Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/2017 i ASIAN Geographic

A friend presented me With tender leaves of Oolong tea, For which I chose a kettle Of ivory-mounted gold, A mixing-bowl of snow-white earth. With its clear bright froth and fragrance, It was like the nectar of Immortals. The first bowl washed the cobwebs from my mind – The whole world seemed to sparkle. A second cleansed my spirit Like purifying showers of rain, A third and I was one of the Immortals – What need now for austerities To purge our human sorrows? Worldly people, by going in for wine, Sadly deceive themselves.…

 ALEX GOH CHUN SEONG has over 20 years of experience as a photographer, and has covered major news events in the region; he is constantly expanding his travel photography portfolio. From his hometown of Penang, he has travelled extensively, creating photo documentaries. His work has been published in regional and international publications, including GEO and National Geographic (Spanish edition). His accolades include a Sony World Photography Award (category winner 2010) and a Humanity Photo Award (2011); he was also a winner in the Emirates Photography Competition (2012). He is an official photographer for Airbnb, covering the northern region of Malaysia. He is a member of the Photographic Society of Penang, the Photographic Society of America and Royal Photographic Society. www.alexgohchunseong.com…

It’s just after midnight in the Ban Pong district of Ratchaburi, in what might appear to most as a sleepy town. An hour and a half west of Thailand’s capital city, Bangkok, it’s best known for its nearby traditional floating market. Long after the daily influx of tourists has subsided, a handful of worn-down factories come to life as techno music erupts from loudspeakers, and a group of Burmese migrant workers dons aprons in preparation for the night’s work. Throughout the empty alleys, or sois, as they’re called in Thailand, the sounds of thumping music and laughter spill out over the high walls of the various compounds in the area. What may sound like an electronic music-inspired dance party is actually the sound of workers across the city creating one…

For some tantalising bug recipes visit www.next food.net There are around 40 tonnes of insects to every human! Insects offer a solution to curbing world hunger The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has held conferences on edible insects as a means of improving food security Eating insects is hardly new. For years, Cambodians have been eating tarantulas; Thai people love fried crickets They are very nutritious. For example, caterpillars contain more protein and iron than the equivalent quantity of beef mince We are spoiled for choice! There are around 1,000 varieties of insects that we can eat…

NEEM (AZIDIRACHTA INDICA) Antifungal | Neem oil Native to temperate Northern Hemisphere, including China MA HUANG (EPHEDRA SINICA) Nasal decongestant | Pseudoephedrine Native to Mongolia, Russia, Northern China OPIUM POPPY (PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM) Pain relief | Opium Grown across temperate Asia, native to Eastern Mediterranean LEMON (CITRUS LIMON) Binding agent for medicine | Pectin Native to South Asia GINGER (ZINGIBER OFFICINALE) Settles digestion, produces saliva | Ginger as spice or supplement Native to Southeast Asian rainforests KEMENYAN (STYRAX BEZOIN) Cough suppressant | Benzoin Native to Southeast Asian rainforests SNAKEROOT (RAUVOLFIA SERPENTINA) Lowers blood pressure | Reserpine Native to South Asia CAMPHOR LAUREL (CINNAMOMUM CAMPHORA) Stimulating balm, cough suppressant, decongestant | Camphor Native to Southeast Asian rainforests WILLOW (SALIX SPP) Pain relief | Aspirin Native to temperate Northern Hemisphere, including China…

While most children are drawn towards medicine and engineering, Madan – one of the Akshaya Patra Foundation’s beneficiaries – is quite clear about his career ambitions. “I want to become an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and serve the country,” he asserts. A pupil at the Government Higher Primary School in Bengaluru, India, he believes that the midday meal he receives daily has been instrumental in his focus at school. “That one hot meal is sometimes my first meal of the day,” he says. “It helps me concentrate on what is being taught in the classroom.” For Madan and the millions of other hungry children in India whom the Foundation benefits, this midday meal serves as an incentive to come to school. If not for the promise of a meal,…

 Satoyama Jujo is located in the thick of snow country in the beautiful Minami-Uonuma region, flanked by mountains around 2,000 metres high, in the shadow of the majestic Mount Makihata. In winter, this region transforms into a wonderland of white. It’s astonishing to think that this vastly different world is just an hour and a half away from bustling Tokyo; it takes a mere 80 minutes by Shinkansen (the fastest bullet train) to get there. In winter, this region transforms into a wonderland of white Satoyama Jujo translates to “10 stories of mountain village”. It was opened in 2014 by a Japanese lifestyle magazine company, Jiyujin, with the aim of redefining luxury in offering guests a unique experience. Visitors can kick back in this area’s breathtaking environment, discovering its unique…

“Food can never be too good and cooking can never be done too carefully” Confucius Apart from his philosophies on ancestor veneration and filial piety – which are at the cornerstone of Chinese culture – the ancient sage was well known for being scrupulous about meals and mealtime etiquette. Confucius, whose Chinese name was Kong Qiu, was an educator and scholar. Born in China’s Lu state, he was a politician for a period in his life. His teachings, recorded in the Analects, included guidelines on social interaction, respect for elders and family loyalty. They also detail rules about how food should be prepared and consumed, chief of which was maintaining a moderate and balanced diet. Cautioning against overeating meat (and getting drunk), Confucius believed that cooking and eating well was…

Monosodium glutamate (“MSG”) has gained a somewhat notorious status globally as a foodie villain – a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Japanese ingredient has been blamed for making people nauseous, even ill, in what has been dubbed “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” (CRS), with symptoms including headaches and asthma. And yet in most of Asia, it appears that people hold no fear of MSG, which has been credited with the sensation of “umami”: the fifth taste. In fact, the Japanese have gone so far as to pay public homage to it, in the form of the Yokohama Ramen Museum and Amusement Park. As food critic Jeffrey Steingarten famously challenged in 1999, if MSG is so bad for you, “Why doesn’t everyone in China have a headache?” Numerous studies have attempted to unpack…

When Wanlop Suwandee, chief adviser to Bangkok’s governor, announced a blanket ban on street hawkers in the Thai capital this April, the backlash was immediate. News outlets slammed the administration for culling a culinary community that is rated as among the finest street food destinations in the world; pictures depicting eerily empty hawker haunts of Siam Square, Pratunam and Saphan Lek market – where hawkers had been run out by the military – made the rounds online, and lovers of Thai street food flooded social media in dismay. But within a week, the narrative changed. On April 21, Wanlop told CNN that he had been misquoted. The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) issued a press release assuring tourists that the city would continue to offer its famed street fare, albeit…

Cereals. Cookies. Snacks. Sweets. Instant noodles. Potato chips. Carbonated drinks. Packet drinks. Spongy snack cakes. Crunchy savoury bites. Processed foods are increasingly part of the diet in Asia, filling the shelves of convenience stores and 7-Elevens, especially in urban neighbourhoods. These foods are often cheaper to produce and purchase and are extremely convenient: They are ready-to-eat (or ready-to-heat) and remain “fresh” for days, weeks or months, because they have barely any fresh ingredients. These long-life highly processed products, which are aggressively marketed by transnational companies, are increasingly displacing traditional foods and dietary patterns. For Professor Carlos Monteiro from the University of Sao Paulo, this is the current “big issue” in public health nutrition which is driving the obesity epidemic and chronic diseases. He believes this trend also undermines culture, meals,…

{ SOUTHEAST ASIA} According to the World Health Organization (based on a compilation of data from a variety of sources – including grassroot organisations), noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), or “lifestyle” diseases: • Claim an estimated 8.5 million lives annually • Are the top killers in the region • Are responsible for a third of deaths occurring before age 70 • Are contributed to extensively by an unhealthy diet { GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE} Much like in Southeast Asia, unhealthy diets are seen as one of the four major contributors to the escalation of NCDs globally. According to the 2017 WHO global NCD Factsheet: • NCDs kill 40 million people each year and account for 70 percent of all deaths • The four diseases listed above account for 80 percent of all premature deaths…

Whether or not whale sharks should be hand-fed for tourism is a highly debated subject amongst scientists and conservationists There’s a whale shark in the way of my whale shark. That’s not a thought one has often in one’s lifetime. But here I am, off the coast of remote Indonesian Borneo, photographing the world’s largest fish, when another one comes barrelling through, spoiling my photo and nearly causing me to drop my (incredibly pricey) underwater camera and lighting set up. I steady myself and get back to the matter at hand of taking a split-level shot of a rather surreal scene: a whale shark – hanging vertically in the water column – having bait poured into its mouth by fishermen off the side of a floating platform, known as a…

 Journalists often find themselves frustrated by the fact that injustices remain unchanged, no matter how much they cover the causes and consequences. “What I wanted the most was to hug my little daughter, whom I had never touched since she was born” Abul Bajandar And then, once in a while, there are exceptions to this: Abul Bajandar is one of them. At the age of 15, the Bangladeshi adolescent started to suffer from a very strange disease called Epidermodysplasia verruciformis, causing his limbs to sprout tree-like warts. To date, only five cases of this rare disease have been diagnosed globally. “The warts soon covered my hands and legs, so I wasn’t able to work as an auto-rickshaw driver anymore. I had to beg,” Bajandar recalls. He became known as the…

Once they started smoking, it was difficult to stop. From the first puff of cigarette smoke, Joey, 58, and Clark (who asked to be quoted under a pseudonym), 29, continued smoking, until their health deteriorated. A heavy smoker for nearly four decades, Joey nearly lost his life to cigarettes. In 2014, he felt his legs prickle, go numb, and turn purple in a matter of hours. In the emergency room, Joey was informed that both his legs had to be amputated. He had peripheral vascular disease – or Buerger’s disease – which causes the blood vessels to clot. The condition is strongly associated with tobacco use. “At that point I already accepted what was going on, but I was hoping that one leg would be saved,” explains Joey. “I was…

DID YOU KNOW? SPICY FOODS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH HEALTH BENEFITS 1 Adding extra spice can speed up weight loss! Hot peppers increase your body heat, which boosts metabolism 2 Peppers impact the body’s circulation, and can lower blood pressure; capsaicin may also help prevent blood clots 3 Capsaicin can block cancer cells! In one study, it killed 80 percent of cancer cells in mice 4 A recent study showed that people who ate spicy foods six or seven times a week had a 14 percent lower risk of dying prematurely. Eat hot, live longer! 5 People suffering from arthritis, shingles – even some kinds of headaches – can buy cream with capsaicin as the active ingredient to relieve pain ASIA’S CONTENDERS ALEPPO PEPPER At about 10,000 SHU, the Aleppo pepper,…

Thousands of additives are used today: flavourings, colourings, sweeteners, enhancers, emulsifiers, stabilisers, texturisers, thickeners, preservatives, humectants as well as bulking, gelling and fortifying agents. Many additives are inadequately tested and the effects of combining some of these chemicals are unclear. Some raise serious health concerns: • Artificial food dyes, found in thousands of foods, have long been controversial. The US Center for Science in the Public Interest is campaigning for nine artificial food dyes to be banned and replaced with natural dyes following a report concluding the nine approved dyes were carcinogenic, and cause hypersensitivity reactions and behavioural problems • Processed meat with nitrates or nitrites raises the risk of cancer, the World Health Organization (WHO) says • Preservatives such as aspartame, sulphites and benzoates have been linked with breathing…

Creepy-crawlies might give some people the heebie-jeebies, but humans have been consuming bugs for a very long time. In China, records show that insects have been on the menu for at least 3,200 years, and written recipes using bugs have been found in literature dating back to the Ming Dynasty circa 1368. Today, there are 29 entomophagous (meaning “feeding on insects”) Asian countries, each culture favouring different species, flavours, and cooking methods. The larvae of the Asian palm weevil – also known as sago grubs – are a delicacy found in Malaysia and Indonesia. Cooked, they’re said to taste similar to bacon, and are even sometimes spread on pizza. Those that make it past their unsettling, bulbous appearance liken a squirming live grub to coconut. Sago grubs aren’t the only…

We owe much of our good health to Earth’s biological diversity. Given the wealth of species in the world, scientists are still finding new natural sources for medicines. There are many promising medicinal sources within the planet’s biodiversity – animals, plants, fungus, bacteria, and more. However, pharmacologists still have a wealth of further kingdoms to explore, such as minerals and inorganic chemicals, and electromagnetic and radioactive energies, presenting surprising new and innovative techniques in genetic medicine. Let’s take a look at some of these unexplored kingdoms of medicine, and gain a sense of why they’ve remained unmapped. Traditional medicines have been passed down from one generation to the next between the ages, and we can only imagine the spark of inspiration that triggered their recognition by our observant ancestors. Modern…

 Ram Lalita didn’t know that she had been infected with HIV until AIDS killed her husband. “He got very sick suddenly, so we took him to a shaman. He performed a ritual and recommended taking herbs, but it didn’t work. Finally, we had to take him to the hospital,” Lalita, who is in her forties, recalls. “I tried to conceal the true reason of his death, but soon all the village knew” Ram Lalita Lalita and her husband had to spend a relative fortune to seek help, and travelled 50 kilometres along the bumpy roads of eastern Nepal to get to the nearest health facility – but all in vain. At the Mahottari Hospital, a shocking truth was revealed: Lalita’s husband, a migrant worker who used to have a job…

 Travelling abroad to seek healthcare is certainly not new. For centuries, people have travelled far and wide in search of cures and healing. In the past decade, the phrase was coined as something of a sector “buzzword”. Until recently, medical tourism has been largely reserved for the affluent from less-developed countries, who have journeyed to developed countries such as Singapore to seek out better treatment and patient care. Medical tourism is no longer reserved for the elite; many people are travelling to developing nations to receive medical care Singapore remains the top dog in medical tourism in Asia, according to data from a medical tourism index released in May this year, ranking Singapore as the most attractive among seven Asian countries for “patient experience”. But – it scored low for…

Acupuncture – the insertion of metal needles into the body as a form of therapy – is an ancient Chinese medical procedure that was invented thousands of years ago. Ancient Chinese literature credits the invention of acupuncture to two Taoist sages, Fu Xi and the Yellow Emperor. Early acupuncture needles were made of stone, called bian shi – as there were no techniques for casting iron in ancient times. These needles evolved from stone knives that early Chinese people used to incise abscesses, drain pus and conduct bloodletting. Stone knives later evolved into stone needles, relics of which have been found in Shandong Province and Inner Mongolia, dating back to the Chinese stone age. Records on the use of bian shi were traced by researchers to around 300 BCE in…