Word: china
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Should Professors Cheech and Chong ever receive university tenure teaching the medical history of their favorite subject, the course pack would be surprisingly thick. As early as 2737 B.C., the mystical Emperor Shen Neng of China was prescribing marijuana tea for the treatment of gout, rheumatism, malaria and, oddly enough, poor memory. The drug's popularity as a medicine spread throughout Asia, the Middle East and down the eastern coast of Africa, and certain Hindu sects in India used marijuana for religious purposes and stress relief. Ancient physicians prescribed marijuana for everything from pain relief to earache to childbirth. Doctors...
...Chinese officials spoke of literature flourishing but did not say a word about writers in jail, about censorship or prohibitions," Dai told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA). Dai, however, had plenty to say on the topic, in interviews and at fair-related events. By reacting so vitriolically to her presence - China's former ambassador to Germany Mei Zhaorong said, "We didn't come for a lesson on democracy" - China ensured that the uglier elements of its treatment of journalists and authors would be a focus of the fair. "The media is paying attention to us. We can speak freely," she told...
...Juergen Boos, the fair organizer, said he was personally angered by mistakes and compromises in the organization and communication of the pre-fair symposium. In response to Mei's statement that China wouldn't be lectured on democracy, Boos wrote on the fair's website that "the Frankfurt Book Fair is not offering instruction in democracy, to be sure, but it is democracy in action." Soon after, project manager Peter Ripken was fired, apparently for blocking Dai and Bei from speaking at the closing ceremony, Deutsche Welle reported. Ripken responded that he had been acting on instructions from Germany...
...successful 2008 Olympics showed China as a world leader in sport, and the relative strength of the country's economy amid the global financial downturn has given it further economic clout. China's domestic publishing industry has expanded rapidly since economic reforms began in the late 70s, with 270,000 titles published last year, but overseas recognition of this growing body of literature hasn't followed as quickly. Chinese leaders have long worried about China's lack of soft-power influence of the sort that the U.S. and Europe achieve through their prominent roles in media and arts...
...China's cultural ministries saw Frankfurt as a way to boost the country's clout overseas. The General Administration of Press and Publication sponsored the translation of more than 100 Chinese books into German and English to be sold at the fair, part of China's $7.5 million investment in the event. The writers who were approved for the official program in Frankfurt included Yu Hua, an author of earthy, sometimes profane novels of human struggle including To Live and Brothers. While Yu's sex- and drug-laden writing could have been banned as late as the 1980s...