World Travel News

During Chinatown’s Autumn Moon Festival, the signs for mooncakes crowd every storefront window from Mott Street to the Bowery.

Mooncakes flavored with green tea, oolong tea, mango, pineapple, roasted espresso, dried scallops, shark’s fin - pretty much anything. There’s even a sparrow bird’s-nest mooncake flavored with coconut cream. The dense, round pastries represent full moons and connect Asian-Americans to their past.

But to many, the mooncake tradition in mid-September is really more about the decorative tin than the four cakes it contains, with each cake top imprinted with the bakery’s logo in Chinese.

Think of it as the Asian version of the Christmas fruitcake. It’s one of those traditions that no one wants to mess with. Just go along to get along, and hopefully, get a pretty tin.

The Autumn Moon Festival began as a celebration to mark the overthrow of the Mongols at the end of the Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1279-1368 ) in China. As the story goes, the rebels passed each other secret messages with a plan of attack hidden inside round cakes.

On the 15th day of the eighth moon - what would later become known as the first Autumn Moon Festival - the rebels succeeded in attacking and overthrowing the government. The event triggered the start of the Ming Dynasty and the tradition of giving round cakes - without the messages - to loved ones.

Even the Haagen-Dazs here has mooncake. It’s vanilla ice cream, covered in chocolate and with an orange sorbet “yolk” center, instead of the traditional egg yolk, lotus-seed paste and lard. But it’s only available at the Chinatown store.

At this year’s festival, held Sept. 18, Mott Street between Bayard and Canal streets was blocked off for the celebration. Tourists and the locals who have lived in Chinatown their entire lives spent the warm, sunny, Sunday afternoon watching the traditional lion and dragon dances alongside “Asian-Britpop” band Johnny Hi-Fi.

But it was anything but a culture clash.

The streets may be crowded with names such as Hing Tai Co., Tasty Dumpling and Happy General Store, but you’ve got to remember this is the largest Chinese community in America. And there’s plenty of room for the trendy bubble tea shops (sweet tea with tapioca “bubbles") to mix with the traditional teahouses.

It’s an ideal day for a sightseeing trip on Lake Erie - the sky is a sparkling clear blue and the water is calm - but Steve Galbreth and Constance Livchak aren’t watching birds or checking out the lush island coastline from their 25-foot boat.

Instead, the state researchers have put sheets of black fabric over the craft’s cabin windows, trying to block the sun so they can get a clearer view of two orange-tinted computer screens.

As they peer at the monitors in the darkened cabin, a seemingly endless stream of wiggly gray lines suddenly parts, and an item shaped like a cigar materializes in front of them.

They’ve reached the F.H. Prince, a 230-foot freighter converted to a sand dredge that caught fire in 1911 off the east end of Kelleys Island and sunk. It rests in three to 18 feet of water.

“That’s the wreck, coming up on the starboard side,” said Mr. Galbreth, a research vessel operator for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Geological Survey.

“This is a real popular one to dive on because it’s in such shallow water.”

Ms. Livchak, supervisor of the Division of Geological Survey, says the geological survey division is using its side-scan sonar equipment to learn more about the hundreds of shipwrecks at the bottom of Ohio’s Lake Erie waters.

The state hopes, in turn, to promote interest in the wrecks among divers and history buffs by making the information it gleans from the sunken ships more readily available.

ODNR officials tried to do that by establishing a shipwreck preserve including the Prince and other sunken vessels near Kelleys Island.

But opposition from island property owners, who feared restrictions on their land-use rights, killed the proposal two years ago.

So state officials, lake historians, and underwater archeologists are taking another tack. They hope to designate an area east of Kelleys Island and three other Lake Erie zones as Ohio’s first “underwater trailways” - virtual routes mapped in brochures and Web pages that would guide divers to historic submerged structures.

Other routes would be mapped between Vermilion and Lorain, off Cleveland, and off Fairport Harbor in Lake County.

Atilla Koc, Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism, returned from Germany to Turkey on Sunday.

Speaking to reporters at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, Koc noted that he attended a symposium and an exhibition at the Bochum Museum.

Koc said, ‘’the event was very fruitful with respect to promotion of Turkey. In the opening of the exhibition, I explained opportunities of Turkey.'’

221 archeological pieces from the Bodrum Underwater Archeology Museum and 11 historical pieces from the Corum Museum are displayed in the exhibition at the Bochum Museum.

Source: turkishpress.com

The 12-year-old Alliance of Tribal Tourism Advocates is starting a new campaign, hoping to jump-start tourism on South Dakota reservations.

“We Want to Make Your Reservation to a Tribal Sovereign Destination,” the new campaign, aims to draw more people – and money – to Indian Country.

Package tours will include lodging and educational and craft sessions.

“We have to promote our own image,” said Daphne Richards-Cook, executive director of the alliance, who said tribes can’t depend on other tourism agencies.

Tourism has been talked about for years as an economic development tool for South Dakota’s nine reservations, but so far, little has happened. Part of that is a lack of organization. Part of it is a lack of services on some reservations, such as Pine Ridge.

But anything will help. At least there’s some action.

Source: argusleader.com

Atilla Koc, Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism, returned from Germany to Turkey on Sunday.

Speaking to reporters at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, Koc noted that he attended a symposium and an exhibition at the Bochum Museum.

Koc said, ‘’the event was very fruitful with respect to promotion of Turkey. In the opening of the exhibition, I explained opportunities of Turkey.'’

221 archeological pieces from the Bodrum Underwater Archeology Museum and 11 historical pieces from the Corum Museum are displayed in the exhibition at the Bochum Museum.

Source: turkishpress.com