The Hebrew year is 5774 and the Chinese year is 4710. That must mean, the joke goes, that against all odds the Jews went without Chinese food for 1,064 years. In fact, Jewish love for Chinese food is neither hallucinated nor arbitrary. It is very real and very determined, and it originates roughly a century ago, in a place about four miles away from Mile End: the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
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Tablet is a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture. Launched in June 2009, it’s a project of the not-for-profit Nextbook Inc., which also produces the Nextbook Press Jewish Encounters book series. Our archive holds all the articles and features that originally appeared on the website Nextbook.org.
Chinese authorities have said a 73-year-old woman has died after being infected with a bird flu strain not previously found in people, a development that the World Health Organisation called “worrisome.”
The test is seen as another step in tightening the party’s control over media. At a conference in August, President Xi Jinping called for the “consolidation of mainstream ideology and opinion” to ensure a correct political direction by media outlets, Xinhua reported. Mr. Xi’s speech has been incorporated into the test.
For Chinese critics of the government, the border long ago acquired a political toll booth: Whichever way you cross, you pay a price.
The Laohu Valley Reserve sits on a rolling plain about 200 kilometers from Bloemfontein, South Africa’s judicial capital. In September 2003, two South China tigers were sent to the reserve from a Chinese zoo. What began as an effort to save the species from the brink of extinction evolved into a “rewilding” training project, the goal of which is to release the big cats back into their natural habitat.
There are fifteen South China tigers now living in Laohu Valley. Tiger supervisor Vivienne McKenzie said that nine of them are already capable hunters.
Nearly a year to the day after seven new leaders ascended to their posts on the Standing Committee of China’s Politburo, the Asia Society held a public conversation with The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos; Dr. Susan Shirk of the University of California, San Diego; Former Ambassador to China, J. Stapleton Roy; and Orville Schell.
Following Washington’s move to increase its military footprint in Asia, China has declared it is building a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of a size to compete with the mightiest in the U.S. naval fleet.
As the western world eagerly anticipates the festive season, in China Christmas will be a relatively subdued affair.
