Word: townes
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...decades, many Asian countries - from Japan and South Korea to Thailand and the Philippines - were used to counting on an American big brother for everything from economic sustenance to military security. Now there's a new top dog in town: China. Last year, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada proclaimed that this "will be the age of Asia and in that context it is important for Japan to have its own stance, to play its own role in the region" - a role separate from that of the U.S. It's no coincidence that such a sentiment was expressed precisely as China...
...name, Guan Moye his real one) is in his hometown of Gaomi, Shandong province, a place he has described as the wellspring of his creativity. It's also the location of most of his vivid, at times brilliant, novels. Local Communist Party officials are honoring the town's famous son with a lavish lunch, but as the dishes are served - three kinds of fish, oysters, sea cucumber - the author looks increasingly surprised. "I had no idea that Gaomi had a restaurant of such high quality," he finally blurts, to the amusement of his hosts...
...Whatever the reason, Mo Yan makes it clear that his fiction will stay rooted in Gaomi - or rather his historical version of it. The novel he is contemplating next, for example, will be centered around a siege of the town during the 1930s, when China was riven with warlord rivalry...
When Twyla Tharp was 8 years old, her family moved from rural Indiana to a small town near San Bernardino, Calif., and opened a drive-in movie theater. Tharp's mother, an accomplished pianist, had put her precocious daughter through the usual cultural paces--lessons in ballet and tap as well as several musical instruments--but the family movie palace is where Tharp got her first real feel for an audience. She'd work at the snack bar and sit in a junked car way up front to watch the movies--westerns, musicals, horror-film fright fests on Friday...
Last September, for instance, three men driving a Saturn were stopped in Fowlerville, Michigan, by a police officer after their vehicle crossed the center line. According to the town's police chief, Gary Krause, an officer found the car packed with weapons, including a .357-cal. revolver, three assault rifles, three 9-mm semiautomatic pistols and 700 rounds of ammunition. The three men identified themselves as bodyguards of Mark Koernke, the self-promoting militia propagandist. "They said they had just completed maneuvers," Krause recalls. While those three men didn't show up for their arraignment six days later, dozens...