Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 158 i ASIAN Geographic

“A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.”—Mahatma Gandhi ASIAN Geographic commemorates its silver anniversary in 2024, and we’re in the mood to celebrate, remembering some of the most compelling features in our 25-year history. Over the years, we’ve discovered the astonishing diversity, complexity and sometimes downright strangeness of Asia’s traditions, beliefs, and arts. In this celebratory issue, we’re giving a second life to some of the most fascinating culture stories we’ve told – but with a fresh, up-to-date spin. In some cases, more than a decade has passed since the original publication, but it’s interesting to note that when it comes to culture, change comes slowly, if at all. The popularity of adorning the body with henna hasn’t waned (“A Habit of Henna”, page…

Unbelievable journeys are not uncommon when travelling through Asia. The people, colours and cultures are difficult to forget, and even harder to leave. Ancient imageries and statues, vivid descriptions and metaphors, and archaic rituals make for lifelong tales so rich, most regions pale in comparison. A familiar plot – in a nutshell, the adoration of the penis – that runs through some parts of Asia serves to only add one more dimension to the ethos of Asian nations. Taboo as it sounds, this particular bit of culture that repeats itself from country to country is closely associated to prosperity, fertility and protection, all strong reasons to keep these rituals alive. Take a walk on the wild side, as ASIAN Geographic explores Asia’s most taboo of celebrations.…

Held annually in the small Japanese city of Komaki in central Japan, the Honen Matsuri festival is the survival of an ancient and once widespread ritual believed to ensure the growth of all living things and a good harvest. It is centred around two Shinto shrines dedicated to the god Mitoshi-no-kami and the goddess, Tamahine-no-Mikoto. The festival originates from an ancient Japanese belief that for the growth of all things, Mother Earth has to be impregnated by Father Heaven. A smaller gathering dedicated to the female Shinto deity takes place the Sunday before the main male-orientated festival. The central celebrations centre around the Tagata Jinja Shrine, which is believed to have been founded over 1,500 years ago, although it has been rebuilt many times. Legend has it that it lies…

Like a tribe of children armed with poster paints, early man made his mark on his surroundings by pressing his dye-covered hands and feet to the walls and the floor, by scratching or drawing around their shape and making impressions in the sand and soft clay. The vast majority of such images have washed and worn away with time, but every now and then, an archaeologist makes a chance discovery, unearthing this simplest form of human expression that has endured from time immemorial. The Lene Hara caves in Timor-Leste, first excavated in the early 1960s, contain what are perhaps the oldest hand stencils in the world. Human inhabitation of the caves began some 35,000 years ago, and their ancient inhabitants were unusually creative: Not only did they make beads and…

Our tourist boat sailed down the central river of Tokyo and stopped near Ginza, a high-end district with a walking street paved with the likes of Gucci, Versace, Prada and Louis Vuitton. A friend and I moved from the dock towards the street with dozens of other tourists. We noticed a woman in elaborate, traditional robes, her hair worn up. She walked with great poise. Her aged and dignified face showed that she had probably been a young woman during the pre-World War II Japanese imperial glory. We wondered whether she was a geisha, but a Japanese man we had befriended on the boat laughed at us, as my friend whipped out her camera with excitement. “That’s not a geisha,” he said, “It’s only 10 in the morning! The geishas…

Once every 12 years, a Hindu temple is required to hold a Kumbhabhishekam as part of its consecration ceremony. Kumbhabhishekam is derived from two words, abhisheka (ritualistic pouring of sacred water) and kumbham (a pot filled with sacred water). The ritual is held to rejuvenate the spiritual power of the deities while providing the temple time to conduct repairs on the inner sanctum as well as in the outer areas. I witnessed a Kumbhabhishegam ceremony at the Sri Maha Kaliamman Temple in the small town of Serdang in Selangor, Malaysia. In preparation for the ceremony, the temple went through massive reconstruction to replace the ageing older structure. To facilitate the reconstruction, the deities were removed and housed in a temporary building a year prior to the date that had been…

A Hindu bride is a work of art: Her hands and feet are a canvas for the most intricate of henna designs. It is said that the darker the colour of the design, the more love and welcome she will receive from her in-laws – so getting it right is an absolute must. Henna (Lawsonia inermis) is a flowering plant native to the tropical and subtropical zones of Africa, South Asia and northern Australasia. The plants are cultivated most heavily in the Pali district of Rajasthan, where more than 100 henna processors operate in a single city. The henna they produce is used domestically within India but also exported around the world, where henna body art and hair dye are growing trends. Since the Bronze Age, henna has been used…

Penis madness. That’s the impression you can’t help getting once you set foot on this small, mountain-locked country. In every village and on nearly every imaginable spot of this “last Shangri-la” – as dubbed by foreigners enchanted by the splendour of the place – you’ll have no difficulty finding this male sexual symbol around you, in full view. Vivid images of penises squirting semen are painted ornately on walls, both inside and outside of houses, some as much as three metres tall. Figures of fully erect penises are carved into statues, big and small, at the centres of fountains and on monastery gates. People draw phalluses on their carts and cars, hang them on rice fields, even sport them on their heads as hats. Here, phallic artistry is to be…

In Thailand, a newly-minted cultural minister once suggested a “wholly original” idea to help prop up the flagging tourist sector: aggressively market carved wooden penises to foreigners. Of course, the minister wasn’t trying to be funny or provocative; carved phalluses, or palad khik, have long been an important part of traditional Thai culture. If the politician was guilty of anything, it was only ignorance; tourists have long been able to purchase all variety of palad khik at local markets, though they rarely do so. Who knows why? Perhaps a lifelike, intricately-carved wooden phallus wouldn’t make the right impression on the folks back home. Not everyone can be as culturally open-minded as the rest of us. Of course, Thailand is hardly alone in its veneration of the male reproductive organ. Many…

Extract from the citrus peel can be used for anti-dryness. Shiseido’s White Lucent range is part of a line that uses such organic ingredients to naturally help re-texturise the skin for a smoother, brighter visage. Glycyrrhizinic acid derivative is an ingredient known for antiinflammation. It comes from the liquorice vetch flower (Astragalus glycyphllos) and can be found in the Shiseido White Lucent range. Extract from the chestnut rose plant is a popular remedy for anti-oxidation. An antioxidant helps to slow down or prevent the action of oxidants. Oxidation is a chemical reaction that produces free radicals, which start chain reactions that damage cells and eventually results in wrinkles. Shiseido also offers skincare products containing an interesting yuzu seed extract that helps skin create moisture. The yuzu fruit (Citrus junos, a.k.a.…

There is something primeval about the hunting of whales before the advent of industrial killing by factory ships and explosive long-range harpoons. It’s a near-mythical activity rooted in the fiction of Moby-Dick and the reality of men sailing thousands of miles into almost uncharted waters back in the days of sail, enduring hardship and danger as they chased down mighty beasts capable of crushing pursuing boats with a flick of their mighty tails. Indeed, Melville may well have been inspired to conjure up Moby-Dick by the real-life destruction of the Nantucket whaler Essex in November 1820 by a gigantic sperm whale and the subsequent ordeal of the 21 surviving crew in open boats. After running out of food, water and virtually all hope, the men drew lots to determine who…

Over the centuries, martial arts have travelled far beyond their places of origin and become some of the greatest sports ever devised. In contemporary culture, names like Jackie Chan and Jet Li have broken language barriers, transcended cultural differences and made martial arts the go-to commercial success, embraced by billions and eventually influencing many Hollywood movies. For many, kung fu is synonymous with the warrior Buddhist monks at the famous Shaolin Temple. Commercially, martial arts legend Bruce Lee comes to mind. Looking at muay thai (Thai kick boxing), we think of its lethal punches and kicks. In India, kushti (Indian wrestling) takes the prominent prize with its exotic and spiritual devotion that is the cornerstone of the sport. Chinese martial arts, Indian wrestling and muay thai have thousands of years…

As direct evidence of the adoration of the erogenous based on religious teachings, imageries and statues portraying zany sexuality are widespread in consecrated sites throughout the Indonesian archipelago. In a number of temples built in Java and Bali in the past six to eight centuries, sexuality is celebrated in its most gracious – and also grotesque – forms, often with minimal restraint. Ancient Javanese and Balinese, integrating the prevailing pair of Hinduism and Buddhism with their own Kejawen philosophy, honoured the phallus almost as highly as they did the vagina. They maintained that both were equally crucial to the preservation of life, for one cannot survive without the other. Artistic inspirations during that era drew heavily from sacred texts and customs that contain elements of sexual liberation. Both the lingga…

In Tibetan regions, people still practise the sky burial – a ceremony that entrusts the corpses to vultures. Hardly has the first light of dawn begun brightening the sky when the sound of creaking prayer wheels fills the kora (pilgrimage path) surrounding the monastery. Some shadows stand out: old Tibetan women shuffling along or monks in purple robes scurrying about after the first prayers of the day. Enveloping them are the landscapes of Amdo, one of the regions of Tibet now dissolved into the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan. Below, the town bathes in the smoke of juniper-tree offerings. Above the houses, the cold-scorched meadows wait for the yaks to return. Higher still, snow-capped mountains keep watch. Outside the monastery, a winding dirt track climbs up to a…

According to an old legend of the Soyot people, a vicious person can never find the way into the valley of the Ok-hem River: Bad weather or misfortune will stop him. There are mountains all round the valley. This area of the Sayan Highland, situated to the west of Buryatia and sharing its borders with Tuva and Mongolia, is considered to be one of the most traversed and sparsely populated areas of Siberia. In the 19th century, Buddhist pilgrims coming back from the Himalayas gave the name “Lesser Tibet” to the Okinsky region, the local landscapes being very similar to the Tibetan Plateau. The second day of the monotonous riding march along stony mountain paths was coming to an end when a large herd (about 100 heads) of big, horned,…

Growing up in Vietnam, tea drinking has always been a ritual in my family. Back then, however, I did not appreciate or understand why people were so interested in tea. Over several years, I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend more time in Buddhist temples around Asia. Slowly, I began to fall in love with the art of tea making, wanting to learn more about a beverage so simple yet so complicated. One tea bush can be made into many different kinds of tea, depending on the season and the roasting. The more I learnt about tea, the more fascinating I found it – how it was one of the most important commodities traded around world and how it impacted history. Tea drinking has been an…

Ganesha Chaturthi, also known as Vinayaga Chaturthi, is the hindu festival of Ganesha, the son of Lord Shiva and Parvati, who is believed to bestow his presence on Earth for all his devotees throughout the duration of this festival. It is generally considered as the birthday of Ganesha, who is widely worshipped as the god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune. The festival, which is observed in the Hindu calendar month of Bhaadrapada, usually falls between the months of August and September. Two to three months prior to Ganesh Chaturthi, artistic clay models of the elephantheaded god are created by especially skilled artisans. Beautifully decorated, they depict Lord Ganesh in various poses and vary in size from two centimetres to over seven metres. All over India, people buy these various…

Successful first Great Spine of Africa expedition to document and protect the river that feeds the Zambezi led by Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative partner explorer Steve Boyes Through its Perpetual Planet Initiative, Rolex is supporting Steve Boyes’ Great Spine of Africa series of expeditions, traversing thousands of kilometres of rivers that have never been scientifically documented. Over several years, the team plans to travel more than 40,000 kilometres, equivalent to a journey around the planet. What it discovers will provide crucial information to protect the people and wildlife dependent on Africa’s great rivers. Over 20 million people in southern Africa, and countless species of plants and animals, rely on the rushing waters of the Zambezi River. But much of its winding journey, from its marshy origins to the salt waters…