Word: meccas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Seurat, most would answer. But there was at least one other: Seurat's friend and luminous fellow painter, Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac (1863-1935). Signac, an avid yachtsman, helped create the French Riviera as a subject for painting--and Saint-Tropez, where he settled from 1892 on, as a mecca for tourism. His pursuit of pure color sensation, the yellow of beaches and the purple of shade under the umbrella-pines, made his canvases radical in their time. Yet to a modern eye, his paradisiacal view of the world--a world now hopelessly fouled by mass tourism--offers undiluted pleasure...
...sarongs, prayer caps and head scarves mingle with the more familiar conical hats and trousers, and people make a living fishing, farming and weaving cloth in traditional Cham patterns. The area has no fewer than 12 mosques, and town elder Ismail has just returned from a cherished journey to Mecca. Ismail has never seen My Son or the other Cham ruins in central and southern Vietnam. He wouldn't mind seeing them, he says, but what's important is teaching Cham children religion not ancient history. "The past is the past," he shrugs. "We don't teach about that...
...factory. Still, while China had largely forgotten his heroic ancestor, Zheng says family legends kept his exploits very much alive. Tales of his voyages were passed down through the generations like a fragment of silken embroidery. "Zheng He's one regret," says his descendant, "is that he never reached Mecca." On the last voyage, by the time a few men from his fleet finally made the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest site, Zheng He had died. Both his father and grandfather had made the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca overland all the way from southwestern China long before their illustrious offspring...
...reaching Mecca a personal goal, a secret motivation driving Zheng He onward? In his various writings, left on stone stelae scattered about his travels, Zheng He makes clear that imperial hubris was best left ashore: the success of these voyages depended on knowing his place between heaven and earth, on paying homage to the many gods worshiped by people along the way, starting with the constantly burning incense to Chinese sea goddess Tianfei. I jot down a note to myself: when the next typhoon approaches, light incense for Tianfei aboard my junk - and be friendly to any woman...
...across Asia, risk awareness is thin, and no pan-Asian transport body exists to call for precautionary measures, as the European Commission did in January. During the Haj season when tens of thousands go to Mecca, Pakistan International Airways routinely refits aircraft to shoehorn in as many seats as possible. In China, Li Ru, spokeswoman for Air China, puts her faith in passenger size. "We are shorter and smaller than Westerners, so we're less uncomfortable in airplane seats," she says. For those airlines that are taking action, the mood is aggressively defensive. Following the WHO conference, the Association...