UNESCO has called the Mogo Caves the “largest, most richly endowed and longest-used treasure house of Buddhist art” in the world. The caves are located outside Dunhuang, an oasis city in northwest China at the edge of the Gobi Desert in Gansu province. Filled with vivid murals and statues depicting Buddha and Buddhist paradise, as…
Seven-year-old Goku Alexander stood on one leg, like a stork, raising his right knee to waist level. His gloved fists hovered just above his eyes as he peered intently at his taller opponent, a Thai boy named Pingkong. Anticipating one another’s every move, the pair began cautiously, trading light jabs. Then Pingkong, in blue trunks,…
You’ll probably eat miso on a trip to Japan, but what if you could also learn how to make the fermented soybean paste? What insight might you gain into wabi-sabi, the Japanese appreciation for the imperfection and impermanence of life, if you learned how to restore broken ceramics using a centuries-old technique called kintsugi? Not only do these experiences afford deep dives into Japanese culture, but they also provide personal connections to the history, techniques, and philosophy behind centuries of Japanese crafts and cuisine.
By Christine Loomis Jason Younis y Delgado, fifth-generation tinsmith, sits at a table off the sunbaked plazuela of Casa San Ysidro in Corrales, New Mexico. The Casa is part of an historic adobe complex affiliated with the Albuquerque Museum. Surrounded by pieces of tin and rows of tools, he’s fabricating traditional tin works to sell…
By Teresa Bergen The crowd of over 500 wellness and medical professionals from around the world pack the opulent new Mandarin Oriental in Downtown Dubai as Katherine Johnston, senior research fellow at the nonprofit Global Wellness Institute, takes the stage. She is calm and self-assured, the sort of person who seems trustworthy with reams of…
By Steffy McCourt Untouched by the glaciers that leveled the northern part of the state, Southern Indiana swells and ebbs against an unending sky, forested hills, and ancient farms. On its winding two-lane roads, it unfolds like a good story… slow turns, familiar scenes, a feeling that you’ve been here before, even if you haven’t.…
The Guadalupe River appeared benign – quiet, slow-moving, fishy-looking. It was just what a visitor from a thousand miles away expected in the Central Texas Hill Country, a region of big skies, gentle hills and open land that native son President Lyndon Johnson loved. The Hill Country is north of San Antiono and south of…
By Cynthia David By the thousands they came, between 1880 and 1920, fleeing poverty and starvation in Southern Italy to power America’s factories, build roads and dig tunnels. Like every wave of newcomers, the hard-working Italians found comfort in recreating the familiar recipes and cooking techniques they’d left behind. Little did they know la pizza,…
In the valley of Viñales, the smoke from Cuban cigars mingles in an atmosphere rich in history and contradiction. Join writer and photographer Robert Holmes as he explores how this humble agricultural region in Cuba has become the heart of a luxury export trade, and the exotic visage that masks the reality of rural hardship, outdated infrastructure, and the heavy weight of a global reputation.
By David DeVoss It was the opening game of the baseball season and the atmosphere at Legends Field, home of the Kansas City Monarchs, resembles that of a carnival. Four skydivers dressed in bright primary colors started the festivities by parachuting onto center field. Action then shifts to the infield, where a handful of Little…