Cultural Diplomacy
In Washington, D.C., home to most national museums in the country, should there be a museum expressly dedicated to Asian Pacific American history and culture? For Franklin Odo, the founding director of the Smithsonian's APA program from 1997-2010, that has since been upgraded to a "center," the time has come for an even further upgrade to a full-fledged museum.
This month, the Brazilian embassy in Jordan will promote the Brazilian Gastronomy Week in the capital Amman. The dinners will take place at the hotel Grand Hyatt Amman from April 19 to 27. Around 120 guests are expected each night. [...] The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce is supporting the event, providing the contact of member companies interested in having their products in the dinners.
China's economic growth has begun to flatten out, so it has sought to evolve from manufacturing to service. And professional soccer [...] is a service. In a country newly rich and besotted by Western luxury goods, the sport has become a paradigm of sorts for embracing and importing foreign commodities. Only in this case, those commodities aren't yachts or Ivy League educations, but rather soccer players.
A surprise awaits beyond a black door adorned with a silver lotus flower at the end of a tangle of alleyways in Gaza's chaotic Old City. Through it and behind imposing stone walls sits a small, Levantine-style palace, some 430 years old and recently painstakingly restored. It is among the rare vestiges of Gaza City's architectural heritage, battered by war, time, population pressure and simple indifference.
Pakistan's smallest religious minority, the Kalash […] fear their unique culture will not endure: Increasingly their youth are converting to Islam, prompting activists to campaign to preserve the traditions of this ancient, diminishing tribe. Their fight to get the Kalash on to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage List began in 2008, but eight years on remains mired in sluggish bureaucracy.
The Office of American Spaces under the U.S. Department of State has recently released its annual report. With over 700 spaces across 169 countries, American Spaces "serve as the primary places of ongoing people-to-people connections between the United States and foreign audiences that are essential to advancing U.S. foreign policy objectives." Hosted in embassies, schools, libraries, and other partner institutions, often outside capital cities, these locales aim to further a core tenet of democracy: access to information.
SBS’s deal with the European Broadcasting Union to develop a Eurovision Song Contest equivalent in Asia is a welcome chance for Australia to develop stronger ties with the Asia-Pacific region. The development of an Asian Eurovision - an “Asiavision”, we might call it - is an exciting project for regional unity.