Culture

By Jayanta Sarkar, Anthropological Survey of India Additional Information Researchers at the Database for Indigenous Cultural Evolution, University of Missouri; Anvita Abbi, Professor of Linguistics,...

Sporting competitions conjure images of athletic prowess and physical feats, with all the fanfare hiding the deft political manoeuvring required to bring these events to life. A closer inspection of the Asian Games reveals a political tapestry reflective of the deeply complex relations of the member states.

For centuries, indigenous tattooists working across Asia have marked human skin with powerful designs and symbols in their quest to signal ethnic identity and render the body sacred. Carried through life and onwards into death, these marks of humanity testify to an ancestral legacy that is in danger of gradually fading away.

You should be careful which books you give your daughters, because you never know what irrepressible, adventurous spirit they might engender. For Freya Stark (1893–1993), the desire to escape and explore was sown on her ninth birthday when she was given One Thousand and One Nights, the famous collection of Arabian tales.

Text & Photos  by Angelia Tan It’s an old island here in Koh Samui. Situated on the east coast of Thailand, the history told takes...

Across Asia, women throughout the ages have decorated their faces in pursuit of specific beauty ideals

Under a courtship ritual called harana, it was compulsory for Filipino men to sing to their sweethearts

Identifying herself as a Franco-Belgian photographer of Chinese origin from Malaysia, Diana’s transient life between three different continents has informed most of the philosophy behind her photography. Diana explores the ancient ritual of adorning women with symbolic clothing, religious objects, amulets and heirloom jewellery. Her purpose is to fuse the past and the present, the traditional and the modern, and to effectively create new possibilities of defining a woman’s identity.