice (Filipino
style, cooked only in garlic and salt to
taste) or the side dishes that go with
it like longganisa, danggit (air dried fish)
and corned beef, the fast food chain’s
Filipino breakfast meals tickle the
taste buds not only of Filipinos but of
other nationalities as well.
Jollibee, the only local brand that
has toppled the US fast food chain
McDonald’s, has hundreds of fran44 •
chises all over the Philippines and
other countries such as China, Hong
Kong, Viet Nam, Saudi, UAE and
the US. These franchises are meant
for the growing number of Filipinos
abroad and for foreigners who are
familiar with the dancing and smiling, yellow bumblebee mascot.
But Jollibee is not ‘the Filipino restaurant’. If you look at its menu, it is just an
amalgamation of Western-style fast food
and very little Filipino cuisine. The bestselling dishes at Jollibee are still chicken
joy, French fries and burger.
I mention Jollibee as a premise to
this food piece to emphasise on other
restaurants in Manila that offer more
promising and tastier Filipino dishes.
In my last column, I provided a guide
to 10 things to do in Manila, which
included digging in on Filipino food.
The Filipino food is not the Sad
Sack on Asia, a reputation it has garnered after Thai, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese dishes have grown in popularity the world over. Upon realising
the goodness of Filipino food, you
will think how stupid Filipinos for
not promoting their national pride,
which is food.
Now, let’s have a tour of some of
Manila’s restaurants and check out
their specialties.
ΩΩ Gerry’s Grill
This restaurant started out as the
hangout of Manileños after a day’s
work. There is a lot of drinking (San
Miguel beer) in this restaurant so you
would expect that the fare they offer
are the usual beer-matches, which are
fatty and oily. But Gerry’s Grill has
evolved into a family restaurant, offering a wide-range of Filipino dishes for
all age groups. Even among foreigners,
their dishes to beat are grilled tuna,
kare-kare (stewed oxtail or seafood and
vegetables with peanut sauce and
shrimp paste), sisig (made from parts of
pig’s head and liver, usually seasoned
with calamansi or local lime and chili
peppers and served on sizzling plate)
and bulalo (beef bone marrow and vegetable soup). The restaurants have
branches in most malls in Manila.
ΩΩ Mushroom Burger
The colour and the logo of this restaurant look like Jollibee but it has a
different twist to the fast food fare.
June 17-30, 2011
Ginataang sitaw at kalabasa
Mushroom Burger, which originated
in Tagaytay City, a hilly and cold vacation spot just outside Manila, is
known for its (yes, you guess it right)
mushroom burger. T he owners
thought of giving Filipinos what they
love most in fast food but with a
healthy twist. So eating ‘burger’ here
is not a sin. Aside from the usual
mushroom burger, it has one of the
cheapest but tastiest lomi (FilipinoChinese thick soup with a variety of
thick fresh egg noodles, pork organs,
crushed pork cracklings, shrimp, vegetables, chicken stock, chicken breast
and beef loin). Mushroom burger also
serves Filipino favourites adobo (chicken, pork or seafood cooked in soy
sauce, vinegar and spices) and fried
rice with daing na bangus (fried dried
milkfish), both served with mushroom side dish.
ΩΩ Aristocrat
During the ‘80s, this restaurant was
so huge people lined up for hours
especially during weekends to taste its
house specialties. But patrons have
since dwindled due to stiff competition from other new Filipino restaurants. However, its branch in Malate,
Manila still has regular patrons who
remain loyal. Over the years, Aristocrat has remained committed to serve
sumptuous traditional fare such as
sinigang (sour soup) and crispy pata
(deep-fried pig’s knuckles) and honeycured chicken barbecue. Desserts such
as halo-halo (a mixture of shaved ice
and evaporated milk with various
boiled sweet beans and fruits, and
June 17-30, 2011
Daing na bangus
Sinigang
served in a tall glass or bowl), leche
flan (steamed creme caramel custard),
bibingka (rice cake), halaya (mashed
purple yum, milk and sugar pudding)
and pichi-pichi (grated cassava, flour,
water and sugar pudding).
ΩΩ Mangan
This restaurant has its origin in
Pampanga, a province known for its
culinary delights. In local dialect,
mangan means to eat. The restaurant
has a classy but homey feel with
paintings of local heroes hanging on
the walls. But the atmosphere is only
second to the food served in the restaurant. The usual favourite here is
sisig, a dish which originated in Pampanga itself. But here, instead of being served on sizzling plate, sisig is
served cold. For those who love fish,
their gatang tilapia with mustasa (St. Peter’s fish cooked in coconut milk and
garnished with mustard leaves and
green pepper) is to die for. Other
coconut milk dishes include gatang
sigarilyas with bagoong (winged bean in
coconut milk with shrimp paste) or
gatang sitaw at kalabasa (string beans
and pumpkin cooked in coconut
milk). Another must-have vegetable
dish is okoy (papaya and shrimp fritters served with a dipping sauce of
native sugarcane vinegar).
ΩΩ Max’s Restaurant
When the restaurant ad says “sarap
to the bones” (delicious to the bones),
believe it. The taste of Max’s Restaurant’s fried chicken has been always
been the same for decades. But
Sisig
through the years, Max’s menu list
has expanded and added other Filipino dishes such as kare-kare (stewed
oxtail or seafood and vegetables
with peanut sauce and shrimp
paste), nilagang baka (beef soup), sinigang (sour soup), crispy pata (deepfried pork leg and knuckles), tapsilog
(fried rice, cured beef or pork and
egg), longsilog (fried rice, sausage and
egg) and lechon kawali (crispy panfried roasted pork).
ΩΩ Chicken Bacolod
Of course, chicken is the restaurant’s specialty. The tastiest chicken inasal (grilled chicken in skewer), which
originated in Negros province, can be
had with gusto here. The secret why
chicken inasal tastes way better than
other grilled chicken is the marinade
and the soy sauce, calamansi and chilli
dip. Chicken Bacolod also serves the
best-tasting deep-fried crablets, sisig
and daing na bangus. For vegetarians,
the chop suey (mixed vegetables) and
ensaladang talong (eggplant salad) are
their best bet. Mang Inasal, a competitor of Chicken Bacolod, also offers
the same grilled chicken.
All these restaurants can easily be
found in malls and major districts in
Manila. Filipinos love to eat and finding good Filipino food is easy. Also
try eating in neighbourhood eateries
called carinderia where you will find
cheap but delicious fare.
travelbites.asia@gmail.com
• 45
EXPLORE
CAMBODIA
By Rebecca Lo
China Daily
Beyond The Sacred
Angkor Wat temple in Siam Reap is where
history meets modern-day tourism.
46 •
W
❖❖ Siam Reap
ith tourism in nearby
Siem Reap developing at an exponential
rate over the past 20
years, the Cambodian
city now boasts a solid infrastructure
of services and facilities to keep up
with the influx of visitors.
Luxury hotels are as ubiquitous
as backpacker hostels; championship golf courses and horseback
riding are welcome distractions and
art and cultural sites abound beyond
the walls of Angkor.
An increasing number of direct
flights from many cities is transforming Siem Reap into a viable long
weekend destination.
As Siem Reap-Angkor Interna-
tional Airport offers visas upon
landing, more international travellers are discovering that Cambodia
is a safe and genuinely friendly destination that has emerged from a
troubled past to face the future with
enthusiastic optimism.
“There is no shortage of trendy
places here,” says Chloe Chomienne,
manager with Exotissimo Travel.
“There is finally peace and economic
development. It is a good value-formoney destination. Cambodians are
really looking to the future. They
have a different mentality than their
Southeast Asian neighbours, although
they share a similar culture. The people are warm and there is a lot of
authenticity here. And it is safe for
women and individual travellers.”
June 17-30, 2011
driven open-air carriages are fun and
can seat between four to six passengers. Alternatively, you can hire a car
and driver if the heat and humidity
get too overwhelming, or opt to bike
to and around Angkor Wat or the city
if you are feeling energetic.
Hungry folks head to Le Passage
where they can indulge in an assortment of traditional Khmer cuisine as
well as international fare. Tucked between Pub Street and the Old Market,
the explosion of restaurants here came
about in 2008 when many of the
buildings were renovated.
“This area was formerly all private
homes,” notes Sreyroth Chan, gen-
Try classic coconut
curries and fish in
Siam Reap.
Hop on a friendly
tuk-tuk to get around
quickly in Siem Reap.
Angelo’s are standouts; plus, it has the
distinction of being the closest 5-star
property to Angkor Wat. “It is the last
bastion of civilisation before the jungle,” laughs Lee Ng, Le Meridien Angkor’s director of sales and marketing.
New kid on the block Hotel de la
Paix has already amassed a loyal following. It is easy to see why. Its location in the heart of the Old Market
district means it is within easy walking
distance to nearby pubs, restaurants
and shops. Chic interior design courtesy of Bill Bensley gives it a sense of
wit, underscored by swinging daybeds
for al fresco dining and its ever-changing arts lounge showcasing the works
of local and international talent.
For getting around the city, nothing
beats the tuk tuk. These motorcycle-
eral manager of Amok. The pretty
two-story colonial restaurant specialises in amok fish—a coconutflavoured steamed curry that melts
in the mouth. “Amok fish is found
in ever y traditional Cambodian
household,” explains Chan. “It is
sweet and creamy, and every family
makes it differently.”
Lounge lizards will want to check
out Nest, a sexy restaurant that offers
grills and home fare including lok lak,
a succulent marinated stir-fry meat
entree served with steamed rice.
White tent-like sails provide shelter in
the garden setting, while a dozen daybeds invite you to dine while reclining like the ancient Greeks.
Pub Street and its neighboring alleys offer a wide selection of nightlife
June 17-30, 2011
venues where you can enjoy a pint or
two. A popular haunt is Red Piano,
reputed to be the bar of choice for
Angelina Jolie when she was in Siem
Reap to film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Or
check out the sultry digs and yummy
cocktails at Miss Wong, run by expatriate Dean Williams. Inspired by
1920s Shanghai, the ambience is all siren red glamour with a chilled vibe.
In between the bars and restaurants
are specialty shops featuring local artists and designers. Garden of Desire is
a jewelry shop with original pieces by
Ly Pisith, and the distinctive combinations of semi-precious stones and silver are worth a second glance. If your
Fancy a tickle and a cure? Pop your
feet into a tank of fish in Siam Reap
to clean up the dead skin.
feet are revolting from exhaustion by
this point, try one of the many “fish
doctors” lining the streets. These
tanks offer the services of small fish
that suck away the dead skin on the
soles of your feet, leaving them soft
and smooth, as if you’ve had a relaxing foot massage.
Khmer handicrafts are seeing a resurgence, partly due to the efforts of
Artisans d’Angkor. Take a look at its
workshop where dozens of young
Cambodians are learning traditional
techniques such as stone- and woodcarving, lacquering and gilding, and
silk-weaving. There is a shop on site
to stock up on souvenirs such as
brightly coloured silk scarves that are
the perfect size for slipping into your
carry-on bag.
• 47
Photos By Rebecca Lo/China Daily
Most people go to
Siem Reap to
experience Angkor
Wat, but the sleepy
town has evolved
to become a place
with a lot more to
offer than just
temple-hopping
Retreating to a comfortable haven
after a hot and tiring day of sightseeing
is vital in Siem Reap. For old-world
colonial charm, you can’t go wrong at
Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor. This
1932 hotel was the first property to cater to weary tourists during the golden
age of travel through Indochina. It retains many lovely touches such as
guest rooms with ceramic doorknobs,
claw-foot cast iron bathtubs and butlers handpicked from long-serving staff
by the general manager.
If contemporary European sophistication is what you seek, then Le Meridien Angkor fits the bill. Its Angkorstyle pool and Italian restaurant
EXPLORE
SOUTH KOREA
By Andrew Ponnampalam
The Star
PH OTO S BY A ndrew P onnampalam/ TH E STAR
A GOOD VIEW: A seagull
looking out to sea on the Hand
of Harmony at Homikot Cape.
Hidden
Heartland
Tired of the usual soap opera and
hallyu tours in South Korea?
Then visit the country’s industrial
nerve centres
T
❖❖ Kuala Lumpur
he names struck an oddly
industrial clang: Pohang,
Ulsan and Mokpo. In fact,
these cities are mainly
known for commerce and
industry, not tourism potential. The
travel agencies and airlines which I
approached about doing such a tour
were aghast.
“Individually tailored tours to these
places in South Korea for upmarket
clients? We have ski packages, romantic destinations and even cultural
tours rich in historic grandeur, all on
48 •
the major tourism routes. Why would
you want to go to the grimy industrial places where tourists never venture?” they asked.
The reaction of the Korea Tourism Organisation was worse. They
were not just unhelpful and uncooperative; they were downright
unpleasant and negative.
But I was resolute about my plan,
and eventually I met up with an old
friend who immediately saw the potential of my proposed itinerary.
Cooper Huang is one of Malaysia’s
most experienced travel professionals.
His company, Malaysian Harmony
Tour & Travel, is one of the leading
tour companies in the country, handling both outbound and inbound
tourism.
Low-profile and often under the radar of individual travellers, the agency
is nevertheless well-known and highly rated by airlines and foreign tour
operators.
Huang was intrigued by my choice
of destinations. Rather unexpectedly,
he offered to host the full trip.
“This would be the exact opposite
choice of itinerary for the affluent
traveller on an independent, speciallytailored tour, but knowing you, I
think you might make the most extraordinary of discoveries!” he said
The elegant, white-haired veteran’s
words proved prophetic. In my very
brief swing through the hidden
heartland of South Korea’s post-war
economic miracle, I did indeed discover exquisite delights and memorable surprises. Getting off the tourist
trail and into the heartland of any
country will bring its own set of
challenges, however, and it was no
different in South Korea.
English is sparsely spoken, but people are curious and kind. Advertising
and shop signs are only in the local
script, but most road signs are marked
clearly in English. Restaurants have
completely local decor and signage,
but menus frequently have English
translations beneath each dish. Towns
may seem nondescript and mundanelooking, but gorgeous photo-opportunities abound for those with an eye
for local colour.
South Korea’s heartlands has a
wealth of authentic delights. The first
thing I discovered in the southern
part was that the most nondescript
and grimy local industrial ports have
a mouth-watering cornucopia of seafood delights!
Take Pohang, for instance. This
dusty traffic-choked city is located
in North Gyeongsang Province on
the southeast coast of South Korea.
It is mainly know n as a major
seaport and the home base of Pohang Steel Company (Posco), one
of the largest steel producers in the
world. Although the city receives
June 17-30, 2011
PORT AREA: Visitors will have a whale of a time in Pohang, a port city with sumptuous seafood dishes.
hundreds of foreign visitors every
year, they are mainly businessmen
visiting Posco and its subsidiaries.
T he city itself seems grimy and
unattractive, but what great seafood it has!
The region surrounding Pohang has
some very interesting attractions, too.
We drove east about 30 minutes to
Homigot Cape, a piece of land jutting
out into the Sea of Japan. Homigot is
one of the easternmost points on the
Korean peninsula, and as such serves
every year as a gathering place for
thousands to greet Korea’s first sunrise
of the New Year.
The beach is also home to the famous Hand of Harmony sculpture.
The fishing boats are a rustic attraction for photographers. The main attraction in this little spot is the variety
of small, family-run restaurants, outdoor cafes and stalls—all selling fresh
and delicious seafood. Prices are a
fraction of that charged in the cities,
and the food is wonderful.
No wonder Homigot Cape is very
popular with domestic tourists! There
is also a small Marine Museum and a
larger National Museum with imposing architecture at this small resort.
Speaking of museums, I must point
out that there are some excellent ones
in Ulsan, another city with a strong
industrial image. The Ulsan Industrial
District is the industrial powerhouse
June 17-30, 2011
of South Korea and home to the
world’s largest automobile assembly
plant (operated by Hyundai Motor),
the world’s largest shipyard (operated
by Hyundai Heavy Industries) and
the world’s largest oil-refinery (owned
by SK Energy).
Each one offers conducted tours,
but these must be planned and booked
in advance.
A major attraction in Ulsan is the
Jangsaengpo Whale Museum. The
port of Jangsaengpo served as the outpost for whaling in Korea until whaling was banned in 1986, and the whale
museum is the only of its kind in the
country. The museum provides information on whales, how they travel
and how they live. It also features a
live dolphin show and an underwater
aquarium, an exciting 3D film and numerous small aquariums displaying a
variety of decorative fish.
Outside the museum are several
decorative sculptures and displays.
There are other fascinating museums
and interpretive centres in and around
Ulsan, including the whale-shaped Ulsan Petroglyph Museum, the Ulsan
Art Museum and the huge Ulsan City
Museum. These are all suitable for
travellers but it is advisable to have a
Korean-speaking guide.
There are some excellent seafood restaurants in the downtown area of Ulsan—small, typically Korean eateries
with both Western-style tables and
chairs, and Korean low tables called
sang, where diners sit on a wooden platform. Due to the large number of expatriates, there are also restaurants serving
Chinese, Indian, American, Italian, British and other types of cuisine.
Meanwhile, in the southwest corner
of the peninsula is the charming little
town of Mokpo. It is a popular domestic destination, being a seaside resort and historical port. Located midway between Seoul and Busan,
Mokpo requires five hours by bus either way. It is also connected to Seoul
by the superfast KTX train.
The city is full of motels catering
to the domestic market. They are
ver y ornate and gaudy from the
outside, and have funny and fanciful names. There is a large esplanade in the city centre, with fun
t h i ng s t o d o f o r f a m i l i e s w i t h
children. Shopping offers largely
Korean-made items like clothes,
toys and foodstuff.
Like any coastal town in Korea,
Mokpo has a lot of seafood restaurants! Some are large and fanciful,
while others are small and homely.
Mokpo is another seafood lover’s
paradise, and true gourmets will
love the freshness and variety of cuisine here. Even more than Ulsan,
Mokpo is great for sight-seeing because it has an amazing number of
museums on an equally amazing
number of themes, and they are all
found in one convenient area called
the Gatbawi Cultural District. The
National Maritime Museum, Mokpo
Natural History Museum, Outdoor
Museum of Colonial Korea and
Mokpo Museum Of Modern History
are just some of the fascinating attractions here. You can spend a full
day in this part of Mokpo, actually.
As we explored the various small
towns and villages, I noticed that my
guide, the operations manager of a
prominent Korean inbound tour company, was as busy taking as many
photographs as I was. When I asked
him about it, he sheepishly explained
that although he had covered the usual tourism destinations a zillion times,
this was the first time he was discovering these hidden treasures!
• 49
DATEBOOK
T HAI LAN D
Grand Sale
Thailand’s the biggest annual shopping
extravaganza offers world-class shopping,
a diverse selection of quality products
and services, special discounts of 10-80
per cent and promotional offers being
extended by leading department stores,
shopping complexes, King Power Duty
Free shops, airlines, hotels, spas,
hospitals, jewellery shops and participating retail outlets along designated
‘shopping streets’ in Bangkok, golf
courses, online travel agents, and at
special events.
TO KYO
SI N GAPORE
Sumida River Fireworks Display
Great Singapore Sale 2011
Tokyo’s dazzling fireworks display,
Sumidagawa Hanabi Taikai, sees
thousands of rockets spouting skywards
along the Sumida River. The show
includes a competition between rival
firework companies, so expect state-ofthe-art pyrotechnics. Street stalls keep
crowds fuelled with hot sake and
corn-on-the-cob.
The best viewing locations are the
boats on the river, but places are limited.
Most of the 900,000 spectators head for
Asakusa’s Sumida Park, which gets
incredibly busy, but it is worth a bit of
crowd barging for the amazing atmosphere.
It’s time to indulge once again in the
annual Great Singapore Sale. For eight
glorious weeks, enjoy up to 70 per cent
discount on just about everything,
everywhere from the central shopping
belt of Orchard Road and Marina Bay to
the Southern Waterfront and suburbs.
Follow #GreatSingaporeSale on Twitter
to find and share the best deals and
SHAN GH AI
Shanghai International Film
Festival
The Japanese word for firework,
hanabi, means fire-flower, and the
short-lived beauty of a firework has
much in common with that of the
celebrated cherry blossom, so it’s no
surprise that the Japanese turn out in
their droves to firework festivals. The
Sumida Gawa event however, is the
biggest and most spectacular in Tokyo,
so it’s well worth a look.
When: July (annual); 7pm-8:30pm
Where: Sumida Gawa
50 •
This competitive feature
film festival kicks off and ends
with celebrities strutting
down the red carpet. For
those who aren’t quite famous
enough to attend the opening
and closing ceremonies, the
film screenings are held in
venues across Shanghai.
When: June 11-19
Info: www.siff.com
The ‘shopping streets’ provide a
convenient opportunity to spot great buys
in an exotic range of unique crafts and
cottage industry products, including
exquisitely hand-crafted decorative items
for home and living and fashion accessories, available in the traditional as well as
contemporary design. Local shopping
streets will be organised in all participating cities.
When: Ongoing until August 15
Where: Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Hat Yai
(Songkhla), Phuket, Pattaya (Chonburi),
Hua Hin (Phachupkirikan), Samui (Surat
Thani)
shopping tips.
When: May 27-July 24
Info: www.greatsingaporesale.com.sg
H O N G KO N G
Chinese Opera Festival 2011
A gem of a festival, it showcases
seven theatrical genres of Chinese
traditional theatre performed by
famous artists and groups. The seven
theatrical genres include Peking opera,
Kunqu opera, Cantonese opera, Chiu
Chow opera, Pingtan narrative singing
and two ancient indigenous forms, Qi
opera and Gaojia opera.
Chinese and English subtitles/
synopses are available.
When: Ongoing until July 24
Tickets: www.urbtix.hk
June 17-30, 2011
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