The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro
The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro |
- One dead, widespread destruction in Tonga cyclone
- Plying the wire for a sense of balance
- Consumers have to pay more for most CNY festive goodies
| One dead, widespread destruction in Tonga cyclone Posted: 11 Jan 2014 05:14 PM PST NUKU'ALOFA (Tonga) (AFP) - At least one person was killed when powerful Cyclone Ian ploughed into Tonga's northern Ha'apai islands, causing extensive damage and destroying houses, reports said Sunday. The full extent of the destruction began to emerge when communications were partially restored a day after the South Pacific kingdom's first category five cyclone struck early Saturday morning. Initial reports on Saturday said the cyclone had left minor damage. Ian was downgraded to a category four cyclone late Saturday morning, but increased in intensity later in the day and was restored to the most severe rating of category five. By Sunday there were reports of houses destroyed and trees flattened across the island chain, which is home to about 8,000 people and is popular with tourists. The head of the Tonga Red Cross, Sione Taumoefolau, said he had been informed of one death in Ha'apai but did not have further details. He said staff in the region told him by satellite phone the main island of Lifuka was devastated. Tupou Ahomee Faupula, from Tonga's cell phone provider Digicel, said his field officer in Ha'apai, Uaisele Fonokalafi, reported widespread devastation. "He told us that this was the worst ever damage from a cyclone. Most houses are flattened, roofs are off, trees and power lines are down." The Tonga navy was sending two patrol boats to Ha'apai, and the Matangi Tonga news website reported the government was considering overseas aid. New Zealand has announced immediate assistance of NZ$50,000 ($41,500) and an Air Force Orion to assist with aerial surveillance of the devastated areas. "Our thoughts are with the people of Tonga as they begin to come to terms with the damage caused by this cyclone," said Foreign Minister Murray McCully. "Further support will be considered as the full extent of the damage becomes clear and the government of Tonga determines its priority response areas." The Fua'amotu Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre downgraded Ian again to category four Sunday, with wind gusts of up to 140 knots (161 miles per hour, 259 kilometres per hour). The storm was expected to continue weakening as it moved south over open waters, away from the island nation, according to meteorologists. |
| Plying the wire for a sense of balance Posted: 11 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST Uighurs' favourite sport – tightrope walking – is seen as sign of the ethnic group's resilience amid China's religious and cultural constraints. FROM the top of the Prince of the Sky's tower, the pavement below is a vertigo-inducing abstraction, a grey expanse dotted with people-like specks. But the Prince, one of the best tightrope walkers in the world, doesn't think about the pavement. He looks towards his destination – another high tower on a distant hillside – and contemplates the thin steel cable strung across the expanse. For Aisikaier Wubulikaisimu, 41, tightrope walking is more than a circus act – it's a national sport with two millennia of history. Aisikaier, hailed as the Prince by his publicist, is Uighur, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group from Xinjiang in China's far north-west. He has wide-set eyes, a burst of knotty dreadlocks and a gnarled scar just below his jaw, from when he fell from a low wire as a child and impaled himself on the protruding end of a metal coil. In his native language, tightrope walking is called dawaz, and like all dawaz performers, he refuses to use safety equipment. Every walk is a dance with fate. "I represent the people of Xinjiang," Aisikaier says in stilted Mandarin. "If I fail, people will think I'm a joke. So I don't think about failure. Either I succeed, or I die." He laughs. Suddenly, Xinjiang music blares from the speakers below – a sweep of hand-drums, fiddles and lutes – and he steps on to the wire. Aisikaier is, by most metrics, a success. He works for a small theme park in rural south-west China, which pays him well. He has broken four Guinness world records, most of them for speed-mad 100m dashes across dizzyingly high wires, and frequently appears on Chinese television. Yet for Aisikaier and other Uighurs, navigating Chinese society is itself a tightrope act, fraught with an equal degree of peril. They are China's most beleaguered ethnic group – feared, misunderstood and economically marginalised. Cosy up to Han society and they could be ostracised. Struggle against it and they could be jailed. "I think (dawaz) is a nice metaphor for the sort of place that Uighurs find themselves in, between Chinese society and central Asian society, between Islam and Chinese secularism," says Dru Gladney, an expert on China's ethnic minorities at Pomona College in California. While the Chinese government supports traditional Uighur music and dance, staging elaborate shows to showcase the country's ethnic diversity, it barely touches dawaz. The sport is too rugged, too individualistic. "You can say it's a weapon of the weak, but it's also a very effective way of showing the resilience of Uighur culture," he says. Every month seems to bring news from Xinjiang underscoring the region's entrenched ethnic divide. In November last year, 11 people died when a Uighur mob attacked a police station. On Dec 15, a clash between gun-toting police and machete-wielding Uighurs took 16 lives in the region's arid west. The unrest reached Beijing in October, when an SUV ploughed through pedestrians in Tiananmen Square and caught fire, killing five and injuring dozens. Authorities identified the driver as Uighur and described the incident as an act of terrorism, motivated by "religious extremist forces". Uighur activists abroad called it a last-ditch protest against religious and cultural constraints. Tensions in Xinjiang reached boiling point in July 2009, when knife-wielding Uighurs rioted in the region's capital, Urumqi, indiscriminately killing scores of Han Chinese. Since then, authorities in Xinjiang have kept up a relentless campaign of surveillance cameras, Internet monitors and paramilitary troops. They pressure women to remove their veils, discourage fasting during Ramadan and prohibit young Uighur men from visiting mosques, fearing they will organise protests. Han and Uighurs frequent different restaurants and nightclubs. Intermarriage is rare. The tradition of dawaz is rooted in resistance. Thousands of years ago, performers say, a Xinjiang city was invaded by repressive ghosts. Uighur warriors could not push past its high wall and moat, so for a long time, the ghosts ruled unabated. But one brave warrior fixed a rope between a tree and the city wall and walked across, using two heavy swords to keep his balance. Ultimately, he scaled the wall, vanquished the ghosts and liberated his people. Although Adili Wuxor has never vanquished any ghosts, his rise to national stardom has, for many Uighurs, comparable significance. Adili, 43, is Aisikaier's friend and only rival, a sixth-generation tightrope walker whose ancestors performed for Qing dynasty emperors. He is a darling of the state-owned media. In 2010, Adili performed on a wire strung over the Bird's Nest Stadium for 60 consecutive days, sleeping in a tiny cabin on its roof. In October, he walked between two guard towers on the Great Wall. "I'm of the sky. That's what I do," he told the China Daily. "And the Great Wall is a place particularly symbolic." Despite his boyish visage and compact frame, Adili has the air of a triumphant underdog. "If I never studied dawaz, it's very possible that dawaz would cease to exist," he says. Adili began practising dawaz at the age of five and spent so much time on the wire as a child that it left permanent grooves in the soles of his feet. He recently opened a dawaz school for orphans in Xinjiang, and says he directs half of his six million yuan (RM3.2mil) annual income towards keeping it afloat. "Fewer and fewer people are studying dawaz," he says. "You know China has a one-child policy, and if you only have one child, you're not going to let her study something so dangerous." Despite his status among Uighurs, Adili enjoys a friendly relationship with the Chinese state. His school's promotional materials show students draped in a Chinese flag. He was a torch-bearer for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and has repeatedly served as a deputy to the National People's Congress, the national legislature. In 2004, Adili was touring in Toronto with an acrobatics troupe when seven members went into hiding and applied for political asylum. Adili returned to Xinjiang with the remaining five. Xinjiang's Communist party bosses claimed the defectors had been tricked by "overseas separatists" and Adili publicly appealed for their return. "He walked this weird line between knowing that he was a symbol of nationhood on one level, and even of independence, I guess – but at the same time, he was very comfortable in this coddled position as a performer," said Deborah Stratman, a Chicago-based documentary film-maker who lived with Adili as he toured Xinjiang for three months in 2001. "It could have been that he was an activist on some level, but he would never reveal that, especially to a foreigner." Aisikaier's theme park is tucked away among lush, low-lying mountains an hour's drive from Kunming, the capital of south-west China's Yunnan province. He says he couldn't find suitable work in his childhood home of Kashgar. It's a sensitive subject. When pushed for details, his eyes dart away, and he picks at his fingernails. Aisikaier's life at the park is placid. The park's main attraction is the Kingdom of the Little People, staffed almost exclusively by people with dwarfism. They put on two variety shows a day for tourists. Aisikaier towers above his colleagues, many of whom he considers close friends; they spend most of their time chatting and playing cards. He lives in a mildewed dorm room and cooks halal food for himself. He plans to stay for another decade. Occasionally, Aisikaier puts on elaborate performances organised by an agency in Anhui. Last summer, his team strung a 700m-long cable between cliffs in central China and the Prince, seeking a new challenge, decided to cross it backwards and blindfolded. On the day, he wore a white tank top and pants. Although he had completed the walk in practice, that day was insufferably hot – 40°C – and after about 50 minutes, he began to feel queasy. His balancing pole swayed uncontrollably, nearly tapping the sides of his feet. With 40m to go, his legs gave out; he desperately tried to grab the wire, missed and plummeted. When Aisikaier came to a few seconds later, he was tangled in the branches of a tree. "When I was falling, my mind was blank. But once I realised what had just happened, I thought: 'I don't want to die. God, don't take me now. Give me another chance,'" he says. Aisikaier went home that night shaken, but unhurt. Four days later, he was back on a wire. — ©Guardian News & Media 2014 |
| Consumers have to pay more for most CNY festive goodies Posted: 11 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST WITH less than three weeks to Chinese New Year, consumers are having to pay up to a third more than last year for certain festive goodies. Reasons given by retailers and wholesalers include rising costs of raw ingredients and supply issues. A Straits Times check with a dozen stores in Chinatown and Bugis shows prices of fish maw and dried mushrooms have gone up by as much as 30%. In Chinatown, seafood wholesaler Yau Shing is selling fish maw at between S$7 (RM18.20) and S$80 (RM208) per 100g, up 30% from last year. At Teck Soon Medical Hall, dried mushrooms cost as much as S$10 (RM26) per 100g, against S$8 (RM20.80) last year. Yau Shing's owner Jeff Poon, 58, said the price of fish maw has risen because of higher demand from China. The supply is also falling because of overfishing. In Bugis, retailer Eng San Ginseng and Birdnest sells dried mushrooms for between S$2.50 (RM6.50) and S$8 per 100g. This is about 20% more than last year, due to a shortage of supply from China and South Korea, said owner Lee Yam Poh, who is in his 70s. The good news is: Prices of dried abalone, dried scallops and sea cucumber remain consistent. Even with higher demand, shop owners say they are not raising prices so as to stay competitive. "It's a small market, everyone is selling the same thing," said Chow Khai Cheng, 57, who owns Teck Yin Soon Chinese Medical Hall in Chinatown. An honorary president of the Singapore Food Manufacturers' Association, Allan Tan, said the festive items have been selling well since last week. Prices of festive goods such as pineapple tarts have also gone up due to the rising costs of ingredients like flour, butter and sugar, said retailers. Le Cafe Confectionery & Pastry, which has a branch near Bugis, has increased the price of its pineapple tarts by 10 cents (26 sen) a container. At Chop Tai Chong Kok bakery in Chinatown, a container of about 50 pineapple tarts costs S$35.90 (RM93.34), S$1 (RM2.60) more than last year. At bak kwa chain Lim Chee Guan, which has outlets in Chinatown, the sliced barbecued pork was selling at S$50 (RM130) per kg. Owner Rod Lim, 62, said it is too early to say if prices will rise further, but last year's peak was S$50 per kg. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network |
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