bamboo beancake

China’s 600-year-old Forbidden City is renovating its website in a move to improve its offerings of Chinese culture, said the information chief of the Palace Museum Wednesday. The new website will launch during the National Day Festival in early October, said Hu Chui, head of the museum’s information department. “It will give visitors richer and easier access to the imperial city, and the ancient building complex with as many as 8,707 rooms and 1.5 million artistic articles,” said Hu, who is leading a team of 60 to boost the museum’s digital display.

The Forbidden City is the world’s largest surviving imperial palace complex and served as the home of the emperor and his household, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government, from 1420 to the early 20th century. The new website is restructured to meet the different demands of laymen, researchers and academics, Hu said. The site will include quiz games, suitable for children, that teach basic knowledge about ancient China. The museum has created a cartoon figure as its image ambassador, a young emperor clad in a bright yellow royal robe adapted from Emperor Kangxi, one of the most famous emperors of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Older visitors can expect tens of thousands of pictures in refined quality with explanatory introductions. And researchers can have access to the museum’s academic research findings in a database.

“VIRTUAL WORLD” STAGES

The new website is part of the imperial palace-turned museum’s effort to move into the virtual world. Hu’s team is producing seven 3-D documentaries, each a 20- to 30-minute film mixed with real photographs or archival footage, and special effects produced by computer. A yet-to-open 3-D cinema is in the southwestern corner hall in the yard of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, with black walls and red chairs. Xu Ying, director of the museum’s exhibition technology section, said the cinema is built of a removable steel structure that minimizes possible damage to the ancient wood architecture of the hall. “We are recruiting management staff now. Our top problem is to ensure the safety of the palace hall when the audience crowds in,” she said.

PRESERVING ARCHITECTURE

Qi Xin, technician of the team, admitted this is a difficult task. “Unlike ordinary museums, the wood construction of the building is the exhibit itself. The preservation is as important as the exhibition,” Qi said. From April until now, visitors have been able to use electric touch screens to look at details of ancient works of calligraphy and paintings in the imperial collections in the Hall of Martial Valor in the southwestern part of the palace. On the screens, beside each exhibit, visitors can easily find information about the exhibit in detail and zoom in on high-definition pictures, large enough to discern even tiny strokes.

“It’s wonderful. I could see much clearer this way than pressing my face onto the glass surrounding the exhibits,” said Chen, a near-sighted college sophomore from Jiangsu Province who declined to give his full name. “This is what a museum should be.”

The Forbidden City was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987 by UNESCO with the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. Despite more than eight million visitors annually, knowledge of its architecture and antique collections have been largely unknown to the public. Many visitors come to the palace only to boast that they have been in the emperor’s bedroom. “That’s why we are committed to digital technology. It could make learning more attractive,” said Hu.

THREE-DIMENSIONAL TOURS

About 200,000 users have registered in the museum’s “Virtual Forbidden City” online travel community or “Beyond Time and Space”, a project which kicked off last October jointly with IBM. A click of the mouse, and the Chinese cultural beginner can take a three-dimensional tour of the 725,000-sq-m museum. However, despite many initial registrations, the number of users online is leveling off. Yang Shuo, a 25-year-old user of the website, said: “It really attracted me at first. But the content is limited. A digital tour takes only 15 minutes. You have few things to do if you log in twice.” Other users complain that the site is slow in general, and in changing scenes during the 3-D tour. Guo Weide, manager of corporate citizenship and cooperate affairs for IBM Greater China Group, said: “We hope to make further developments together with the museum.” IBM produced a similar online museum, “Eternal Egypt,” based on Egypt’s pyramids.

“I’m sure the new website could make up for its shortcomings,” said Hu. “And after all, the digital technology is a supplementary tool that attracts and helps people to understand.” It is “a great pity” that so many valuable artifacts are unknown to the world, and the new website should help change that, Hu said.
(Source: China Daily)

Beijing closed down its streets overnight Friday in the heart of the city near Tiananmen Square as tens of thousands of people joined in the first dress rehearsal for China’s 60th anniversary parade. October 1, the People’s Republic of China celebrates six decades since its founding. The first full-fledged rehearsal was held overnight for hours along Chang An Avenue, the major boulevard that runs in front of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City will not allow visitors to bring bottles containing water, alcohol or any other liquids inside the area starting tomorrow, according to the Beijing Youth Daily.The move is intended to insure visitors’ safety and protect the 600-year-old building complex from any possible danger. Beijing has geared up safety measures for the upcoming celebrations.

Below is the video for the comeback performance by Brown Eyed Girls.

Asin Thottumkal is an Indian film actress from the state of Kerala, and was born October 26, 1985. She made her acting debut in Sathyan Anthikkad’s Narendra Makan Jayakanthan Vaka (2001). Asin had her first commercial success with Amma Nanna O Tamila Ammayi in 2003, and won a Filmfare Award for the Best Telugu Actress for the film. After a number of films, she received her second South Filmfare Award for Best Actress for her performance in her second Tamil film, Ghajini (2005). She played the lead female roles in hits, the thriller Ghajini (2005) and the action comedy Varalaru (2006). More recently, Asin made her début in Bollywood, with Ghajini, the remake of its Tamil namesake, subsequently winning the Filmfare Best Female Debut Award Award.

Asin has a very serious problem. She has impersonators on all the major social-networking websites. “I was ready to overlook these fake IDs using my name as long as they weren’t harmful. But now the problem is getting out of hand.” The other night a colleague had a whole long conversation with ‘Asin’ and called up the next day to share her excitement about what an intimate conversation they had.

“I nearly fell off my chair. I won’t name this actress. But she said we shared our most intimate secrets on Facebook. I nearly fell of my chair and asked her who she shared her secrets with. Because it was most certainly not me. Two days ago a journalist came to interview me and said she got all the information on me from what I had written on Twitter. For the record I’m not on any of the social-networking websites. Apart from my own website I am not on the internet for any other purpose. I started blogging even before Aamir did in August 2005,” Asin declares proudly.

I was recently was looking for a few recipes by Masaharu Morimoto and stumbled across this recipe, and video from the Today show.

Braised black cod
Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups sake
• 6 slices of fresh ginger
• 6 black cod fillets with skin on, 6 to 7 ounces (175 to 200 g) each
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 cup soy sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons tamari
• 3 tablespoons mirin

DIRECTIONS

1. Pour the sake into a large, deep skillet or flame-proof casserole. Add the ginger and fish fillets skin side up. Cover and cook over high heat for 3 minutes. Add the sugar and cook over medium-high heat for three more minutes.

2. Pour the soy sauce and tamari over the fish fillets. Cook over medium-high heat, covered, for five minutes. Add the mirin and cook for three minutes longer. Be careful not to burn the fish; glaze the fillets by repeatedly pouring the thickened sauce over them while cooking.

3. With a slotted spatula, carefully transfer the black cod fillets to a platter. Check the fish to make sure it has no residual bones hidden in it.

4. If the braising liquid is not thick enough, keep cooking it over high heat until it becomes caramelized.

5. Garnish the cod with the julienned scallion and ginger and sprigs of kinome, and drizzle with the braising liquid.

Vegetable ragout
Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking

INGREDIENTS

• 1 carrot, peeled and diced on an angle
• 1 bamboo shoot (about 8 ounces), rinsed, diced
• 8-inch piece of burdock root, peeled and diced on an angle
• 6 dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated, stem-cleaned, and quartered
• 1/2 yam cake, diced with a spoon
• 2 tablespoons Asian sesame oil
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup sake
• 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1/3 cup sugar
• Julienned Tokyo scallion and ginger, for garnish
• Sprigs of kinome, for garnish

DIRECTIONS

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Set a large bowl of ice and water next to the stove. One at a time, blanch your vegetables for two minutes. Drain well. (The vegetables can be prepared several hours in advance.)

2. Heat the sesame oil in a large skillet. Add the vegetables and saute over medium heat until tender and lightly browned, about 3 minutes.

3. Add the soy sauce, sake, chicken stock, and sugar. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are just tender, about 30 minutes.

38-year-old Japanese pop star Noriko Sakai has surrendered herself to Tokyo police. Noriko is known for her girl-next-door image, but was arrested on suspicion of possessing illegal stimulants. Tokyo police found a small quantity of drugs in her apartment.

Her missing 10-year-old son was found safe in Tokyo on Thursday night. Sakai’s husband, Yuichi Takaso, 41, was arrested last Monday for alleged drug possession and questions concerning the star’s whereabouts have dominated headlines in Asia ever since.

She rose to fame in 1987 after releasing a “Otoko no Ko ni Naritai”, a few days before her 16th birthday. Known as Nori-P during her early career, she began to use her real name after turning to acting in the 1990s. One of her most acclaimed roles came in “Hitotsu Yane no Shita”.

Maria Ozawa, who used the name Miyabi early in her career, is a Japanese adult video (AV) actress known in Japan as an AV idol. She was born in Hokkaido, Japan on January 8, 1986. Her mother is Japanese and her father is French-Canadian. She attended an international school from Primary School to High School, and claims that her English reading and writing ability is better than her Japanese. While at school, she played hockey every day, and often went to karaoke after class. Ozawa had her first sexual experience at the age of 13, and learned the “48 sexual positions” through a book that she bought herself. In 2002, while still in high school, Ozawa appeared in a short (30 second) Japanese TV commercial for DARS Chocolate with the two members of the Japanese pop group KinKi Kids. The commercial has her sharing chocolate with one of the duo while secretly holding hands with the other.

She first encountered AVs (adult videos) by watching several tapes that belonged to a friend’s brother. Unlike most AV actresses, Ozawa was not scouted. Instead, she was introduced to the AV industry through a friend that was working in AVs. Ozawa was interested in the industry, and researched companies until she found B-open, a model agent which she liked. She applied for an interview with the company and was accepted. She started modeling as Miyabi for the pornographic site Shirouto-Teien.com in June 2005, which resulted in several sets of photographs and a short hardcore gonzo video released in CD-R and DVD-R formats.

She was then signed by S1 No. 1 Style, an AV studio that produces light hardcore pornography, premiering for them as Maria Ozawa on October 7, 2005 with the video New Face – Number One Style directed by Hideto Aki. Ozawa remembers that she was so nervous during the filming of her first AV that she could not look the male actor in the face. At S1, Ozawa subsequently appeared in one original video per month until February 2007. She was involved in several S1 compilation videos including the company’s entry in the 2006 AV Open, a competition between Japanese porn studios for the best selling video. The S1 video Hyper – Barely There Mosaic, featuring Maria Ozawa along with other AV idols Sora Aoi, Yua Aida, Yuma Asami, and Honoka (plus a short preview for Rin Aoki), won first place.

She parted ways with S1 in early 2007. Along with Rin Suzuka, Reina Matsushima and Rin Aoki, she moved from the safe, but popular S1 to a new startup company, Dasdas (DAS). On April 25, 2007, Dasdas released the first videos of the company, one of which (Beautiful Eurasian News Anchor Maria Ozawa Desiring Nakadashi Rape) featured Maria Ozawa. Dasdas videos contain scenes of rape, creampie, urolagnia, enema and physical torture, themes not featured in the light hardcore style of her S1 videos. Her first “interracial” title Multiple Black Rape was released from Dasdas in May 2008.

By the end of 2007, she signed (not exclusively) with Attackers’ , an established AV studio that specializes in thematic rape pornography. In June 2008 she changed studios once again, going to the small start-up studio Ran-maru which released her first video with them on July 19, 2008. Ran-maru, along with Ozawa’s previous studios, S1, Dasdas and Attackers, are all part of Japan’s largest group of AV companies, the Hokuto Corporation.

The latter part of 2008 has seen Ozawa in a variety of videos from different producers including her first exclusively lesbian video (W Cast Premium Lesbian) for LADYxLADY, a division of the Japanese porn conglomerate Soft On Demand (SOD). In a more drastic career move, Ozawa decided to appear in her first “uncensored” movies which do not have the mosaic pixelation which is used to obscure the genitals in all standard Japanese porn videos. Four uncensored 45-minute videos of Ozawa and a single male actor were released online at XVN in September 2008. The material from the first two videos was edited for a 90 minute DVD (Tora-Tora Platinum Vol.49 Maria Ozawa) released September 26, 2008, and the second two videos were combined as Tora-Tora Platinum Vol. 52 Maria Ozawa (December 31, 2008).

For the 2009 AV GrandPrix three studios (DAS, Moodyz, and M’s Video Group) all selected videos starring Ozawa as their entries in the contest. The DAS compilation The Queen of DAS won the Best Violence Video Award and the M’s Video Group entry Oral Venus took one of the Special Awards in the Featured Actress Video category. In January 2009, Ozawa returned to DAS to film Shemale Orgy Gangbang Rape with three transsexual actresses and in March 2009 made her debut in the Japanese porn genre of tentacle rape with Monster Swallowing Ecstasy Maria Ozawa for SOD.

Besides adult videos, she has appeared in V-Cinema films, a photobook and several glamour (“gravure”) videos. In 2007, she played the character Anita on the popular Japanese TV drama Tokumei Kakarich? Tadano Hitoshi on TV Asahi. In addition, Ozawa was on a 2007 episode of the Japanese variety show Megami no hatena (“The Goddess of What Is That”) on Nihon TV as part of a series with AV actresses telling why they went into AV work. She has also appeared on Japanese MTV with the hip hop artist SEAMO, who is also a fan, and in the 2007 music video Summer Time in the D.S.C. with the Yokohama hip hop group DS455.

Ozawa could be seen in 2007 performing twice at the Shinjuku striptease bar “Shinjuku New Art”. She took dance lessons to prepare but was still very nervous. She danced in a variety of outfits including appearing as a belly-dancer, a geisha and a cowgirl. Three videos were released of her performance and a behind-the-scenes interview. She followed up on her Shinjuku experience by starring in a cabaret show in Macao. The show, called “Tokyo Nights”, ran at the Rockza night club in the Grand Lisboa Hotel from August 16 to September 6, 2008 and featured Ozawa and several other Japanese performers. The shows received mixed reviews. Promotional materials show her with a (temporary) tattoo.

In 2008, Ozawa acted in her first mainstream movie, Invitation Only, billed as “Taiwan’s First-Ever Slasher Horror”. The film is produced by Three Dots Entertainment in Taipei, Taiwan and co-stars Julianne Chu. Ozawa plays a supermodel and has dialog in English and Japanese. Her professionalism impressed her co-workers and her role was expanded to include further scenes. The film was released in Taiwan in August 2008. Ozawa, who is very popular in Taiwan, also did a photoshoot for the Taiwan version of FHM magazine in May 2009.

Her hobbies include cooking and watching AVs on her flatscreen television set. She also enjoys playing video games, and owns a pink Nintendo DS Lite, and a pink PlayStation 2 console. Ozawa has been fairly open about her private life granting several interviews and keeping a very detailed text and picture blog of her life and activities dating back to October 2005. During a 2007 interview, Ozawa reported that her interest in the AV industry remains high, and her video cabinet contains nothing but AVs. She makes a good living from the industry, living in a mansion (a high-class apartment) with a US$1,682-per-month rent, and earning a minimum of $8,000 per month. However, while she says that she would quit the industry only if she is forced to do something else, she would try to prevent a friend from beginning work in the AV industry. Ozawa’s family and friends are against her chosen profession in spite of her apparent pride in her work. When she brought several of her videos home to show her parents, they refused to watch them and told her to get out.

In mid-2008, it was reported in the Japanese tabloid newspapers Sh?kan Bunshun and Tokyo Sports that Ozawa was dating J-pop star Koki Tanaka from the group KAT-TUN. According to the reports, Ozawa neither confirmed or denied the rumours, saying only “If I’m dating someone I will stay devoted to him! I have a rule against sex friends. It’s not a good thing, plus having one boyfriend is enough”.

Check out maria’s movies at JSexnetwork.com. Many of them are uncensored.

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TAIPEI (Reuters) – A medium-strength typhoon, the most severe this year so far, slowly enveloped Taiwan on Friday, forcing flight cancellations and port closures after killing 11 people in the Philippines.

Typhoon Morakot churned slowly towards Taiwan with winds gusts up to 180 kph (112 mph) on its way to China and after triggering flash floods in the Philippines, disaster officials said.

Three French tourists and two guides on a trek to Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines drowned on Thursday when their car was swept away by a swollen river. Six other people were killed in flash floods and landslides in the main island of Luzon.

Morakot, listed as a category 2 storm on a 1-5 scale by the Tropical Storm Risk forecasting service, had left four people missing in Taiwan, caused 14 injuries and cut power to about 52,000 users while grounding scores of domestic and international flights.

Taiwan’s major seaports, Kaohsiung and Keelung, closed late on Thursday due to high winds, harbour officials said. The coast guard had also rescued 10 people from three ships that ran ashore near Taiwan’s southern tip.

Taipei’s stock and forex markets were closed on Friday.

Morakot’s outermost layer reached the island during the night, with sustained winds of up to 144 kph (89 mph) and heavy rains, the weather bureau and disaster authorities said. More than 700 mm (28 inches) of rain had already fallen in some areas.

But the slow-moving storm was still offshore as of 1115 GMT, centered 60 km (37 miles) southeast of Taiwan, the weather bureau said, with more havoc expected on Saturday.

“The weather keeps changing, and the rainfall should increase tomorrow, which could be the most severe day if the winds continue,” said Lee Ching-an, a team leader at the government’s disaster response centre.

Local television showed images of minor building damage and mountains communities stranded by severed roads.

Morakot will move on to China by Sunday after weakening to a tropical storm, Tropical Storm Risk said on its website (www.tropicalstormrisk.com).

Typhoons regularly hit China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan in the second half of the year, gathering strength from the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean or South China Sea before weakening over land.

(Reporting by Ralph Jennings in Taipei and Manny Mogato in Manila; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani

I read this story this morning about my favourite grocery store at CBC News :

“Grocery retailer Loblaw Companies Ltd. said Friday it is buying T&T Supermarket Inc., Canada’s largest Asian food retailer, for about $225 million.
Loblaw 3-month TSX chartLoblaw 3-month TSX chart. Loblaw said the deal is for $191 million in cash, with the rest in preferred shares issued by T&T. The value of the preferred shares will be tied to the future performance of the business.

Sales in the quarter rose by 2.8 per cent to $7.2 billion on growth in its food and drugstore operations. Same-store sales — which track sales at stores open at least a 12 months — gained 2.5 per cent, topping the one-year rise of 0.7 per cent seen in the same quarter of 2008. Loblaw stock fell 70 cents to $35.05 in TSX trading.”