Epoch Times, Singapore Edition (Issue 504)

February 6 – 19, 2015 • MCI (P) 100/09/2014 • SINGAPORE EDITION • theepochtimes.com

Alibaba Loses US$30 Billion as

Political Connections Turn Sour

Asia & china perspectives 14

It is disconcerting to investors that the Chinese government is the one telling Alibaba that it has merchandise that may not be authentic.

GIL LURIA, FINANCIAL ANALYST

Alibaba’s Chairman Jack Ma.

Fotolia and GETTY IMAGES/ photo Illustration By Epoch Times

Leaving a Legacy of Positivity

Baby Formula Is Loaded With GMOs – Avoid These Brands

Let’s Lo Hei for Good Luck!

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Contents

quote of the week

The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.

Mencius (371–291 B.C.), Confucian philosopher

A FREE CHINA

192,892,336 people have renounced the Chinese Communist Party.

See Page 19 for Details

People buy Chinese New Year goodies ahead of the Lunar New Year in Singapore. Ethnic Chinese will be celebrating the Lunar New Year of the Goat on February 19, 2015.

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all photos Courtesy of Spencer Ogden

Singapore’s Coolest Workspace Epoch Times Staff SINGAPORE— Located on the 34th floor of One Raffles Place, Spencer Ogden, the region’s leading energy recruiter, launched one of Singapore’s coolest workspaces on 22 January 2015.

The space was designed by Bonita Spencer-Percival, the company’s Design Director, with the vision of incorporating home and garden in its office.

To keep executives energised while they work, over S$1 million has been spent to integrate table-tennis, foosball, basketball hoops, crazy golf, bicycles and even rickshaws into the workspace.

Bonita Spencer-Percival has amalgamated

Spencer Ogden’s corporate brand with distinctive elements of local culture.

For example, there is a huge Singapore national flag in the Not Bored Room, a Raffles inspired Club Room and a warehouse-style trading floor.

CEO David Spencer-Percival said: “The new office in Singapore is our biggest and most ambitious yet. At Spencer Ogden, we are committed to creating environments that encourage open communication and team work, and as a result we have a highly collaborative and productive workforce.

“I want the team to enjoy coming to work and I strongly believe that creating a positive working environment brings benefits: I have seen it increase staff productivity by 30%.”

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Leaving a Legacy of Positivity all photos Courtesy of Terence quek

By Li Yen Epoch Times Staff Terence Quek is the CEO of Emergenetics International-Asia Pacific, a global people and organisation development consultancy.

After serving 13 years with the Republic of Singapore Navy, Quek co-founded a strategic communications consultancy Caelan & Sage Private Limited. In a mere four years, it has turned into a successful business with an annual turnover of over a million. It merged with Emergenetics Asia in 2012 to form Emergenetics Caelan & Sage.

Presently, he heads the Asia Pacific headquarters of Emergenetics International.

The firm develops the Emergenetics Profile, which is a statistically valid and reliable psychometric instrument that researches on the thinking and behavioural preferences of individuals and teams. The profile is then used as an effective tool by clients to improve their interactions and relationships in order to be more productive.

Quek is also the Director of Communications and Outreach for Project Happy Feet, a non-profit organisation actively involved in supporting the education of underprivileged children in developing countries.

Project Happy Feet has successfully raised a hefty S$500,000 by end 2014 for its beneficiaries in Nepal, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines and Singapore.

A recipient of the Public Service Medal, Quek is passionate about making a positive difference in people development, especially youths. He is generous in sharing knowledge and learns from everyone.

“It’s important to be a friend to everyone,” he says.

He adds, “I mean to offer a service, to help, to share, to give. Do it unconditionally, not with a hidden agenda. Be sincere, be authentic, be generous. In no time, you will create a whole network of allies who will favour you and support you.”

Honoured as a Young Outstanding Person of Singapore, the 39-year-old thinks that honesty is an important asset which an entrepreneur needs to possess.

“This world needs more responsible entrepreneurs who believe in sustainability, accountability and corporate social responsibility,” shares the kind and friendly bachelor who lives by the motto “Do or do not, there is no try” — a famous quote by Yoda from Star Wars.

You co-founded a strategic communications consultancy and grow it into a company with annual turnover of over-a million. How do you manage to achieve this?

I spent 13 years with the Republic of Singapore Navy and upon completing two contracts with the Navy, I co-founded Caelan

This world needs more responsible entrepreneurs who believe in sustainability, accountability and corporate social responsibility.

Terence Quek, CEO of Emergenetics International-AP & Sage Private Limited with my business partner Deborah Chew. Though we were not schooled in business, we had some ideas about building Caelan & Sage on our passions and what we were good at or had experiences in.

Thanks to the Navy, I gained experience in strategy and operations planning, as well as practical experience in corporate communication (I had helped set up the corporate communication department for the Navy and worked there for about four years).

My business partner Deborah had a wider corporate experience, having worked in hospitality, education and also in high-profiled event management (at one time, she worked with the NUS Public Policy Programme putting together Executive Programmes featuring prominent speakers like Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia. The programme is today, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy).

An ex-Navy colleague of mine, Mark Lim, who had left the Navy earlier and had worked with advertising agencies in design and creative roles, also joined us at Caelan & Sage, bringing with him experience and expertise in design and web development.

Together, we carved out a niche for Caelan & Sage, which offered consultancy in strategic communication and execution in design and branding, events management and training.

At the beginning, we worked really hard to bid for projects, and we were blessed to have won tenders for relatively good projects - producing an e-newsletter for a University’s alumni, designing and conducting a 3–month long training programme, and several web and design projects.

Within months, we saw that having one name – Caelan & Sage – and doing these seemingly varied and unrelated projects – was confusing our customers and prospects. We saw an urgent need to create clarity in our brand and what we do. And so, we created three brands under the banner

Terence Quek, CEO of Emergenetics International-Asia Pacific. Active in the local and international community, Quek was awarded Honoree of JCI The Young Outstanding Person of Singapore 2009.

of Caelan & Sage, each focusing on one key aspect of communication – Thinking Designs provided design solutions in visual communication (print, web and identity); High Events offered services in experiential communication (event management services for high-profiled events); and Right Impact Training conducted training in interpersonal and inter-organisational communication. Having these brands helped tremendously in communicating what we offered and allowed prospects to approach us for different services.

When we started the business, we didn’t have capital to invest into the business, so we ensured that we took great care in the way we ran the business. Not having business knowledge was perhaps a blessing in disguise. We didn’t understand financial instruments and stayed away from anything that required financial commitment.

We operated from cafes and worked from our homes to save on rental, and paid ourselves on project basis.

We also applied a strict discipline in the way we paid ourselves and ensured a certain percentage of our revenue went to the company to grow its coffers. We paid all our suppliers on time so we know every

cent in the bank belonged to us. We kept our books tidy. We remained nimble and took feedback seriously and objectively. We bidded for government projects because we wanted that stable and credible paymaster. We delivered more than we promised.

We listened to our clients, and continually improved our services.

After a year of operating and saving up, we knew we had sufficient money to pay ourselves a fixed salary and also commit to an office space. And we continued from there. Within four years, our annual turnover surpassed one million dollars with a healthy profit margin.

If you asked me how [I did it], I would say it was a team effort. I’m blessed to have a strong and committed team of talented and dynamic people, who are aligned in our values, and are professional in our work.

I would also say that we put a lot of emphasis in ensuring a clarity of vision and mission, and also having a purpose, and core values that we take very seriously. Of course, the use of Emergenetics right from the start allowed each of us to understand each other’s thinking and behavioural preferences so we could collaborate more productively.

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How did you plan and execute things?

What did you feel was the toughest phase or toughest thing to do?

I believe a lot in taking a holistic approach.

In our company, we take a WEapproach – Whole Emergenetics approach. We first get clarity of the vision, picturing the end state or desired outcome. Then we ensure that we are clear about the goals and objectives, and have a clear action plan with timeline and resources allocated. We also look at who would be responsible for what part of the plan, and if everyone had the necessary resources and competencies required.

When executing our plan, we communicate very openly, giving each other feedback and monitoring the progress. If something breaks down, we quickly figure out a remedial course of action, keeping in mind what our vision is. In the first three years of our business, our vision was to be the “preferred partner” of organisations in the area of communication and we used our revenue as a way to benchmark our progress.

Three years into the business, while the company continued to grow steadily, our team had not grown much in size. Everyone was feeling stretched as we strive to meet the demands of our clients. We knew adding more people to the team made sense, but financially, we didn’t want to take the risk.

This was perhaps the toughest part of our journey – the phase where we were experiencing growth (which is a good thing), but everyone was feeling stretched to the point of burnt out (which is bad). We also realised that as a service provider, the marketplace was crowded. We were not big enough to fight the bigger players, and there were many freelancers who were undercutting the market.

We were between a rock and a hard place.

This is when we thought that to scale, we must not only have service, but also a product that we [own]. And so in the midst of working hard to [meet] the demands of our clients and stretching ourselves to win more projects, we began our search for a product that had a global appeal and reach, is something that we believe in, has great potential to grow in this part of the world, and preferably something we own.

In 2011, after a meeting with the then CEO of Emergenetics Asia Private Limited, we decided to merge our companies because we saw great synergy: we had already been working with each other for several years (we were purchasing Emergenetics profiles for our training programmes) and our values were aligned; we were experienced in branding, design, and PR, which they needed, and they had an intellectual property product that had tremendous potential in this part of the word – which we wanted.

So in 2012, we merged our companies to form Emergenetics Caelan & Sage, which operated as Emergenetics International-Asia Pacific and continued to provide communication solutions through Thinking Designs and Caelan & Sage.

Share with us what you had said at ‘Passion Unleashed’, a monthly signature talk series held at the Singapore Management University. Why is it important to be friends with everyone?

I believe that whether in business or in life, we all need friends. In life, apart from

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inspired us to do something for the children in those villages.

Deborah and I discussed and we decided that our company Caelan & Sage would sponsor air tickets and accommodation for our staff team on the condition that everyone fundraises an equal or more amount, using our talents and skills. We pooled the money we raised and visited four villages in Siem Reap in 2008.

Upon our return, we decided that it was very meaningful and so we set up Project Happy Feet as a public company limited by guarantee. Project Happy Feet was run on several principles: 100% volunteer-run – no full-time staff; 100% of costs underwritten by sponsors; 100% of funds raised channelled to support programmes that directly benefit underprivileged children and youths through education and training.

By end of 2014, we had raised in excess of SGD500,000 and channelled 100% of it to support programmes in Nepal, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines and Singapore.

What is the reason behind your involvement in Project Happy Feet?

As with everything else that I am involved in, I feel a great sense of resonance with the cause of Project Happy Feet. I am proud of the way we set it up, and am humbled by what we have done and are committed to doing for underprivileged children in Singapore and overseas. Also, I volunteer my time and expertise simply because “I can”. If I can do something, and I believe in it, I will do it.

Terence Quek at Project Happy Feet’s Slipper Race 2014. Quek is Director of Communications and Outreach for the non-profit that seeks to empower the lives of underprivileged youths and children.

family and blood ties, good friends are the ones who we can turn to, to give us feedback so we can check our blindspots, to lift us up when we are down, and to bring us back to earth if we get too big headed.

In business, I’ve learnt and experienced the power of collaboration, which allows you to tap on resources you don’t own, and open up opportunities that may not come your way.

You can’t collaborate if you see the other as an enemy, only as a friend. So it’s important to be a friend to everyone, and by being a friend, I mean to offer a service, to help, to share, to give. Do it unconditionally, not with a hidden agenda. Be sincere, be authentic, be generous. In no time, you will create a whole network of allies who will favour you and support you. Now, isn’t that a better way to live?

What is your advice to Singaporean entrepreneurs?

[Be] honest with yourself and with others. Be honest with what you want and if you have what it takes (skills, knowledge and attitude) to do it. Be honest with yourself and look at your strengths and blindspots.

When creating a business, build it on a solid foundation of honesty. It’s easy to come up with money making ideas, but it’s hard to grow an honest business and sustain it.

Will your business still stand years down the road? Or are you doing a hit-and-run?

Your personal reputation and your business

are closely tied.

This world needs more responsible entrepreneurs who believe in sustainability, accountability and corporate social responsibility. This world does not need more entrepreneurs who cheat and scam people of their hard-earned money.

Being an entrepreneur should not be [ego boosting]. It is a privilege and responsibility because entrepreneurship means job creation and contribution to the economy and the country.

To me, it’s a privilege and honour when someone decides to join my company, to follow my vision, and give up other opportunities to journey with me, so I must not let them down. And of the many things, it is so important to be honest. Without honesty, there would not be trust. With no trust, your customers will quickly go elsewhere.

You are a founding member of non-profit organisation Project Happy Feet. Tell us more about Project Happy Feet.

Project Happy Feet is a non-profit that empowers the lives of underprivileged children and youth by supporting their education and training.

The idea for Project Happy Feet started when my business partner Deborah Chew and a mutual friend Grace Chia returned from a leisure trip to Siem Reap in 2007. They were saddened by the state of education in a rural village there and upon their return,

How do you define success? Do you consider yourself successful?

I don’t really think very much about success, because I feel by defining it, I am limiting myself. I’m more excited by defining my journey, to define what I want to achieve and accomplish at each point in time, with what I have been given. I’ll leave it to others to define if I am successful or not!

What are you truly passionate about?

One day, at the age of 20, while reflecting on life in general and where I am headed, I decided that I should have a purpose in life. I decided it shall be “to make a positive difference”. I even wrote that at the top of my CV. Over time, I have grown the habit of ensuring I make a positive difference in everything I say or do. You can say that is a passion of mine! I’m also passionate about people development, especially youths and young leaders. And that is why I’m enjoying what I do at work and in my various community roles!

What is your motto in life? What do you want to achieve most in life?

I have several mottos I live by: “Do or do not, there is no try”; “Carpe Diem”; “This, Too, Shall Pass”.

What do I want to achieve most in life? To leave a legacy of positivity behind, shaping the lives of future leaders, so they can use their talents and skills to make a positive impact in what they choose to do.

This Is Singapore is a fortnightly feature that delves into the life of an inspiring and talented individual in Singapore.

Read all our interviews here: http://bit.do/ thisissingapore

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‘Never Again’ Is Here Again A second generation Holocaust survivor reflects on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Carsten Koall/Getty Images

I preferred to forget everything related to the Holocaust except one thing: the vow “never again” to anyone on any place on the planet.

By Dina Gordon Epoch Times Staff I was born in Croatia a year before the second world war ended. I don’t remember much, but I still have the sense of fear and terror down to the deepest level of every cell in my body.

I sucked it with my mother’s milk.

I still have a heavy album full of black and white pictures of people whose names I don’t know. They are all my family members, but I don’t recognise them. I never dared to ask my mother.

Every weekend over Saturday family lunch, she would tell lively stories about uncles and aunts and cousins. I loved the first part of these stories, but they all ended with the same sentence: “But they all have gone in the war.” I didn’t understand what it meant, but I didn’t dare to ask her.

As I grew older, I did ask her once, “What does it mean?” and she said with a gloomy voice: “You know, in the ‘lager’ (the word for concentration camp in Croatian).” It didn’t make it clearer for me. I guess I just didn’t want to understand, as the true story was too horrify-

Roses left by mourners lie next to one of the many plaques detailing transports of Berlin Jews to concentration camps at the Gleis 17 (Track 17) in Berlin, Germany, on Jan 27, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

ing and too painful to grasp.

I remembered all these as I was planning my trip to Poland for the ceremonies of the remembrance day on Jan 27, which marks 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, the most notorious concentration camp.

Growing up in Israel with my family memories of the Holocaust, I preferred to forget everything related to the Holocaust except one thing: the vow “never again” to anyone on any place on the planet, which was set deep in me.

I never really healed from the trauma of the Holocaust until 2003, when I found a spiritual path that completely changed my life. The name of the practice is Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, which originated in China in 1992 and spread all over

the world. It basically asks you to improve your behaviour and moral character by adhering to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It also includes five meditative exercises. The combination of these two completely eliminated all my endless health problems and healed my heart. I also believe it really made me a more tolerant and easier-to-live-with person.

That’s why I was shocked to find out that this practice, which was so praised in the beginning by the Chinese regime, has been severely persecuted in China since 1999. The then-head of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, panicked because there were an estimated 70 million–100 million people who are trying to live by the principles of truthfulness, compassion,

and tolerance, which are not the principles of the Communist Party. The persecution started almost overnight and the systematic methods and their severity brought back all my bad memories.

Overnight, Falun Gong practitioners were labelled as enemies of the country—as Jews had been labelled—using all the mass media. They were detained, arrested, and sent to forced labour camps and tortured to death. And very similar to the dark days of the Holocaust, a special office was set up: the “610 Office”, to persecute Falun Gong to this very day.

Who wanted to interfere with Germany, then a big and rich country? And who wants to interfere with China today?

But there is one more horrifying detail. Tens of thousands

of Falun Gong practitioners are being used as a living organ bank: their vital organs (hearts, kidneys, livers) are being forcefully ripped out and sold for high prices and their bodies are cremated.

Who believed the stories about the Holocaust when they started to come out? They were so radically against human values that it was impossible to believe. Unfortunately, they were all true, as are the stories about the persecution of Falun Gong.

That’s why I went to Poland, to remind all of us of the vow “never again”, which I believe everybody vowed after the horrors of the Holocaust.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Epoch Times.

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Commemorating the Holocaust Remarks at a press conference at the Foundation for Free Speech in Warsaw, Poland Ian Gavan/Getty Images

By David Matas January 27 is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Today, I suggest two things to commemorate the horror of the Holocaust. We should remember what was distinctive about the Holocaust – and we should remember the lessons we can learn from the Holocaust to apply to other atrocities.

In talking about other atrocities, we have, regrettably, a wealth of examples from which to choose.

I will focus on only one, as a case study, the compelling evidence that practitioners of Falun Gong have been killed in China in the tens of thousands for their organs which are sold to transplant patients. This is, I believe, an instructive example because the Nazis in Germany then were—and the Communists in China now are— in government in a country of global force.

The Holocaust was an experience unique in human annals. We must be wary of false analogies, but we must not isolate the Holocaust from the rest of human experience.

The Holocaust was unique in its disconnection from reality. Other genocides grow out of political and ethnic conflicts. While the killing of innocents is always irrational, one can see, with other genocides, the politics that led to the genocide. In contrast, with Nazi Germany, there was no such context or explanation.

Historian Yehuda Bauer writes: “For the first time in history, the motivation [of the genocide] had little, if anything, to do with economic or social factors, but was purely ideological, and the ideology was totally removed from any realistic situations.”

The genocide of the Jews was unprecedented in its scope, in the attempt to kill every single Jew, no matter how old or young, no matter how distant from Judaism and the Jewish community. Conversion to Christianity or even to Nazism, inter-marriage, friends in Nazi high places, or adoption of Jewish children by non-Jewish parents did not stop the Nazi killing machines. Nothing could.

The Auschwitz exhibit of chil-

dren’s shoes is striking not just because of the sheer number of shoes, but also because it is a visible reminder of the Nazi determination to kill children. Of the six million killed in the Holocaust, an estimated two million were children. Nazi field reports of the Jews they murdered made a point of listing the children killed to show that they were completing the task assigned to them.

Historian Yehuda Bauer writes: “For the first time in history, every single person who was considered by the perpetrators to be a member of the target group, that is the Jews, was to be killed for the crime of having been born.”

Other mass killings both before and after World War II were local, territorial, national. The Holocaust was unprecedented not only in its unlimited scope, but also in its unlimited reach.

Never before or since has a group of people attempted to conquer the world so that they could kill all and every member of another group. The Holocaust was a crime in which virtually every country in the globe was complicit either by participating in the killings or by denying refuge to those attempting to escape or by granting safe haven to Nazi mass murderers.

We must not isolate the Holocaust from the rest of human experience.

A Crime of Humanity The Holocaust was not just a crime against humanity. It was a crime of humanity. The Holocaust was an act of insanity in which the whole world went mad.

What can the Holocaust experience tell us about the killing of Falun Gong for their organs? Unlike the Nazi perpetrators and their Jewish victims, the Communist Party of China is not attempting to conquer the world through force of arms to kill practitioners of Falun Gong wherever they may be found. Yet, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese

(From left to right) 81-year-old Paula Lebovics, 79-year-old Miriam Ziegler, 85-year-old Gabor Hirsch and 80-yearold Eva Kor pose with the original image of them as children taken at Auschwitz at the time of its liberation in Krakow, Poland, on Jan 26, 2015.

state organs, through their embassies, consulates, state-owned multinational conglomerate businesses and Confucius Institutes, project incitement to hatred and discrimination against practitioners of Falun Gong worldwide.

Unlike the Nazi perpetrators and their Jewish victims, the CCP and state will accept conversion.

If a practitioner abandons Falun Gong, renounces it in writing, stops practising, praises the Communist Party and denounces fellow practitioners, the practitioner can avoid Communist Party inflicted torture, detention and arbitrary execution through the harvesting of organs.

Unlike the Nazi killing of the Jews, the killing of Falun Gong of their organs has a connection with reality, however perverse. Falun Gong is set of exercises with a spiritual foundation begun in 1992.

It was initially encouraged by the Communist Party as beneficial to health, but banned in 1999.

The spirituality of Falun Gong stood in contrast to the atheism of the Communist Party. Above all, the rapidly expanding popularity of Falun Gong made the Communist Party jealous and fearful of its ability to maintain its own ideological supremacy.

The Party began a campaign of vilification against Falun Gong to justify the banning. This campaign of vilification led to depersonalisation and dehumanisation that made the killing of Falun Gong easier for their jailors to inflict. The withdrawal by the Communist Party of state funds from the health system as a result of its shift from socialism to capitalism meant hospitals and doctors were badly in need of funds, which the sale of organs from Falun Gong prisoners supplied.

Despite these differences between the Holocaust and the killing of Falun Gong for their organs, there are similarities. The Holocaust happened not just because there were racists in power in Germany, but because ordinary people around the world either collaborated or did nothing.

The Banality of Evil Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, only 210,000 were Germans and Austrians. In the other places the Nazis went, they did not know the languages, the places or the people. Wherever they went, they relied heavily on local police, administrative personnel and homegrown fascists organised into militias to round up

Jews for the death camps. Without the active collaboration of tens of thousands, and the passive indifference of millions, the Nazis could not have accomplished their mission of death.

Today, we see foreign travel agents and brokers who arrange for transplant patients to receive organs in China, hospitals and doctors who provide training to Chinese professionals in transplant techniques, internet service providers who host Chinese transplant websites and universities who provide forums and even award honorary degrees to Chinese transplant professionals.

Outside of the network of the complicit, there is massive ignorance or indifference.

Governments for decades did nothing to bring Nazi war criminals to justice; that inactivity was a reflection of public indifference to justice for the Holocaust. Today, the efforts worldwide to bring perpetrators of the persecution inflicted on practitioners of Falun Gong to justice go nowhere.

The story of the Holocaust is, to be sure, the death of the Jews.

But it is also the death of the illusion of the limits of evil. Because of the Holocaust, everything has changed. Our view of human-

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Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

ity can never be the same. Yet, if we put the Holocaust to one side nothing will change.

The Holocaust was the product of a civilisation at the forefront of humanity’s culture, technology, medicine, legal, and administrative structures. Austria and Germany, at the time that they led the world to slaughter its Jews, were the countries of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and Schubert; of Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Kant.

Even during the Holocaust, many of the most highly educated of the day were among the most enthusiastic supporters of antiSemitism, including the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, the American poet Ezra Pound, and the French novelist Céline.

The Holocaust tells us that neither education nor culture nor intellect can immunise us from evil.

Doctors, leaders of their profession worldwide, in violation of professional ethics, turned their healing skills to barbaric experiments against unwilling subjects, killing them through the experiments.

They slaughtered the handicapped under the doctrine “life unworthy of life”. They engaged in eugenic sterilisation so enthusiastically, on their own initiative, that the Nazi government felt constrained to rein them in. The Holocaust tells us that we cannot rely on medical ethics alone to prevent atrocities.

Technological Abuse Technological developments do not change human nature. But they do change the ability to inflict harm. The progress of civilisation made the Holocaust easier rather than harder to perpetrate. The elaborate organisation and systematic execution of the plan to extinguish the Jews, the identification, the ghettoisation, the trans-shipment, the death camps, the ovens, and the gas chambers were the products of an advanced technological and industrial society.

The Holocaust teaches us that industrial and technological development, while they increase our material well-being, also increase our capacity for evil. In an advanced civilisation, murderers can kill an entire world.

The development of transplant surgery has done much to improve the ability of humanity to cope with failing organs. But these developments in transplant surgery have not changed our way of thinking.

There is a tendency to think of any new medical development as a benefit to humanity. That is certainly the intent of its developers.

But medical research, no matter how far advanced, comes face to

face with the same old capacity for good and evil.

More advanced techniques in transplant surgery in China do not mean a more advanced Chinese political system. The Communist system remains. Developments in transplant surgery in China fall prey to the cruelty, the corruption, and the repression that pervades China. Advances in transplant surgery provide new means for old cadres to act out their venality and ideology. We should not be so naive as to think that just because transplant surgery was developed to do good, it can do no harm.

On the contrary, the evidence that the development of transplant surgery in China is being used to harvest organs from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners is just the acting out, in a new context, of a lesson the Holocaust has taught us. We have seen before that modern technologies developed for the benefit of humanity have been perverted to inflict harm. We should not be surprised if this has also happened to transplant surgery.

Worse, the death camps and death squads the Nazis organised for Jews killed more than Jews. The Nazi machinery of death crushed Romas, homosexuals, Jehovah witnesses, the mentally and physically disabled, as well as anti-Nazis. The killing of the disabled in Germany preceded the killing of Jews. The Nazis killed five million non-Jews in the Holocaust with

The entrance to the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

the killing of millions in a few years, the consciousness that led to its inception and execution were decades in the making.

The consciousness was one of eliminationist anti-Semitism, the culmination of racist thinking that began with prejudices and stereotypes but not with plans of murder.

The Holocaust is the ultimate lesson in the dangers of incitement to hatred. It tells us as no other example can where incitement to hatred leads, why incitement to hatred must be avoided.

The killing of practitioners Falun Gong for their organs is an abuse the Communist Party of China denies. They cannot deny

The Holocaust was not just a crime against humanity. It was a crime of humanity. The Holocaust tells us that once human rights violations are the norm, no one is safe. the death camps and the roving killing squads, in addition to six million Jews, with a death toll of 11 million innocents.

Anti-Semitism became a cancer that invaded and destroyed the whole body politic. Because of the Holocaust, a consciousness developed that it was impossible for humanity to destroy Jews without destroying itself.

We do not need China to invade foreign countries to kill practitioners of Falun Gong to realise the global danger that the killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs poses. The Holocaust tells us that human rights violations are a spreading uncontainable stain.

Once human rights violations are the norm, no one is safe.

Genocide Starts with Hatred Although the Holocaust was

incitement to hatred against Falun Gong. It is a matter of daily public record. CCP propaganda against Falun Gong is everyday discourse.

If there were one thing we could have done to reverse the Holocaust, it would have been this: Protest vigorously and globally the Nazi victimisation of Jews from the minute it started. If there is one lesson that humanity should learn from World War II, it is that state hatred of a disadvantaged minority in a repressive country can wreak global damage.

The Holocaust was exceptionally well documented, in part, because the Nazis were defeated and all their records became available.

We cannot now see Chinese government records. Yet, it would be a mistake to compare the records we have now of Nazi abuse with the records we have now of CCP

abuse. A better point of comparison would be the records we had of the Holocaust while the Nazis held power.

The Red Cross conducted an inspection of Theresienstadt ghetto/ camp in June 1944. The Nazis created in Theresienstadt a Potemkin village; they beautified the camp to mislead the Red Cross into thinking that Jews were being well treated. And the Red Cross was misled.

The Red Cross also visited Auschwitz in September 1944, but did not notice the gas chambers. The Red Cross reported: “Not only the washing places, but installations for baths, showers, and laundry were inspected by the delegates. They [often took] action to have fixtures made less primitive, and to get them repaired or enlarged.”

The Red Cross representatives did not realise that the showerheads in the gas chambers did not work because they were fake.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is not allowed to visit prisoners in China. Nor is any other organisation concerned with human rights of prisoners.

Speaking to US journalists in November 1993, in answer to a question about the desire by rights groups to inspect prisons, then Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen said, “I believe that if the Red Cross does put forward such a request…, we would give positive consideration to that request.” The Red Cross did put forward such a request, and there was no positive consideration.

The UN Special Rapporteur on torture and the UN Special Rapporteur on religious intolerance in 2007 and 2008 both asked the Chinese Government to explain the discrepancy between its huge volume of transplants and its comparatively tiny volume of acknowledged sources. The Committee against Torture established under the Convention against Torture in December 2008 called on the

government of China to cooperate with an independent investigation into the sourcing of organs for transplants. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has received a petition from one and a half million individuals around the world asking him to conduct his own investigation on the subject.

The European Parliament, by a resolution passed in December 2013, called for a full and transparent investigation by the European Union into organ transplant practices in China. The Parliament further called on the Chinese authorities to allow the UN rapporteurs on torture and religious intolerance to conduct an investigation into organ transplant practices in China.

There have already been several independent investigations into organ transplant practices in China that have concluded that prisoners of conscience, primarily but not only Falun Gong, are being killed en masse for their organs to be sold to transplant patients. The Chinese government has cooperated with none of these investigations. On the contrary, the more the evidence accumulates, the more the Party/State tries to cover up what is going on.

The Red Cross investigation of Nazi atrocities was so blinkered and naive that it has become today a favoured source for neo-Nazi Holocaust denial propaganda. Because perpetrators often try to cover up and disguise their crimes, a modern independent investigation into evidence of atrocities in Communist China has to penetrate beyond CCP – or state cover-up, doublespeak, and disguise.

The phrase “Never again” is often repeated. Yet, history never repeats itself in exactly the same way. Restricting the phrase “Never again” only to an exact replica of the Holocaust is a recipe for doing nothing ever again. To give the phrase “Never again” meaning, we have to learn general lessons from the Holocaust that we can adapt to present circumstances.

The killing of prisoners of conscience in China for their organs is not the Holocaust. Yet, it would disrespect the legacy of the Holocaust to ignore the evidence of these killings and do nothing.

We honour the memory of the victims of the Holocaust best by keeping the legacy of the Holocaust alive.

David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Canada. He is the co-author of “Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China”. This speech has been edited for publication.

10 February 6 – 19, 2015

World Perspectives

Epoch Times

SERGEI CHIRIKOV/AFP/Getty Images

Putin’s Plan to Fight Recession in Russia Also Increases Kremlin’s Control of the Economy

By Richard Connolly University of Birmingham The Russian rouble started 2015 in much the same way it finished 2014: badly. After losing nearly 50% of its dollar value between July and the end of the year, the rouble lost a further 7% in January. The primary cause of this continued decline is the falling price of oil: Brent crude has dropped from US$53 (S$71) per barrel at year end to just under US$48 (S$65) per barrel, a decline of nearly 10% for the year so far.

It is a cause for concern for the Russian economy. A range of forecasts – from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank, the IMF and several ratings agencies – all conclude that Russia will experience a severe recession this year.

In response to this rapidly deteriorat-

ing economic situation, the Kremlin has approved a new package of anticrisis measures and made a number of key changes to Central Bank in recent days.

The problem is, the structural issues at the root of Russia’s economic problems are not being addressed and recent measures signal the further control that Vladimir Putin is taking over the Russian economy.

The Anti-Crisis Plan After a meeting with ministers on Jan 22, Putin gave general approval to a package of anti-crisis measures, known formally as the “Plan for sustainable economic development and social stability in 2015”. Though some questions on how the measures will be financed remain unanswered, the thrust of the plan is clear.

It will focus on re-capitalising Russia’s most important state-owned

banks to the tune of around 1.4 trillion roubles (that’s S$28.4 billion at current exchange rates). These banks will in turn be expected to expand lending to Russian companies, especially those who operate in areas of the economy that compete with importers. This way, the leadership hopes to raise Russia’s capacity for self-reliance. In this respect, the plan is as much a response to the deterioration in relations with the West as it is a plan to deal with impending recession.

With its focus on increasing liquidity in the banking system, the plan is similar in substance, if not in scale, to the package of measures deployed to combat the recession in 2008-9. That proved expensive, but was ultimately successful. However, rolling out similar measures this time around has the whiff of generals planning to fight the last war. It assumes that Russia today faces similar problems to 2008-9,

A range of forecasts – from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank, the IMF and several ratings agencies – all conclude that Russia will experience a severe recession this year.

Epoch Times

which were primarily to do with the worsening of external financial conditions.

Unfortunately, the problems facing the Russian economy today are severe and structural in nature.

Quite simply, the growth model that generally served Russia so well between 1999 and 2012 has broken down. Thus, although the steep decline in oil prices is important, it has not caused Russia’s economic woes – it has simply exposed them. As a result, reigniting growth will likely require a lot more than an increase in liquidity. Instead, serious and sustained structural reforms are required. This week’s plan, alas, does not propose such reforms.

As well as avoiding any serious reforms, the sums allocated to the plan are relatively modest. Unlike 20089, when a fiscal stimulus of around 13% of GDP was deployed to fight the recession, this plan is very much an austerity anti-crisis package.

Musical Chairs at the Central Bank The anti-crisis measures come amidst the backdrop of several important personnel changes at Russia’s Central Bank. First Dmitry Tulin relieved the deputy governor, Ksenia Yudaeva, a leading liberal economist, of responsibility for monetary policy. This was followed by the appointment of Alexander Torshin to the post of deputy governor in charge of relations with the government and parliament. In both cases, the appointments are significant for what they tell us about the trajectory of economic policy in Russia.

Tulin is known as a safe pair of hands who knows the banking system inside out. It is rumoured that

World Perspectives

Slowly, however, it seems the Kremlin is using the slowing economy and the deterioration in relations with the West to assert greater control over the Russian economy.

Russia’s Security Council, a body not known for its expertise in economic affairs, encouraged his nomination. His appointment suggests that a principled approach to monetary policy based on market-oriented values may make way for a more pragmatic approach in which Tulin will do what is necessary to fight any fires that may break out in the banking system.

Torshin’s appointment was ostensibly made to improve the flow of communication surrounding Central Bank actions. The Bank was heavily criticised in December when interest rates were raised without warning. Many believed that the bank could have done more to communicate the reasons for its actions to the political leadership and the wider population.

But communication flows both ways: it is also possible that Torshin will be expected to communicate the views of the Kremlin to the bank. If so, this will mean that the bank’s Yuri Kochetkov

People queue at a money exchange in Moscow. The Russian rouble has tumbled as a result of monetary policy.

much-vaunted independence will be eroded.

The Steady Rise of Control Taken together, recent events offer clues as to the direction in which economic policy in Russia is heading. There is an increasing emphasis on using the levers of the state-dominated financial system to target lending at sectors selected by the leadership. There is also yet more emphasis on the value of import substitution and boosting the resilience of the economy from outside forces.

Plus, the plan makes no mention of reducing military spending, which will account for a large share of public spending in the next few years. Defence and security clearly trump other considerations in economic policy. And finally, the appointments at the Central Bank hint at the creeping erosion of the influence of liberals, both at the bank and within the wider economic policy team.

Putin is not to prone to making sudden changes when it comes to government policy. Instead, he tends to move incrementally towards his objectives.

Recent events need to be viewed in this context. Slowly, however, it seems the

February 6 – 19, 2015 11

Kremlin is using the slowing economy and the deterioration in relations with the West to assert greater control over the Russian economy.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Epoch Times.

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3 | As Recession Looms, Russia Acts to Support Ruble http://goo.gl/vj8cZL

World Perspectives

12 February 6 – 19, 2015

Epoch Times

ECB Unleashes the Trillion Euro Bazooka, but How Will It Work?

AP Photo/Michael Probst

By Giuseppe Fontana University of Leeds Mario Draghi did get round to announcing a much-anticipated new round of quantitative easing (QE) in the end, but never have nine minutes felt so long. The world tuned into the European Central Bank press conference at 1.30pm on Jan 22 expecting to hear its president speak. But the clock ticked and Draghi – apparently having trouble with an elevator – was nowhere to be seen. It was enough to test the nerves of even the most hardened watchers of the eurozone. They may have to be equally patient if they want to see QE do its job.

When the press conference did begin at 1.39pm, Draghi announced that the ECB would launch an expanded asset purchase or QE programme, a trillion euro bazooka which will result in combined monthly purchases of public and private sector securities by the ECB amounting to 60 billion euros (S$92 billion).

The programme will begin in March 2015 and continue until the end of September 2016 – or until there is a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation. The ECB has an inflation rate target below, but close to, 2% over the medium term. QE is Draghi’s big plan to make it happen.

The big question everyone is now asking is – will it work?

It’s not that easy to answer. For a start, what do we mean by “work”? And how is QE supposed to work anyway?

Achievable Goals Let’s us start with the first question. In the Q&A session which followed the press conference, Draghi repeated once again that the mandate of the ECB is price stability. In other words, the primary goal of the ECB is to bring inflation close to its 2% target, not to boost growth and employment or to bring about greater financial stability.

According to Draghi, average inflation in the eurozone for

Mario Draghi Christopher Smith, CC BY-ND

Draghi repeated once again that the mandate of the ECB is price stability.

2014 has been 0.4%, and the latest, market-based expectations for average inflation for the next five and the next ten years are at 0.3% and 0.9%, respectively.

Therefore, for ECB QE to work and be successful by its own definition, it will have to bring both inflation and expectations for inflation towards the 2% rate, regardless of what happens to the growth rate or the rate of unemployment in the eurozone.

Be that as it may, this is not what many people in Europe (including some politicians) hope for

It’s genuinely not all about the price tag.

when thinking of a successful macroeconomic policy.

Rebalancing Act Second, how is QE supposed to work? Again, in the Q&A session, Draghi explained that QE mainly works through a portfolio rebalancing effect. It is a high-stakes game, but pretty simple in practice. The ECB buys bonds from banks which

in turn use the additional money in their portfolios to increase lending to consumers and businesses.

Of course, this begs the question of why banks, which are already awash with cash, will suddenly increase lending in the credit market. Furthermore, we have the tricky question of why European consumers and businesses should demand addition-

al credit when private and public debt is high and the prospect for growth and employment are often seen as so dire.

In reality, another channel of QE may work: a euro depreciation. The purchase of bonds by the ECB will drive down the currency, since increasing the supply of euros makes them less attractive to hold. This should boost exports. Money will then flow in from abroad – and ultimately you get increased inflation and inflation expectations.

This could also generate what are called asymmetric rebalancing effects, which essentially means cheaper exports from countries like Spain and Italy will win business at the expense of those from, say, Germany.

Of course, the ECB won’t be trumpeting this possibility. It amounts to a beggar-thy-neighbour policy and Draghi would never suggest that QE work by means that tend to worsen the economic problems of other countries. It is worth noting too that QE will only produce positive effects via euro depreciation as long as there is a world demand for European goods and services (ask the Bank of England why this might not be a given), and a currency war with other countries is avoided.

It will be fascinating to see in the coming months through which channel QE produces its most telling effects. It will also be intriguing to see whether the markets and the public will measure the success of QE in the eurozone in terms of the impact it has had on jobs and growth or rather on inflation and inflation expectations.

That nine-minute delay as the lifts played up may have given Draghi time to ruminate on that, but now we will have to decide whether it was the prelude to a masterstroke or a desperate roll of the dice.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Epoch Times.

World Perspectives

Epoch Times

February 6 – 19, 2015 13

Baby Formula Is Loaded With GMOs – Avoid These Brands Shutterstock

By Jonathan Benson Naturalnews.com A petition is circulating to persuade three of the top infant formula brands in the US — Abbott Laboratories (Similac), Mead Johnson Nutrition (Enfamil) and Nestle (Gerber Good Start) — to stop using genetically modified (GM) ingredients in their baby products. Each of these powdered formulas is loaded with corn and soy byproducts, along with sugar, which means they are more than likely GM in nature and harming children.

Several years ago, Natural News warned our readers about these dangerous food products for infants, focusing specifically on Similac’s “Go & Grow” formula. The product, which is marketed for babies aged nine to 24 months, claims it contains “balanced nutrition for older babies”. But as we pointed out, the product is nearly half composed of corn syrup solids (sugar), with the remaining 50-or-so percent composed of soybean oil, soy protein isolate, safflower oil and more sugar in the form of sucrose.

Besides being an absolutely unhealthy product in general, based on these ingredients, Similac Go & Grow is an utter freak show of GM additives, which are particularly harmful for developing children. GMOs have been linked to hormone disruption, gut damage and other problems that, again, especially in children, can lead to a lifetime of chronic health problems.

But Similac isn’t alone —

For the infant that is unable to nurse, I insist upon an organic commercial formula.

Michelle Perro, paediatrician practically every major brand of commercial infant formula is composed mostly of corn, soy, and sugar components, each of which is more than likely GM due to the fact that upwards of 90 percent of corn, soy and sugar beet crops planted in the US are GMOs. “For the infant that is unable to nurse, I insist upon an organic commercial formula,” stated paediatrician Michelle Perro, warning against commercial, GMO-laden infant formulas.

“Because of the toxic effects of herbicides, particularly glyphosate (due to its prolific usage) as well as other organophosphates and genetically engineered foods in non-organic commercial formulas, these are not an option for infant feeding. In order to ensure the health of our infants and children, there is no amount of acceptable herbicide or GMO that should be in their diets.”

Major Infant Formula Brands Spent Millions Defeating GMO Labelling Beyond just poisoning our children, Abbott, Mead Johnson

and Nestle all want to keep this poisoning a secret. As explained

by GMOInside.org, each of these companies spent big bucks fighting California’s GMO labelling initiative, Proposition 37, which would have required that infant formulas contain warnings about GMO content.

Abbott reportedly spent US$334,500 (S$451,100) in support of the “No on 37” campaign, while Mead Johnson, which has a much smaller market share, spent US$80,000 (S$107,800).

Nestle, an industry leader in commercial infant formula, contributed US$1.46 million (S$1.97 million) to block Californians from knowing what’s in their food. Combined, these three companies raked in about

US$135 billion in sales in 2012.

“It’s infuriating that parents in the United States are not given the same assurances as citizens in more than 60 other countries including China, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, when it comes to GM ingredients,” said Green America President Aliza Gravitz. “All parents have a right to healthy food options for their children.”

A Green America petition calls on these Big Three infant formula manufacturers to stop using GMOs, which have never been proven safe for human consumption. The long-term effects of GMOs in humans have never been studied, and because babies’ bodies are already less equipped to deal with processing toxins,

it is only logical to stop feeding them untested genetic materials that could lead to permanent health damage.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Epoch Times.

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14

February 6 – 19, 2015

Asia & china perspectives

www.TheEpochTimes.com aNdrew burToN/GeTTy imaGeS

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Sept 19, 2014, during Alibaba Group’s IPO.

Political Connections Turn Sour for Alibaba

By Lu Chen & Matthew Robertson Epoch Times Staff

Alibaba (阿里巴巴), the Chinese e-commerce conglomerate that made the biggest IPO in US history last September, had over US$30 billion (S$41 billion) wiped from its market capitalisation in two days ending late January.

That was just after it got into a rare public brawl with a Chinese regulator, an apparent signal that its political fortunes have shifted decisively under the Xi Jinping (习 近平) administration.

The hit to Alibaba’s share price corresponded with some worsethan-expected earnings, but a dispute between a major Chinese company and the regime itself is rare indeed in China, and was enough to spook investors.

“It is disconcerting to investors that the Chinese government is the one telling Alibaba that it

has merchandise that may not be authentic on its website,” said Gil Luria, a financial analyst at Wedbush Securities, in an interview with CNBC. “I think that rattled investors yesterday.”

He was referring to a white paper published on Jan 28 by the State Administration of Industry and Commerce (国家工商行政管理 总局), one of the main regulators for listed Chinese companies.

It blasted Alibaba for selling fake goods and a spate of other violations. Alibaba struck back with a staunch defence and plans to personally sue for defamation Liu Hongliang (刘洪良), the head of the network supervision department of the SAIC responsible for the announcement.

Political Connections Ties between business and politics are ubiquitous in China—especially in high-profile companies and major initial public offerings. And Alibaba, whose

It is disconcerting to investors that the Chinese government is the one telling Alibaba that it has merchandise that may not be authentic.

Gil Luria, financial analyst

total revenues sat at 52.5 billion yuan (S$11.3 billion) in the year ending March 2014, is the largest e-commerce firm in China—it is often called the equivalent of Ebay, Amazon, and Paypal rolled into a single enormous conglomerate.

It is widely understood that, in China, a single company can only find itself in such a powerful position by being in the good graces of the right people in the Party apparatus.

The converse of that, of course, is that being lined up with the wrong clique can spell deep trouble.

So who was Alibaba mobbed up with in the Chinese Communist Party?

The grandson of former Communist Party boss Jiang Zemin (江泽民), for one. Alvin Jiang (Jiang Zhicheng/江志成 in Mandarin) and his private equity firm Boyu Capital (博裕资本) led a 2012 round of funding for Alibaba to repurchase half of Yahoo’s ownership stake in the company,

Asia & china perspectives

Epoch Times

February 6 – 19, 2015 15

GreG bowker - Pool/GeTTy imaGeS

Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Nov 21, 2014.

Recently, Xi has been working relentlessly to dismantle the political network that had previously controlled China.

FabriCe CoFFriNi/aFP/GeTTy imaGeS

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Alibaba’s Chairman Jack Ma in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan 23. Alibaba lost US$20 billion in market capitalisation in late January after getting into a spat with a Chinese regulator.

4 | Yahoo to Spin Off Alibaba Stake Into Separate Company http://goo.gl/LWQrA2

which at the time stood at 40 percent.

Boyu, and the investment consortium of which it was a part (including other connected financial firms like China Investment Corp), put together over US$7 billion (S$9.47 billion) in that deal, and ended up with a 5.6 percent stake in Alibaba for their trouble, according to a Reuters report about the matter in 2014.

At the time, Alibaba was worth close to US$40 billion, whereas its market cap on IPO day was US$230 billion— representing a nearly 600 percent gain for those shareholders.

Jack Ma (马云), the CEO of Alibaba, has always been confident of his relationship with the Chinese authorities, though he publicly downplays its importance.

During a speech at Columbia University in 2011, he recommend that Google should “respect the government” if it wanted to do well in China. Later, he praised what he called the decisiveness of the Chinese Communist Party

The company had ties with the grandson of an unpopular former Communist Party leader.

in firing people, and added, “I studied a lot of time on how the Chinese Communist Party run.

So we are learning-improving, learning-improving.”

In a 2013 interview with South China Morning Post (南华早 报), Ma said that the decision to massacre students around Tiananmen Square on June 3 and 4, 1989, was “the most correct decision”.

Wrong Clique Observers of Chinese politics will see the common element in Alibaba’s recent troubles, though: the cosy ties to Jiang Zemin, a Party godfather who, through a network of allies and cronies, cast a shadow over politics in the country for nearly a decade after he formally stepped down as Party head in 2002.

Since taking power, Chinese Communist Party head Xi Jinping has targeted Jiang’s allies in a twoyear long, ongoing anti-corruption campaign.

Zhou Yongkang (周永康), the recently-purged security czar, for example, was long a Jiang client – as was the former Politburo member and his co-conspirator in replacing the Party’s pro-growth status quo with a kind of neoMaoist political violence, Bo Xilai

(薄熙来), who is now in prison.

Xu Caihou (徐才厚), the former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (中央军事委 员会)—a position which made him the second most powerful military official in the country—was yet another Jiang Zemin appointee whose purge came as a shock to political circles in China. It would be as though President Obama announced, with little elaboration, that Robert O. Work, the Deputy Secretary of Defence, had been found to be corrupt and was taken away the same day, never to be heard from again.

The extent of Jack Ma and Alibaba’s ties with Jiang Zemin’s political group is unclear—but along with Boyu’s prominent fundraising assistant, Athena China Limited (a Boyu subsidiary) has its fingerprints over the company’s IPO prospectus. The document says that Athena China Limited, incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, is controlled by Prosperous Wintersweet Limited, also incorporated in the BVI, which, in turn, is a subsidiary of Boyu Capital Fund I, L.P.— registered in the Cayman Islands.

The abstruse entanglement of interlocking shell companies makes it difficult to know exactly who owns what of Alibaba.

It is clear, however, that the offspring of the Communist Party’s former leadership had extensive skin in the Alibaba game.

An investment firm run by the son of former premier Wen Jiabao (温家宝), Winston Wen (温云松), also controlled shares in Alibaba – and so did China’s sovereign wealth fund, Citic Capital (中信 资本), as well as CDB Capital ( 国开金融), the state-owned firm whose vice president at the time of the investment, He Jinlei (贺锦 雷), is the son of the former anticorruption chief He Guoqiang (贺 国强), according to The New York Times. Then there was the loan

by China Development Bank (国 家开发银行), also state-owned, of US$1 billion to Alibaba as part of the September 2012 fundraising round that Boyu was involved in. Chen Yuan (陈元), the son of former Party economic patriarch Chen Yun (陈云), headed China Development Bank at the time.

That a Chinese company with such an enormous roster of interest among the ranks of the former leadership—heavily represented by Jiang Zemin-era personnel—would be openly hit by a Chinese regulator indicates that the political sea change under Xi Jinping is only deepening.

Asia & china perspectives

Epoch Times

FEBRUARY 6 – 19, 2015 17

Top Hong Kong Legal Figures: Law Is Above Politics

By Larry Ong Epoch Times Staff Key members of Hong Kong’s legal community said last month that the rule of law cannot be abused for political purposes. Protesters seeking an exception for civil disobedience and the city’s administration must both adhere to the law’s dictates, they said.

At the ceremonial opening of the legal year at Hong Kong’s City Hall, Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma (马道 立) said that the “administration of justice by the courts is not, nor can it be, influenced in the slightest by extraneous factors such as politics or political considerations”.

“The courts and judges apply only the law,” said Ma. Meanwhile, HongPaul Shieh, kongers have “overoutgoing president of the whelmingly” respected the rule of Hong Kong Bar law before and after a nearly three-month long street protest, affirming the “pivotal position” of the rule of law in Hong Kong, Ma notes.

Between end-September to midDecember last year, pro-democracy supporters occupied major thoroughfares outside government offices and in commercial districts to demand “genuine universal suffrage” for the 2017 chief executive elections

Overemphasis of the ‘obey the law’ aspect of ‘Rule of Law’ is the hallmark of a regime which is keen to use the law as a tool to constrain the governed.

and the resignation of current Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying (梁振 英 ).

Protesters have called their prodemocracy activism the “Umbrella Movement” as opposed to a regimechanging “colour revolution.” The demonstrations drew hundreds of thousands of supporters at their peak and remained largely peaceful and non-violent.

Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen (袁国 强), who is part of the administration of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, assessed the effect of the protesters on the rule of law in Hong Kong differently than the chief justice.

Yuen said in mid-January that the Occupy protests are a “blatant challenge” to the rule of law.

Where the chief justice saw Hongkongers overwhelmingly respecting the rule of law after the demonstrations ended, Yuen said further “unlawful activities … would only do further harm to our community”.

Yuen also dismissed claims by key protest figures that the government is using the courts as a tool for “political persecution”.

People were convicted by the court after due process, and the judiciary kept to the law and evidence when passing judgments, Yuen explained.

Hong Kong’s legal system, which follows the British common law tradition and retained an independent judiciary after the former colony was returned to mainland China in 1997, has come under scrutiny during the Occupy protests. Notably, protesters and the legal community questioned

the courts’ decision to award private transportation companies emergency injunction orders to clear protest sites.

Even-Handed Paul Shieh (石永泰), the outgoing chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association (HKBA/香港大律 师公会), thinks that the Hong Kong government, the Chinese communist regime, and prodemocracy protesters all do not properly understand the rule of law and judicial independence.

“It is time for the independent Bar to offer a more balanced view,” said Shieh in his farewell speech.

The Senior Counsel says that the Hong Kong government has in recent years become used to prefacing “almost every description of what it does by the phrase ‘according to the law’”, something he finds “comical” but “misleading”.

Overemphasising the “‘obey the law’ aspect of ‘Rule of Law’,” Shieh said, “is the hallmark of a regime which is keen to use the law as a tool to constrain the governed rather than a means to constrain the way it governs.”

Shieh also criticised a controversial White Paper issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC/大常委会)—the Chinese regime’s faux legislature— in June 2014 which called Hong Kong judges “administrators” who had to be “patriotic” in a White Paper.

Hong Kong’s judges have to perform “judicial tasks independently”, said Shieh, and the Chinese regime should not “paternalistically

issue edicts for judges to perform political tasks”, something that “may be commonplace on the mainland” but “inappropriate” in the semiautonomous city.

In fact, Hong Kong’s Law Society removed their president in August for supporting the White Paper.

‘Double Standards’ The pro-democracy activists also did not escape Shieh’s censure.

Shieh pointed out that judges who ruled against the government were “hailed as heroes” by protesters, but when judgments went in the opposite direction, they would make “insinuations” about the “‘demise’ of the rule of law”, a clear case of “double standards”.

Further, while pro-democracy protesters seemed to occupy moral high ground because of the NPCSC Aug 31 decision—Hong Kong’s top leader will be elected by universal suffrage but Beijing retains the final say—and “police misconduct”, they cannot therefore use the “wrongs” as an excuse to “legitimise” their lengthy street occupation, which Shieh felt had “overstepped legitimate limits” of a civil disobedience movement.

Likewise, the Hong Kong government should not have glossed over the “deficiencies of the NPCSC decision and the underlying discontent by repeating the official classification that the (Umbrella) Movement was ‘unlawful’”.

Hong Kong’s current political crisis, Shieh argues, can “only be solved with enlightenment and political wisdom by all parties concerned”.

Hong Kong Court Drops Joshua Wong’s Case, Awards Damages

By Larry Ong Epoch Times Staff Last month, Hong Kong’s high court withdrew a charge and awarded damages to several prodemocracy protesters, including prominent student leader Joshua Wong (黄之锋).

On Jan 11, a high court judge ruled that there was not enough evidence to prosecute Wong, the teenage face of the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement, as well as thirteen others for “obstructing bailiffs and police” who were authorised to clear a main protest site in the commercial neighbourhood of Mong Kok.

According to Apple Daily ( 苹果日报), the court awarded HKD$56,000 (S$9,757) in damages to the protesters. Wong, who was represented by a private lawyer, got HKD$22,500 (S$3,921).

After the court session, Wong, 18, told reporters that the Hong Kong authorities are trying to tie down pro-democracy protesters in legal proceedings, and in the process, weaken the court’s authority and influence.

Wong and other pro-democracy activists said something similar in a preliminary hearing for the case that Thursday.

Wong also said that the government was “wasting taxpayer’s money… to stop people from

The court awarded HKD$56,000 (S$9,757) in damages to the protesters, according to Apple Daily.

taking future action”.

Lester Shum (岑敖晖), the 21-year-old deputy leader of influential student group Hong Kong Federation of Students ( 香港专上学生联会), accused the authorities of taking advantage of legal proceedings to turn the court into a “political tool for suppression”.

Shum and some other protesters have not been summoned to court for a final ruling yet.

During the police clearing of Mong Kok on Nov 25, Wong and Shum had stood at the front of protester-built, makeshift barricades, and demanded that bailiffs properly explain the court injunctions that a private minibus company applied to have

the protesters evicted from the streets.

A video of the incident shows police rushing in to nab Wong even though he did not act aggressively or show signs of “obstructing” the police.

The authorities may have been unable to press charges against the pro-democracy activists for the protest site clearance, but they have already started the first phase of mass prosecution.

Police called 32 key protest figures like Wong and Shum early last month to schedule dates for them to surrender at police headquarters for the charge of “inciting an illegal assembly”.

About 1,500 protesters could eventually be charged.

16 FEBRUARY 6 – 19, 2015

Asia & china perspectives

Epoch Times

Self-Determination? That’s the Chief Executive’s Idea, Says Hong Kong Student Magazine

By Larry Ong Epoch Times Staff Our discussion of Hong Kong independence is limited and purely academic, says a local student publication, but it is our Chief Executive who is really promoting it.

In the latest issue of Hong Kong University Students’ Union’s (香港 大学学生会) magazine Undergrad (学苑), deputy editor Chan Ah Ming (陈雅明) addressed Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying’s accusation that the publication is promoting self-determination.

In his third policy address on Jan 14, the Chief Executive—better known by locals as “CY Leung” (梁振英)—censured a 2013 issue of the Undergrad, then a largely unnoticed monthly student title.

“The issue concerning the independence of Hong Kong,” said Leung “is not a [matter of] ordinary academic research or discussion.”

“It is indeed advocacy, and we should not take it as a trivial matter,” Leung continued.

Because certain words and slogans used by protesters during the almost three-month long Occupy protests supposedly promotes selfreliance, Leung also suggested that lawmakers close to the Umbrella Movement (雨伞运 动) student leaders should “advise them against putting forward such fallacies”.

Hong Kong was returned to mainland China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” principle. The Chinese financial hub is allowed a “high degree of autonomy” to rule itself, according to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration (中英联合声明), and can keep its economy, legal system, and all rights and freedoms until 2047.

Leung’s criticism of the Undergrad—a last-minute addition to his policy address—was slammed by pro-democracy lawmakers as

By engineering a conflict and then stepping in to resolve it, Leung can then prove his worth to the Chinese regime and keep his office, says Chan.

an attack on the youth and freedom of speech.

“Are you trying to stir up a Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong,” Labour Party chairman Lee Cheuk-yan (工党主席李卓人) asked Leung, referencing a tumultuous decade of political purges and destruction of tradition in China by the Communist regime.

“Are those criticisms your only reflection on the youth issue after the Umbrella Movement,” said Lee. “Are you trying to suppress freedom of speech until ‘one country, two systems’ is destroyed?”

Youth ‘Problems’

Chan Ah Ming echoed Lee’s criticism of Leung in the January 2015 issue of the Undergrad.

Instead of “mending bridges with the Umbrella generation after the Occupy protests,” says Chan, Leung intents to solve Hong Kong’s “youth problem”— increasingly vocal youths taking up pro-democracy activism—by “suppressing” and “chasing” away youths.

Examples of the Chief Executive’s marginalisation of the youth include the Cultural Revolutionstyle denouncement of the Undergrad during his policy address and encouragement of Hong Kong’s youths to leave the city for work.

“When there are no youths in Hong Kong,” Chan continues, “there won’t be a youth problem.”

As for Hong Kong independence, Chan claims that the 2013 Undergrad issue was an attempt to separate calls for civic nomination and self-determination because left-leaning newspapers and the Chinese regime were deliberately mixing the two.

If demands for universal suffrage is equated with Hong Kong independence, Chan argues, then the Chinese regime can use that as a pretext to deny Hong Kong residents a free vote in elections, which is guaranteed in the Basic Law, the city’s governing document.

Undergrad‘s discussion of Hong Kong independence is also not as controversial as it seems, says Chan. Being an academic student publication, the Undergrad is not

The Undergrad doesn’t have the resources or ‘foreign aid’ to advocate for Hong Kong independence.

Chan Ah Ming, deputy editor of Undergrad expected to be widely read and debated.

Also, the magazine had raised self-reliance in the 1960s, socialism in the 1970s—a contentious idea then—and was critical of the British colonial government.

Chan adds that the idea of Hong Kong independence was not in currency—at least until CY Leung highlighted the Undergrad in his policy address.

Because Leung is in a position of power, Chan argues, his comments have political implications, and is thus responsible for bringing the subject to the mainstream.

Besides, “the Undergrad doesn’t have the resources or ‘foreign aid’ to advocate for Hong Kong independence,” said Chan, a jibe at the Chief Executive’s claim that “foreign forces” had interfered with the Umbrella Movement.

jing election committee, and Beijing reserves the final say on who gets to be Hong Kong’s leader. But Leung, who only mustered 689 of 1,200 votes in 2012, is hugely unpopular in Hong Kong, and will unlikely get a second term.

Because most Hong Kong people are happy to be part of China if they have real democracy, and self-determination is an idea that is “taboo”, says Chan, Leung is looking to turn Hongkongers against each other by drawing attention to the Undergrad and making Hong Kong independence seem like a hot issue.

By engineering a conflict and then stepping in to resolve it, Leung can then prove his worth to the Chinese regime and keep his office, says Chan.

‘Conflict Management’

In response to the criticism from the Undergrad, the Chief Executive’s Office stated that CY Leung has a “duty” to let the public know that advocating self-determination is “unconstitutional”, local broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (香港电台) reports.

It is also Leung’s duty to defend the country’s “unity and sovereignty”, the CE office claims.

Or it could be an act of self-preservation on the Chief Executive’s part.

Leung might be looking for a way to secure Beijing’s backing and get re-elected in 2017 through “conflict management”, says Alfred Chan (no relation to Chan Ah Ming), vice convener of the Progressive Teachers Alliance (进 步教师同盟), in a telephone interview with Epoch Times.

Chief Executive candidates have to be approved by a small pro-Bei-

Read Related Articles 1 | Why Is Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Provoking Hongkongers? http://goo.gl/IRbvSu

2 | HK Leader CY Leung Mocked After Revealing ‘External Forces’ Behind Occupy Protests http://goo.gl/C0YPTZ

3 | Hong Kong Police Chief Slammed for Political Use of Force, Fearmongering http://goo.gl/ExEI8Q

4 |Hong Kong Financier: Hongkongers Are Not China’s Enemies http://goo.gl/KTViBy

18 FEBRUARY 6 – 19, 2015

Asia & china perspectives

Epoch Times

China Manufacturing Activity Contracts in January

By Antonio Perez Epoch Times Staff China’s manufacturing sector shrank in January for the second month in a row, an inauspicious start for 2015 ahead of the annu al production slowdown for the Chinese New Year.

The widely followed HSBC China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for January 2015 was 49.7, up fractionally from 49.6.

It is now solidly in contraction territory after three months below the reading of 50, which is the threshold economists use that separates a manufacturing expansion from a contraction.

The report, from global bank HSBC Plc, came after an official Chinese Communist Party government reading of 49.8.

“Both new orders and new export orders saw downward revisions, but still signalled marginal expansion,” said Hongbin Qu, Chief Economist, China & Co-Head of Asian Economic Research at HSBC. “We think demand in the manufacturing sector remains weak and more aggressive monetary and fiscal easing measures will be needed

to prevent another sharp slowdown in growth.”

HSBC also estimated that factory staffing decreased for 15 months in a row. January is typically a slow month for manufacturing staffing in China, as workers travel home for the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday.

The report also said that input prices declined for the sixth consecutive month, with the rate of deflation increasing sharply in January. This is likely due to lower oil and fuel costs.

‘Abenomics’ a Factor?

China’s manufacturing contraction comes during a time of relative boon for Japan’s export-driven economy.

Economists surveyed by the Japan Centre for Economic Research estimated that Japan’s GDP likely grew by an annualised rate of 3 percent over the last quarter of 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s monetary policy of low interest rates to stimulate the economy and weaken the Japanese yen has shown the effect of boosting Japan’s manufacturing sector, which relies on exports.

While Japan’s economy remained in stagnation over the last two

We think demand in the manufacturing sector remains weak and more aggressive monetary and fiscal easing measures will be needed to prevent another sharp slowdown in growth.

Hongbin Qu, Chief Economist, China & Co-Head of Asian Economic Research at HSBC

A Chinese worker checks a machine making blankets for export at a factory in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, on Jan 12.

years, Abenomics has boosted its manufacturing sector. The weak yen, relative to its competing neighbours Korea and China, have ramped up production at companies such as Sharp Corp. and Panasonic Corp.

The Chinese yuan has strengthened against the yen by 11 percent in the last year, and by 22 percent over the last 24 months.

This does not bode well for China’s

Chinese Yuan Crashes, Central Bank Move Coming?

By Antonio Perez Epoch Times Staff China’s yuan crashed against the dollar on Jan 30 in offshore trading, spurring rumours that a central bank action to devalue the currency could be imminent.

Offshore yuan’s valuation dropped to 6.28 per US dollar in New York last Friday afternoon, which is a two-year low. The rate is also 2 percent lower than the official midday fixing by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), China’s central bank.

There are two exchange rates for the Chinese yuan. One is the official reference exchange rate (USD-CNY) set by the PBOC daily in China.

This rate trades in a narrow band as

designated by the central bank. The other exchange rate (USD-CNH) is for overseas trading of the yuan. This rate is watched by the international community as trading is open to foreigners and many FX traders deem this to be a more accurate rate that is less manipulated by the PBOC. When there is a spread between the official and offshore rate, it usually signals a dislocation in demand for the currency between mainland and offshore traders. It could also mean that traders are predicting a policy action in the near future.

Currency Devaluation

The US dollar’s recent surge prompted central banks of many export-oriented countries to cut rates and weaken their

currencies.

Two weeks ago, the central banks of Russia and Denmark both trimmed official interest rates. The action followed similar decisions earlier at the European Central Bank, and the central banks of Japan and Korea to devalue their currencies.

Lowering interest rates could stimulate lending and investments, while a weak currency could spur demand for that country’s goods and products.

That puts the PBOC in a tough spot.

So far, the PBOC has tried to rein in such lending to curb bad debts and slow down certain overheating asset classes. But the country’s export-driven economic engine has stalled in recent months, and given the recent export-

Offshore yuan’s valuation dropped to 6.28 per US dollar in New York last Friday afternoon, which is a two-year low. friendly moves by its competitors Japan and Korea, the PBOC may have no choice but to take action.

Dollars in Demand

The yuan has already been pressured by asset conversion undertaken by wealthy

Asia & china perspectives

Epoch Times

Destruction of Culture: Against All Human Nature STR/AFP/Getty Images

NINE COMMENTARIES

Non-communist societies generally consider humanity’s dual nature of good and evil, and they rely on fixed social contracts to maintain a balance in society.

In communist societies, however, the very concept of human nature is denied, and neither good nor evil is acknowledged.

Eliminating the concepts of good and evil, according to Marx, serves to completely overthrow the superstructure of the old society.

The Communist Party does not believe in God, nor does it even respect physical nature. “Battle with heaven, fight with the earth, struggle with humans—therein lies endless joy.” This was the motto of the CCP during the Cultural Revolution. Great suffering was inflicted on the Chinese people and the land.

Adapted from Commentary 1: On What The Communist Party Is

manufacturing sector. Over the last decade, China has transitioned its export-dominant manufacturing sector from low-cost commodities such as clothing and household goods to become a producer of high-tech equipment and machinery such as auto parts and electronics.

This has put China in direct competition against Japan. And given the Chinese yuan’s recent dive in offshore trading, it is simply a matter of time before the People’s Bank of China decides to lower interest rates.

FEBRUARY 6 – 19, 2015 19

It was famously said that Communist regimes turned mass crime into a full blown system of government. Each of them has received its just verdict in history – all but the Communist Party of China which has persisted to this day.

The “Nine Commentaries” is an award winning editorial series that offers a vivid and perceptive account of the CCP from its inception to the present. By unmasking its perversion, Nine Commentaries seek to recall the Chinese people and the world from the slumber of ignorance and inaction.

Culture of the East: Human Nature as Good

Mural in Vancouver’s Chinatown at Pender and Gore by Alex Li

The Highest Compassion Flows Like Water The recognition that man is intrinsically good lies at the heart of Chinese thought. In Tao Te Ching, a Chinese classic text dated back to around 6th century BC, sage Laozi wrote that “The highest compassion flows like water.” Water gives way to everything, but it is the source of all being and nourishes all life. Water is seldom noticed, but it is everywhere. Likewise, man should be compassionate, with a character that, though yielding and fluid as water, is able to reconcile and assimilate everything. He should also be humble and self-effacing, but his presence will resound from afar.

Culture of the West: Human Nature as Evil

Thomas Cole, American Painter, 1801-1848

Asia American Journalists Association 2005 Top Award Articles Series “The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party”

Chinese. Locals recently rushed to convert their yuan-denominated assets into dollar-denominated investments.

The disposition of yuandenominated assets has been a concern for the Chinese Communist regime, so much so that the government has urged caution for anyone considering to sell their yuan assets. On the Chinese-language China Business News, a report noted that US dollardenominated notes generated 1.2 to 2.5 percent in annual returns, while yuandenominated products had returns of 3 to 5 percent.

But most astute investors in China probably already know that the stability and appreciation potential of dollardenominated assets would likely trump most high-yielding yuan-denominated financial products, risk-adjusted.

Thus far, the series first published in November 2004 has led more than 190 million Chinese to renounce the CCP and its affiliations, trailblazing a massive yet peaceful movement for China’s transformation and change.

Read more of this groundbreaking editorial series at: http://goo.gl/yQ2Jox

Nasty, Short and Brutish Classical western thought predominantly adopts a negative view of human nature. As Thomas Hobbes, a 17th Century philosopher famously said, the life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The painting titled “the Destruction”, by American Romantic landscape painter Thomas Cole depicts the subjugation of human nature over order and civilisation.

Quitting the Chinese Communist Party www.NineCommentaries.com

192,892,336

people have renounced the CCP as of February 3, 2015.

Thousands of Chinese people are quitting the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliate organisations every day through a special website established by The Epoch Times. Others are quitting by calling an international hotline, posting statements on public walls and poles, or writing on banknotes.

Read the full “Nine Commentaries” book, as well as recent statements from Chinese people who have quit the Party, at www.TheEpochTimes.com

20

February 6 – 19, 2015

Business & Property

www.TheEpochTimes.com

Green Haven

Investors are wooed amid job boom in Iskandar

By George Foo Epoch Times Staff

M

alaysian developer, Welton Development Sdn. Bhd. recently launched a 1,134unit service residence in Iskandar Malaysia as it sets its sights on the bullish residential and employment market in this rapidly emerging economic zone.

Mr Thomas C. Y. Ling, Welton’s Chief Executive Officer, believes that a home environment is built around a close-knit community with a good environment.

He specialises in building homes that embrace modern community style living infused with the latest state-of-the-art smart home system. This system would greatly enable homebuyers to have an interactive living experience within a close-knit community.

“We aim to be the trendsetters blending the latest customer-centric user-friendly systems which are advanced and would serve our target group of young executive and senior management professionals well into the future in Green Haven, a place that they would want to call home for a lifetime.” says Welton’s Principal Architect Jason C. S. Yee. Built on 7.76 acres of land, Green Haven, a rainforest-themed project, also aims to woo investors with the best of both worlds: a beautiful, nature-inspired abode at the pulse of Iskandar Malaysia and one that overlooks Singapore’s northernmost skyline.

“The Rainforest is our way of respecting mother nature and by planting more selected trees with care, we feel we are restoring life into our homes” says CEO Ling.

The freehold residence, which is scheduled for completion by Q2, 2017, is expected to fetch an estimated Malaysian Ringgit $1 billion (S$376 million) in Gross Development Value (GDV), according to industry watchers. The appraisal is based on comparatively steeper property prices

in Singapore and the influx of industries in Iskandar Malaysia – which are parameters for a high residential demands and a tight labour market.

Jobs and Residential Market

Since 2006, Iskandar Malaysia has created over 154,000 jobs in the manufacturing and services-related sectors in its bid to create an ‘Invest, Live, Work and Play’ experience for potential investors. The job market, however, is expected to hit 800,000 over the course of the region’s 20year development, according to Iskandar Malaysia’s Economic Blueprint.

To boost the MICE tourism, the Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA), in July, announced the construction of two new international convention centres to supplement the existing Persada Johor International Convention Centre. The two projects to be constructed within the Medini, Nusajaya and the Senai-Kulai flagship development zones in the next three years are part of the Malaysian Ringgit $10.87 billion (S$4.08 billion) investment initiative under the Tourism Blueprint – which targets to create over 46,000 jobs in the next six years.

These rapid developments - including

government plans to build manufacturing and petroleum storage facilities (in the Eastern Gate Development) to capture spill over business from Singapore - is expected to lead a sharp growth in the region’s population.

According to IRDA, the population in the 2,217 square-kilometre Iskandar is expected to reach 3 million by 2025.

Andy Clapham, Regional Director of Building & Infrastructure Recruitment specialist Amida Global, commented that “[they] have seen unprecedented growth in demand for construction and engineering professionals in the Iskandar region over

Epoch Times

the last 12-18 months. With the amount of current and planned developments and the increasing number of local and international developers and contractors, the demand for staff is very high.”

However, it still remains a challenge to attract staff to the Johor area with Singaporeans enjoying higher wages over the border. Malaysians, who are not in the region and who are unwilling to travel, say they would prefer to move to Singapore. With this in mind, wages in the region have steadily risen to compete with the supply & demand imbalance.

Project Managers can now expect to earn in the region of Malaysian Ringgit $9,000 (S$3,383) per month to Malaysian Ringgit $12,000 (S$4,510) per month whilst Senior Project Managers can expect to earn around Malaysian Ringgit $16,000 (S$6,014) per month.

Mr Koh Moo Hing, Chairman of Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association (REHDA) Johor Branch, said the Iskandar Economic Region has generated a positive impact on the

Business & Property property market in the city.

“Iskandar Malaysia has definitely made an impact on the property sector in Johor Bahru. It has opened up many areas which were previously not competitive from the property angle and enhanced their values,” he said in a recent interview with Bernama.

Research released by real estate and property consultant Frank Knight echoed similar sentiments. It identified the residential market in Johor as a growth driver of Iskandar Malaysia’s property market and expected the residential sector – in particular, high-rise condominiums/ service apartments – to be vibrant and exciting.

Infusing Nature with Smart Living

Among the newest residential properties that have taken root in Iskandar’s Eastern Gate Development, Green Haven is expected to attract not only property investors, but also homeowners with mid to long-term residential intent.

In fact, Green Haven’s proximity to the

Bandar Seri Alam or the ‘City of Knowledge’ in the Eastern Gate Development appeals to expatriate families. The Seri Alam hosts campuses of some of the world’s leading academic institutes, including Excelsior International School, The Japanese School, Masterskill University College, Help University College, and Malaysia Art School.

While the proximity to amenities has been key to influence purchasing decisions, Green Haven’s uniqueness – as a verdant-friendly and an almost fantastical sanctuary in this urban metropolis – could prove otherwise.

Its development hosts a range of lush greeneries, where residents can enjoy the serenity in the podium with its river and hill features. While offering spectacular views of the city skylines, its three-tower blocks (40, 43 and 46 storey respectively) are likewise designed and structured to shield urban buzz and frenzy.

Units in Green Haven will also boast avant-garde features such as “smart-home technology”, which allows residents to

February 6 – 19, 2015 21

remotely control electrical appliances in their homes – such as high-definition video recording, touch-pad communication and facility management functions.

Green Haven also incorporates personalised facilities such as a mini theatre, library, café, gourmet kitchen, an approximately 540m jogging track, and an approximately 420m special jogging track around the Sky Bridge. Its Sky Bridge at the 30th storey includes an observation desk that will offer breathtaking panoramic views across the straits.

“The market demand and market potential for quality residence remains strong in Iskandar. Green Haven’s appeal lies in its green and smart elements that suit the housing and lifestyle preferences of both single working professionals and homeowners,” says Welton Development.

For more information, please visit Website: www.greenhaven.com.my Facebook: facebook.com/ greenhavenserviceapartments

Our Addiction to Apple Is Why Its Profits Are Soaring Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

By Constantin Blome and Des Doran Apple has reported the largest quarterly profit ever made by a public company. This is largely thanks to record iPhone sales of 74.5 million units over the Christmas period. With prices starting at US$649 (S$874) for the iPhone 6 in the United States and costing more than US$1,000 in many other parts of the world, it’s no surprise.

Apple products cost varying amounts the world over. The company has justified these price differences by citing different taxes in different countries, as well as additional costs associated with supply chain, logistics, and other nonspecific business costs. As a result, customers outside of the United States can pay up to 25 percent more for products. But even in the United States, the margins the company makes on its products are huge.

And there’s little we consumers can do to circumvent this pricing. Apple imposes strict controls on how and where its products are sold—it is virtually unknown for Apple products to be available outside Apple certified sellers and, as such, there are very few opportunities to buy Apple products at discounted prices.

Key to Apple’s strategy is its price maintenance approach, which means retailers receive only a small wholesale discount margin and therefore cannot afford to engage in significant price reductions.

Retailers have an incentive to sell Apple products at the company’s recommended price, which enables them to maximise their returns on every product sold.

Why We Buy So, why are we prepared to buy Apple products at seemingly inflated prices? Why can’t we as consumers do as we normally do—search the Internet for lower prices and then buy from the cheapest retailer?

Economic theory indicates that something called price elasticity of demand (PED) is a key factor when pricing products—the greater the PED, the more likely that demand will not fall if price increases.

PED is often used to predict buyer behaviour for products that could be regarded as addictive, such as cigarettes and alcohol. However, one could argue that despite the apparent inflation in Apple product prices outside of the United States, we as consumers are still willing to buy Apple products at relatively high prices. Apple products could therefore be regarded as addictive, with consumers embracing the benefits associated with them and, more importantly, coming back to buy newer versions.

Apple’s strategy is now well established and consists of four pillars: 1. Offer a small number of products.

This reduces operations and supply chain complexity and gives Apple greater power when negotiating contracts with suppliers of parts or materials.

2. Focus on the high end. Premium products yield premium profits. Focus on customers who have a high PED ratio, are not too concerned about selling price and are more interested in design, capability, and, of course, the brand.

3. Give priority to profits over market share. Apple actually sells fewer phones

Lines of people wait to purchase the new iPhone 6 at the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York on Sept 19, 2014.

than Samsung, but with higher margins.

4. Create a brand that makes people starve for new Apple products. This kind of approach is reflected in the high demand for Apple products in most parts of the world.

With the increasing level of competition in all its key markets, the future for Apple is uncertain and it would appear that its products will need to offer increasing value if they are to command premium prices.

Overall, Apple is in a unique position due to the addiction of people to its products. The firm can afford a supply chain strategy that focuses on minimising its costs, combined with a pricing strategy that creates significant price premiums that are shared with the supply base even

to a small extent, even though most of the production is outsourced.

Altogether we see a brilliant business model that exploits the willingness of customers to pay a premium for its products.

The high prices—bearing in mind that Apple has excellent supply chains—depend to some extent on the costs in the countries they are sold in.

But ultimately it is we, the consumers, who are willing to accept these prices.

Constantin Blome is a professor of operations management at University of Sussex. Des Doran is a senior lecturer in operations and supply chain management at University of Sussex. This article is previously published on TheConversation. com.

22

february 6 – 19, 2015

Technology & science

www.TheEpochTimes.com

Facebook – Friend or Foe?

Spencer E Holtaway, CC BY 2.0

We’ve never been able to share our thoughts on such a large scale.

By Steve Ellen Monash University It’s hard to remember life without social media.

I saw my first computer in high school—it was the size of a fridge and didn’t have a keyboard. We had to use cards to enter data. We excitedly programmed it to write “happy birthday” and “school is boring” over and over. We weren’t quite in Bill Gate’s league.

In 1991 I bought my first personal computer, a Macintosh Classic. Soon after I connected to the internet (it was US$36 per hour). Since then it’s been a blur— faster, smaller, sleeker, cheaper, phones, shopping, music, maps, apps, cameras and more. And somewhere along the line—social media. If anything separates this century from the last, it’s social media.

In the landscape of our social media options—Facebook is at the summit. It began its ascent in 2004 and today has reached some impressive statistics; one billion people use it each month (there are only seven billion people in the world); 60 percent of the world’s adults have used it; it is available in over 70 different languages. It’s even assisted in overthrowing governments and enabled coordinated worldwide change.

One hundred years ago you’d be lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) if you knew 100 people. If you wanted to say something, a handful would listen. If you had some really juicy gossip, it might reach a couple of hundred people but it would take time and like Chinese Whispers was impacted by personal interpretation.

Social media facilitates quick and vast communication through an intricate web of cyber connection. We now have a tool at our fingertips that helps large numbers of people to connect,

think and act in unison like never before. We’ve never been able to share our thoughts on such a large scale.

Social media rewrites the rules on who has a voice. You don’t need to be a great writer, thinker, leader or media mogul to spread your ideas. All you have to do now is create an account and enter the magic world of social media.

Good ideas, bad ideas, messages of hope, anger, hate, terror…. all can be spread at the click of a button.

The sociologists among us are only just starting to explore the consequences of this phenomenon. Lots of studies but not many conclusions. There’s some soft evidence to suggest overuse might make you unhappy but not everyone agrees. There are lots of stories of people shooting themselves in the foot through over-exposure. But there’s not much else.

We have a social phenomenon affecting half the world and only guesswork to help understand the consequences! Is it frightening or exciting?

Why Is Facebook so Popular?

It might help to start with why Facebook is so popular. Why do you use it? The numerous photos, the access into other people’s lives, some news, easy contact with family/friends, a good way to meet new friends, a fun way to reconnect with old friends, an easy way to advertise, a new way to do business, games, dates, invites to events… The list goes on.

I like Facebook, but with mixed feelings. Most of my family and friends are on it. I know one sister went to the beach today, I know the other practiced violin. My father went to the RSL for a beer last night. I’ll put a link to this column on my Facebook page later. I’ll check first thing tomorrow to see if I have any likes. I’ll check out the comments, I might respond. It feels comforting to in-

Social media facilitates quick and vast communication through an intricate web of cyber connection. We now have a tool at our fingertips that helps large numbers of people to connect, think and act in unison like never before.

Facebook’s Popularity

Certainly part of the attraction is that it feeds our narcissism.

Facebook provides a perfect way to present ourselves to the world as we would like to be seen.

teract with friends and family. I feel less alone.

I’ve racked my brain thinking about the psychology of Facebook.

Certainly part of the attraction is that it feeds our narcissism.

Facebook provides a perfect way to present ourselves to the world as we would like to be seen. We present our “preferred” self.

“Image sculpting”, as some people see it.

Image sculpting is difficult in the real world: your emotions and body language are hard to hide; they can betray you. This is less so in the virtual world of social media.

What do you post? Are you careful? It’s easy to get it wrong or be misinterpreted—I might think a photo shows my fun side, others might see it as pathetic attention seeking. I might put up a comment while drunk or angry and I might regret it later.

Either way, Facebook feeds and encourages narcissism.

It also feeds into our inherent curiosity about what everyone else is doing. Facebook is a way to spy into the lives of others— Facebook stalking. You can compare yourself to others. It’s a yardstick. The trap here is that most people only post their successes. You could easily get fooled into thinking the world is a party and you’re not invited.

Another psychological factor is the positive reward effect from making Facebook posts. Intermittent positive reward is the strongest form of reward—it’s what drives the gambling industry— the odd, unpredictable wins. It’s stronger than predictable positive reward. Facebook provides intermittent positive reward in spades.

Will I get any “likes” from this post? How many? Of course there are no “hates”. You can get negative comments, but comments are far rarer than likes. Facebook tips the balance dramatically in favour of being liked, but it’s intermittent and unpredictable. A perfect recipe to entice users.

Is Facebook a statement of an acute desire for social connections? For decades researchers have said large cities can be lonelier than small towns. Given the worldwide shift towards urbanisation, maybe Facebook’s popularity is a response to feeling lost in a crowd?

The Down Side?

Many say Facebook is just another fad—it comes, we get excited, it goes, we move onto the next big thing and forget. Like any fad,

overuse—or even addiction—is a risk. Some people report being hooked on checking their page and feeling out of control of their use. There is a risk that Facebook will reduce real, face-to-face, nondigital social interactions. Is our apparent “connection” actually leading to a disconnection?

Lots of people simply hate Facebook. They see its superficiality, they frown at the self-promotion, they would rather contact their friends in more meaningful ways, preferring real, close friends to large numbers of acquaintances. I also notice that many wear their Facebookhate with pride. Like a badge of honour.

Or maybe it’s more than that— maybe they are sensing something that us users are missing?

Maybe Facebook is heralding a decline of some sort? A decline in communication, or individuality, or maybe just privacy? Of course just because you’re a Facebook user doesn’t mean you are excluded from the old ways. You can still chat over a coffee; you can still use the telephone.

One thing seems certain: social media is changing the way we communicate. If change is a slow burning fire, Facebook is an accelerant. Facebook is speeding up the fires of change. Facebook will be clicked on today about 800 million times. I love change, but it does make me a little nervous.

Acknowledgement: Miriam Ercole contributed to the preparation of this column.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Epoch Times

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February 6 – 19, 2015 23

Dear Reader

24 February 6 – 19, 2015

Epoch Times

EPOCH TIMES SNAP & REVIEW:

Singapore Yummy Food Instagram Contest ResultS

@bridgetlcooks

@yeo.jon @thedaredreamer

Entry with the most ‘LIKES’ ($150 cash prize): CONGRATULATIONS @yeo.jon!

Judges’ choices ($50 cash prize): Congratulations @bridgetlcooks and @thedaredreamer!

Readers’ Submissions

@xstboiboi

@yeo.jon

@bakeafuss

@thedaredreamer

62353535 Pizza Hut delivery! Haha!

Craving for Pizza Hut? Hurry get your phone and order for yours.

I was craving for Japanese food for the past few weeks like crazy. The photos are arranged according to the pricetag.

I’ve definitely overspent this month for these 4 occasions..... But... happy leh....

Hand painted sugar cookies to chase your Monday blues away!

1/2 of the dishes taken because my hands are just not long enough or the lack of skill. :D But seafood in Singapore is mandatory.

The likes of steamed grouper , chilli crab, salted egg crab and etc are a must on the list.

Dear ReaderÂ

Epoch Times

February 6 – 19, 2015 25

@foodreviewssg

@bridgetlcooks

“Slow cooked Cod in Olive� $24.

Another of the dish we had yesterday at Saveur Art at Ion Orchard. There’s fried baby #squids, legume bohemian, artichokes, paprika form. The baby squids kind of overshadowed the main character, #codfish. I would have preferred the #cod to be cooked with butter to make it even more fragrant as I didn’t felt that olive oil, though a healthier choice, actually bought out the taste.

There’s some improvements required for #Saveursg here. We felt that the codfish we had at TWG in MBS was much better than this. Overall 6.8/10. Intrigue our taste buds and the score will improve.

Japanese Nikujaga literally means Japanese meat and potatoes. A light, simmered dish of meat, potatoes and a few other ingredients you add as you wish.

For this, I used shabu shabu beef, potatoes and carrots simmered in nikujaga stock made from freshly made dashi stock, sake, mirin & soy sauce. This is the second dish inspired by Masterchef Adam Liaw. I feel Japanese cooking is so refined (as well as Korean’s) and I am just glad we can replicate delicious recipes like these at home.

@_leezhiyan

@_leezhiyan

@elmocrez

@bridgetlcooks

Magic custard cake—the batter separates into 3 layers while it bakes, giving you a cake layer on top, a custard layer in the middle & a dense cake layer at the bottom.

However, my batter isn’t thattt magical yet so it only separated into 2 layers.

Fudgey brownies with a hint of mint.

The use of muscovado sugar transformed these babies into rich and squidgy pieces of brownie heaven.

Unlike the usual liushabao, this exciting food from FIXsg has got the dips on the outside, oh fluffy donuts dipping in yummy salted egg sauce ~ yums!

Runny eggs on hash w/crispy chorizo. I think I can have runny eggs on almost any savoury dish.

Geography Guru Epoch Times

2015

TM

THE YEAR OF THE GOAT

“Growing your geography knowledge�

Quiz #5 WHAT COUNTRY AM I? I am a landlocked country among famous mountains. I am slightly less than twice the size of the state of New Jersey.

My people number about 7.5 million, which is less than the population of New York City. Their official languages are German, French, and Italian. I am known for chocolate, clocks, skiing, and banking. A series of international conventions of international law on humanitarian treatment are named after one of my leading cities. My people were so intent on remaining neutral that I moved from observer status in the United Nations to full membership only in 2002. What country am I? Read The Epoch Times next week for the answer!

EPOCH TIMES

o Phottest Con

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it by Subm 2015 rch a M 5 tos 3 pho um of .

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Answer for Quiz #4 GREAT FEATURES: North America is a continent of great spaces and great aspirations.

Great Bear Lake—NORTHWEST TERRITORIES; Great Divide Basin— WYOMING; Great Lakes—ONTARIO; Great Plains—SASKATCHEWAN; Great Sandy Desert—OREGON; Great Salt Lake—UTAH

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26 FEBRUARY 6 – 19, 2015

Epoch Times

Health

Beauty

Can Snacking Help You Lose Weight?

By W. Gifford-Jones M.D. DocGiff.com

H

ow many people in midlife can fit into their wedding clothes? Not too many, because predictably, most have exchanged muscle tissue for body fat and more pounds. Now, a report from Johns Hopkins University claims there are proven ways to limit and even reverse weight gain in both sexes.

Women, as they head into menopause, along with decreased activity, develop what’s been labelled the “Menopot.” With lowered oestrogen, testosterone begins to transfer fat from the hips and other areas to the belly. It’s not just a cosmetic problem, but one that can increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems.

Motivation The Women’s Healthy Lifestyle Project studied 535 women between the ages 44 to 55 for five years. One group received dietary and exercise advice, such as brisk walking and bicycle riding.

Another group was allowed to continue their usual routine.

At the end of the study, 55 percent in the lifestyle group were at or below their baseline weight, compared to 26 percent

of those who had no supervision.

Another study, reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, followed 18,000 premenopausal bicycle-riding women for 16 years. Most women gained 20 pounds (9 kg) during that time, but women who rode their bicycles more often and consistently gained less weight.

The moral? As has been proven over and over, exercise and diet can work if the motivation to persevere is present.

Social Influence But here is what’s not known about midlife obesity. A social network can play a critical role in keeping weight under control. But it can also work against you.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine analysed 12,067 people between 1971 and 2003. It found that weight gain was contagious, spreading from one person to another like an infection.

For instance, researchers discovered that a person’s chance of becoming obese increased 57 percent if his or her friend became obese. This trend was also true for adult siblings. And if a spouse developed a weight problem, there was a 37 percent chance of the partner gaining weight.

So what’s the answer? It’s prudent to pay attention to what your friend, sibling, or spouse is doing wrong. Then try not to emulate them.

A good choice is baby carrots, celery and small whole-grain crackers.

Researchers say there is an art to healthy snacking, and it can provide a boost to successful weight loss.

Art of Snacking Not much surprises me about obesity, but one case made me realise there’s always something new under the sun.

I always believed one sure way to gain weight was to fall prey to snacking between meals. But according to a report in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, snacking can be made a part of efforts to lose weight.

This study involved overweight women enrolled in a weight reduction program.

Researchers discovered that 97 percent of women snacked at least once a day, and more than half snacked two to three times a day.

But amazingly, on average, they succeeded in losing 9 percent of their body weight after six months. It depended on when they snacked. Midmorning snackers lost 7 percent, while the afternoon snackers lost 11 percent.

So what is the hidden secret about snacking? Researchers say there is an art to healthy snacking, and it can provide a boost to successful weight loss.

For a start, you should not engage in mindless snacking. Instead, start the day with a game plan for meals and snacks so you eat every three hours.

Psychologically, this will prevent depression, as you will know there’s a treat in a short time.

Ideally, snacks should contain protein and complex carbohydrates, so choose fruits, vegetables, whole wheat grains, low fat dairy products, and lean meat.

Remember, a snack is not a meal, so portion control is vital. Keep each snack between 100 to 200 calories. A good choice is baby carrots, celery, lowfat yogurt, low-fat cheese, and small whole-grain crackers.

Fluids do not quench the hunger reflex, so drink either water or a noncaloric beverage. And if you are on the run, have a pear in your briefcase or purse.

These suggestions may not get you back into your wedding clothes, but they are all a step in the right direction.

Dr. Gifford-Jones is a medical journalist in Toronto. His website is DocGiff.com.

SHUTTERSTOCK

Epoch Times

hEALTH & BEAUTY

FEBRUARY 6 – 19, 2015 27

2 Simple Recipes for a Nourishing Lunch

By Laura Kraber www.drfranklipman.com

T

o avoid the afternoon energy dip that a carbohydrate-rich meal often imparts, my favorite lunch includes lots of protein and healthy fats and few grains or legumes, if any. In the middle of a busy day, I turn to recipes that require 10 minutes or less of prep or cook time.

Because these meals are so easy and satisfying, I keep my fridge and pantry stocked with the following ingredients to ensure an expedient and nourishing lunch: • Pastured Eggs • Canned wild salmon, packed in water • Canned sardines, packed in water • Pre-washed salad greens such as arugula, baby kale, or a greens blend • Extra-virgin olive oil • Lemons • Avocados

123RF.COM

• Vinegars • Mustard • Fresh or dried herbs such as parsley, thyme, rosemary, basil The following recipes are adaptable to your tastes and the ingredients you have on hand. Double the recipe for two servings or to make tomorrow’s lunch as well as today’s.

These salads can be served on top of pre-washed salad greens for a hearty salad, or wrapped up in collard greens or cabbage leaves for a non-grain wrap. To avoid the afternoon energy dip that a carbohydrate-rich meal often They can also be used as filling imparts, my favorite lunch includes lots of protein and healthy fats and for a sandwich if you have few grains or legumes grain-free (or gluten-free) bread available. omega-3s, I cover my bases by and a small amount of whatever supplementing with virgin krill vegetables you have, such as 1. Top Choice for Omega 3’s: oil and eating sardines and celery, carrots, cucumber or Sardine Salad salmon. peppers, to taste. Slice and Research indicates that nutrient add half an avocado, chopped absorption from eating fish is Recipe: parsley (or other herb) and superior to supplementation For a single serving, mix half mound on top of salad greens. from fish oil capsules; however, a can of sardines/canned wild since supplements easily salmon with the juice of half a 2. Vegetarian and Proteinprovide large amounts of lemon, a tablespoon of olive oil Packed: Pastured Egg Salad

Eggs offer a beautiful balance of protein, fat, vitamins and minerals. Most supermarkets carry pastured eggs and although more expensive than factory-farmed eggs, the nutritional value that they provide makes them worth the cost.

Recipe: Chop 2 hard-boiled eggs into a bowl and blend with 1 teaspoon mustard, 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon olive oil and a chopped shallot, or half a small red onion, or a few green onions. Blend in any fresh herbs you have available (parsley is great) or sprinkle your favorite dried herbs in. Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Place egg salad on a bed of greenes such as arugula or baby kale and top with olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice.

This article was originally published on www.drfranklipman. com.

Health & Beauty

28 February 6 – 19, 2015

Pe ter

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Epoch Times

des-Benz

Military green dress

by Ralph Lauren, New York City, 11 Sept.

2014.

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Bare midriff dress by Reem Acra, New York City, 8 September 2014.

Spring Trends From New York Fashion Week Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Mercedes-Benz

Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Mercedes-Benz

Pe ter Mic

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ages

Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Military green dress

by Jason Wu, New York City, 5 September 2014

Pink gingham check blouse by Oscar de la Renta, New York City, 9 September 2014.

Bare midriff gown from Oscar de la Renta, New York City, 9 September 2014.

Yellow gown by Carolina Herrera, New York City, 8 September 2014.

White mesh dress from Herve Leger By Max Azria, New York City, 6 September 2014.

Epoch Times

Health & Beauty

February 6 – 19, 2015 29

L o o k

Lost Cotton,” written by Spike Jonze and Jonah Hill. The play featured actors Elle Fanning and Rashida Jones as well as model Karlie Kloss.

Now that New York has handed the baton to London, we can finally sit down to discuss the trends for Spring 2015.

in the Mirror

Frazer Ha

rrison/Ge

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es for M

ercedes-

Benz

Military Green

Blue mesh dress by Vivienne Tam, New York City, 7 September 2014.

Spring greens usually conjure up images of soft, sugary pastels. However, the choice of green for next summer is a decidedly darker military hue, usually reserved for the fall season. At Marc Jacobs, we were expecting a bright and happy collection as we sat waiting for the show to start in a Pepto-Bismol pink room at the Park Avenue Armoury. However, our mood quickly changed to a more subdued melancholy feel as makeup-free models, including Kendall Jenner and Candice Swanepoel strutted down the runway in deep green army fatigue hues.

Gingham Style

“I’ve a feeling that we’re not in Kansas anymore,” said Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz.” We knew it because there was a saucy gingham in town. The runways were ablaze with checkers in more daring silhouettes than we typically associate with the pattern, including Altuzarra’s trademark provocatively high-slit pencil skirts shown in pink, baby blue, and black checkers.

Dare-to-Bare Formal Wear

Keep investing in those Pilates classes as the midriff styles that have been prevalent in past seasons move into the formal arena with abdomen-exposing evening gowns. Designer Christian Siriano went so far as to include a wedding gown for those daring enough to walk down the isle with an exposed midriff.

Magnificent Mesh

By Pialy Aditya and Sonaly Aditya

S

eptember in New York City signals the unofficial end of the summer and a return of the world’s top designers, models, celebrities, and media for a week filled with a glimpse of what next spring and summer hold and, of course, amazing afterparties.

Many designers integrated technology into their shows. Diesel Black Gold teamed up with Samsung to design a selection of Gear S smartwatches that debuted on the catwalks. Marc Jacobs teamed up with Beats by Dre to provide individual headphones to all attendees to wear during the runway show. Ralph Lauren took the cake with his launch of Polo for Women in Central Park. The designer used 4D hologram technology to project Polo-clad models on a 60-foot (18-metre) tall screen of water over the lake.

While collections are typically presented with a story, opening ceremony took that to a literal level. They presented their collection at the Metropolitan Opera House via a play entitled “100%

The mesh trend seen in sportswear last spring continues in an elevated way to include evening wear. Designers are incorporating technology in their fabrics, updating synthetic fabrics like neoprene, organza, and nylon with mesh. These transparent futuristic fabrics call for a just-the-right-amount-of-sexy see-thru while keeping it classy.

Hello Sunshine

With yellow dominating the runways for Spring, the designers seem to take a page out of Pharrell’s playbook as the clothes and even some of the models walking down the runway were just happy.

Desigual had a big sunflower for their backdrop as Adriana Lima danced down the runway blowing kisses to the crowd and Nanette Lapore’s show ended with the models dancing in a conga line. This happy hue was seen everywhere from gowns at Carolina Herrera to trench coats at Ralph Lauren.

Pialy Aditya and Sonaly Aditya are fashion-tech entrepreneurs in the New York startup scene. Reach them on Twitter @pialyaditya and @sonalyaditya

Fotolia

A full-length mirror is an absolute essential for any well-dressed woman. Another absolute essential is the proper underpinnings.

By Miriam Silverberg

I

lovely long gown in a slip style. In the front she looked sleek and smooth. In the back she looked as if she was either wearing a whalebone bra or a Middle Ages torture device which was trying to poke through her clothes. You could actually see a ledge under her dress.

If only she had turned around when looking in the mirror. I have no idea what she was wearing, but my attention was riveted on her back for the entire performance.

Another thing I noticed is most women look and feel very awkward and uncomfortable in a long, dressy gown.

This isn’t surprising since few women wear long gowns or have the occasion to.

The women who looked best were either wearing pantsuits or short cocktail dresses. I think it’s always best to be slightly underdressed than over.

Another problem is sandals. I love them—we all do. But so many women do not have feet that look good in them.

I saw one woman wearing sandals on feet that were unusually wide and misshapen. Just because you can find them in your size doesn’t mean you should wear them.

While on the subject of sandals, evening dresses need special shoes and purses. You can’t pair an evening dress with casual or day shoes and carry a purse that you’d wear to the office. If you’ve gone to the trouble of dressing up, carry a small clutch and wear dressy shoes with it.

Now, go forth and wow them!

recently went to an awards event where everyone was very dressed up. Looking around was a revelation. Doesn’t anyone have a full-length mirror? If they do, don’t they look in it?

A full-length mirror is an absolute essential for any well-dressed woman.

Another absolute essential is the proper underpinnings.

I think bikini panties are one of the worst evils visited on women’s bodies.

No matter how thin you are, you still aren’t thin enough for bikini panties.

I wear bikinis but only with pants or skirts. When I wear a dress, I wear a light girdle even though I weigh less than 90 pounds! The trouble with bikinis is that you can see their entire outline as even the slightest amount of Miriam Silverberg fat on your body always rolls over the is a freelance top. journalist and owner One woman was wearing a bandage of Miriam Silverberg dress. Unfortunately, she had about Associates, a boutique 20 pounds too much for the publicity firm in bandage and you could see a Manhattan. She roll of fat at the waist. may be reached Courtesy of Sitting in front of me was a the author at silverbergm@ very thin woman wearing a mindspring.com Miriam Silverberg.

Food Travel

Epoch Times

30 February 6 – 19, 2015

Ba Bao Fan:

A Sweet Chinese New Year Treat! ya Tan

ris Har

o n/

Epo

ch T

ime

s

By Tanya Harrison Epoch Times Staff

I

attempted my first Ba Bao Fan (八寶 飯), or EightTreasure Rice Pudding, many years ago as a gift for a lovely Chinese couple.

Although my friends were quite impressed that I tried to make it, looking back I realise I had no idea of the actual significance of this dish.

However, I decided to try my luck again and made Ba Bao Fan for friends to celebrate the Chinese New Year. I also learned a little more about what a treasure it truly is!

Origins

One story suggests Ba Bao Fan was created in 1600 B.C. to celebrate eight great warriors who helped King Wu conquer the Zhou. Another tale from the Qing Dynasty reveals that the pudding was a well-kept family secret until a smart magistrate discovered it and presented it as a gift to a dowager empress. Through this, he gained a promotion! Whichever story you choose, Ba Bao Fan likely has an illustrious origin.

Lucky Number 8

Why eight treasures? The number eight is an auspicious number for the Chinese. In Mandarin, “ba”, eight, sounds like the word for wealth or prosperity and it is a homophone for fortune in Cantonese (fa), too.

Medicinal Properties

Not only are they lucky, Ba Bao Fan’s eight ingredients also constitute a healthy dish that balances tastes and Chinese medicinal properties.

Lotus seed (蓮子 lián zǐ) is an astringent and a restorative medicine. It is said to calm nerves and relieve thirst.

Red dates (紅棗 hóng zǎo) are warm in nature, and are used to balance foods and medicinal formulas. They also pro-

The traditional Chinese dish Ba Bao Fan, or 8-Treasure Rice Pudding, is used to celebrate Chinese New Year and other auspicious occasions. mote better digestion.

Longan (龍眼 lóng yǎn) is a lowcalorie fruit full of Vitamin C. It is used as a blood tonic and is said to relieve insomnia and anxiety.

Goji berries (枸杞 gǒu qǐ)—or wolf berries—have many vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. They are said to reduce blood sugar and improve eyesight. They also belong to the blood tonic group of herbs.

Winter melon (冬瓜 dōng guā) is a “cool” food that functions as a blood tonic and releases heat.

Apricots (杏 xìng) are symbolic of traditional Chinese medicine based on the legend about Dong Feng and his apricot grove. Apricots are believed to suppress cough and reduce phlegm.

Lily bulb (百合 bǎi hé) is used as a tonic and believed to be calming, to promote restfulness, and reduce

irritability. It may also relieve cough and dry throat.

Making Ba Bao Fan

It’s important to be careful with moisture in this recipe. The rice should be sticky yet “dry” so that it will retain its shape after it is steamed and when the mould is removed.

Also, be careful not to manipulate your fruit design too much. If you displace the shortening used to grease the bowl/mold, the concoction will stick to the bowl, ruining the design when turned out.

Ingredients: • 2 cups glutinous rice (can be soaked overnight) • 1/4 cup cane sugar* • 2 tablespoons shortening* (of your choice, older recipes call for lard) 8 Treasures: • 1/2 cup Lotus seeds (soaked overnight) • 8 or 16 Chinese red dates, dried • 1/2 cup Longan, pitted • 1/4 cup Goji berries* • 8 or 16 strips Winter melon, candied • 8 Apricots, dried * • 1/2 cup Lily bulb, dried • 1 cup Red bean paste* *organic ingredients Instructions: Rinse the rice under cold running water until the water is clear. Cook the rice in a steamer or a pot, about 40 minutes.

While the rice is cooking, put the lotus seeds in a pot with 2 cups of cool water. Bring to a boil, and then simmer for 20 minutes.

Allow to cool, set aside.

Rinse the red dates then steam them, with your preferred method, until tender— about 10-15 minutes.

Carefully remove the pits without changing the shape of the dates then set aside.

Soak goji berries for about 10 minutes, rinse and set aside.

Rinse the dried lily bulb, set it aside.

When the rice is done and while it is still hot, mix in the shortening and the sugar.

Coat the inside of a medium-sized bowl with shortening. Arrange the fruits in an attractive pattern in the bottom of the bowl and up the sides. Use half the rice mixture and pack it on top of the fruits, being careful not to dislodge them. Make an indentation in the centre of the rice in the bowl. Place the red bean paste, rounded, in the space, and then fill the bowl with the rest of the rice mixture, covering up the bean paste. Pack the rice down again.

Place the filled bowl in a steamer with enough water to steam for 45-60 minutes.

Place a serving plate over the bowl of pudding and invert it. Remove the bowl.

If necessary, use a knife around the edge of the pudding to loosen it. Prepare the glaze as below: Glaze: • 1 cup of water • 3 tablespoons sugar* • 1 tablespoon cornstarch*(in 1 1/2 tablespoons water) In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil. Add the sugar and stir until it is completely dissolved. Turn down to medium heat and slowly stir in the cornstarch mixture to thicken.

Pour the glaze over the entire pudding, letting it pool around it on the plate.

This dessert can be eaten warm or cold.

Epoch Times

Food & Travel

February 6 – 19, 2015 31

2.bp.blogspot.com

Let’s Lo Hei for

Good Luck!

Yu sheng is believed to have originated from South China.

According to legend, a long time ago, a couple was stranded at a temple during a storm. Feeling cold and hungry, they caught a carp to ease their hunger.

The temple had nothing except for a bottle of vinegar. But when they added the vinegar to the raw fish, they found the result especially appetising.

Later, during the British colonial period, immigrants from Southern China brought the tradition to Malaya (Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia).

Back then, porridge hawkers sold a type of raw fish dish known as ‘Jiangmen Yu Sheng’ which originated from Jiangmen, Guangdong Province. Jiangmen Yu Sheng consists of raw fish with shredded ginger, shallots, and a vegetable like lettuce or turnip and carrot strips, seasoned with salt, sugar and vinegar.

There is another type of yu sheng known as ‘Teochew Yu Sheng’, which consists of raw grass carp dipped in a sauce of lime, shredded ginger, oil, and mixed with lettuce.

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Reinvention

The contemporary yu sheng eaten in Singapore and Malaysia today evolved from its humble origins into a colourful dish, comprising seven ingredients with symbolic meaning.

There is still considerable cross-border dispute over the origin of this yu sheng—some say it was first created in Malaysia, and some say in Singapore.

But in Singapore, we do know that the country’s modern yu sheng can be attributed to the Four Culinary Heavenly Kings of Cantonese cuisine—Mr Hooi Kok Wai, Mr Tham Mui Kai, Mr Sin Leong and Mr Lau Yoke Pui. These four famous Singapore chefs reinvented the raw fish dish eaten by poor Chinese migrants and reintroduced it to the public in 1964.

As migrants from China themselves, they hit upon the idea of improving the dish when they saw raw fish porridge selling in a

** Applicable for orders placed before 9 Feb 2015

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�o���i�entar� ����� ser�ing o� � sa��on sashi�i s�i�es �wor�h ������ with e�er� ear�y �ird Large Yusheng order ��� our �ri�es are ����� �o e���a ser�i�e �harge �or dine in/take-away ���� de�i�er� to �ea�h road� �a�an �u�tan � �ugis 28 Kandahar Street S(198889) boxnsticks@gmail.com Like us on Facebook.com/boxnsticks

“Box n Sticks Yusheng is one of the best I ever had!

Nothing goes better with their fresh sashimi, yummy sauce and ingredients! Way to go to start a prosperous and happy lunar new year!”

- Geraldine Low BUGIS MRT STN

HAJI LN ARAB ST

WE ARE HERE

GOOD & RICH CAKE

KANDAHAR ST MALAY HERITAGE CENTRE

ALIWAL ST

JALAN SULTAN NICOLL HIHTWAY MRT STN

SULTAN MOSQUE

NORTH BRIDGE RD

Origins

about completely by chance. By serving the dish to a large table for ten, the guests found they had to stand up in order to reach the food. Soon, everyone was on their feet shouting ‘Lo...Lo...Lo’ (toss, toss, toss) and calling out words of prosperity, creating a lively atmosphere.

The idea of tossing colourful yu sheng continues today, and it has become an indispensible dish for reunions.

In more recent years, various types of yu sheng—including Japanese yu sheng that serves slices of succulent sashimi—have been gaining popularity among diners.

The raw fish has also been replaced by more expensive ingredients such as salmon, lobster or abalone.

BAGHOAD ST

I

t’s the time of the year again to toss yu sheng (lo hei) for good luck!

Yu sheng is one of those rare dishes where one is permitted—if not encouraged—to mess with one’s food, having great fun with family, friends, colleagues in the process.

Literally translated as ‘raw fish’, yu sheng is a symbolic traditional dish eaten by the Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia during the Chinese New Year.

It is generally eaten on the eve of Chinese New Year and on ‘ren ri’ (the seventh day of Chinese New Year). According to Chinese belief, ‘ren ri’, or the Day of Humankind, is the day when people were created by Nu Wa (a goddess in ancient Chinese mythology).

Yu sheng is also symbolic for being the homophone of an ‘increase in abundance’ (余升). This is why yu sheng is also called ‘lo hei’, which means to ‘move upwards’. Eating this dish during the New Year is said to bring greater fortune for the rest of the year, and expresses one’s wish for abundant luck and happiness.

Before eating, yu sheng must be tossed as high as possible while shouting words of prosperity and good fortune.

As you indulge in this merry event every Chinese New Year, you’ve probably wondered about where it originated from, and what it symbolises?

market. They saw this as a good way to increase their restaurants’ businesses during the quiet Chinese New Year period when customers usually stayed at home.

The chefs came up with the brilliant idea of adding an array of ingredients such as carrots, white radish, and green radish to the raw fish, to create a colourful, visually attractive and tasty dish.

Together with the auspicious meanings they thought up for each of the ingredients, the dish was truly a fitting one for the New Year.

The dish’s trademark tossing step, however came

PAHANG ST

By Li Yen Epoch Times Staff

32 February 6 – 19, 2015

advertorial

Epoch Times

The

Grand Train Tour of Switzerland Soak in the Swiss Alps and go on cross-country adventures with attractive all-in-one travel tickets, with enticing extras.

all photos from www.swiss-image.ch

By Epoch Time Staff

H

oping to maximise your leave this year with seven long weekends?

Want an all-inclusive tour where the transport is a dream destination?

Head to Switzerland, where you can embark on a spectacular Grand Train Tour with the all-in-one Swiss Travel Pass.

Perfect for travellers hoping to tour the Swiss Alps or explore the remotest corners of the country, Switzerland’s 26,000 km of rail, road and waterway routes have coordinated connections linking more than 150 public transport services.

Rest your mind with regular and reliable rail services, with train departures every half-hour or hour.

Travel in comfort on trains, buses and boats, with the densest public transport network in the world connecting 11 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and world famous alpine scenery.

The Swiss Travel Pass

With the Swiss Travel Pass, you can have it all—and more.

Starting from just S$282 for a 3-day (continuous) adult pass, you can also opt for flexible passes that allow you to travel anytime within a month. Both types of passes have 3-day, 4-day, 8-day and 15-day options.

Complete and convenient, the Swiss Travel Pass grants tourists all-in-one unlimited travel. You can hop on and off trains, buses and even lake ferries to any Swiss destination, including popular cities like Bern, Geneva, Locarno, Lausanne and Zurich. You can also take a scenic train to the top of Europe at Jungfraujoch, where

the Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

For ultimate luxury, travel first class, which offers more legroom, greater quiet and comfort, and special business zones. First class is usually on the upper deck, with exceptional views of scenic panoramas. You also have a choice of first or second class on Swiss boats.

The Swiss Travel Pass is also packed with attractive bonuses and discounts.

Free public transportation in main Swiss cities, free admission to over 450 Swiss museums and exhibits, discounted city tours, free ferry trips and more are included in your pass. There is also a 50 percent discount with the Swiss Travel Pass on cable cars and mountain trains not included in the Swiss Travel System range of passes.

Tourists can rejoice with special transfer tickets covering travel from Swiss airports and border railway stations to their holiday destination— and back again. Regional passes are available for unlimited travel by public transport in various Swiss regions.

The Swiss Travel Pass is also ideal for families. A Swiss Family Card will be given to families travelling together, which allows children aged 6 to under 16 to travel for free when accompanied by at least one parent. Youths under 26 years old also enjoy discounted rates.

All-in-One Trains & Railway Stations

And that’s not all. The Swiss Travel System includes a range of attractive extras that live up to Swiss service

standards.

With Fly Rail Baggage, your luggage will be transported directly to your Swiss travel destination from any airport in the world. Simply pay CHF 22 (S$34) per baggage for this service, and you can collect your belongings from one of the 81 designated railway stations upon your arrival. Luggage lockers are also available at all main railway stations in Switzerland.

Cyclists on Hub & Spoke tours will rejoice with 80 railway stations offering bike rental services. Staying at one place and doing day excursions is now in vogue, and with the Swiss Travel Pass, you have the tool to do so.

You can also bring your bike on board with a bike ticket, or have it shipped from and to any Swiss railway station.

Tickets for many top events throughout the country, including

concerts and sports shows, can be purchased at multifunctional rail ticket counters. At Swiss stations, you can also change currency. At the main railway stations, RailCities are one-stop shopping malls offering everything you need, from food to specialised services.

For families, it is child’s play to travel in the family coach with themed playgrounds. All double-deck InterCity trains on long-distance routes include a Ticki Park family coach, while the single-deck InterCity and InterCity tilting trains contain family zones with game tables. There is also ample room for pushchairs, suitcases and more.

Most trains also offer culinary delights, ranging from simple snacks to dishes of distinction. Many InterCity and InterCity tilting trains include a restaurant serving freshly prepared delicacies. Dining cars are also included in some international trains, the Glacier Express and in several trains of the Rhaetian Railway.

Continued on the next page

Food & Travel

Epoch Times

February 6 – 19, 2015 33

Top 10 Things to Do in Seoul

commons.wikimedia.org

Continued from Page 32

The Grand Train Tour of Switzerland

There is something magical about trains, and in Switzerland, you can ascend to a majestic mountain paradise by rail.

The Grand Train Tour of Switzerland represents the very best of Swiss public transport and can be enjoyed all year round.

With 10 world-famous panoramic routes to choose from, you’ll be spoilt for choice.

The Alps cover 65 percent of Switzerland’s surface area, and the highest concentration of glaciers in the Alps is also found here.

Get ready for the day trip of your life with the Glacier Express. At 7.5 hours, the world’s slowest express train wows travellers with observation carriages that open up vistas of unique landscapes— for example, the 400-metre deep Rhine Gorge, the 2,033-metre high Oberalp Pass and the mighty Matterhorn in Zermatt.

Expect a spectacular setting of rugged cliff faces, crystal-clear mountain lakes and unspoiled villages through 91 tunnels and across 291 impressive bridges.

Dubbed the most spectacular Alpine crossing, the Bernina Express seamlessly connects the cool North with the warm South. Near Filisur, the train traverses an awe-inspiring landmark—the 65-metrehigh Landwasser viaduct. The cross-border Albula and Bernina Lines between Thusis and Tirano owe their 2008 inscription into the UNESCO World Heritage list to stunning scenery such as the Schyn Gorge, Morteratsch Glacier and Brusio spiral viaduct.

The Wilhelm Tell Express combines travel by rail and waterway—first a train trip along the old Gotthard route, then a cruise on Lake Lucerne—in two of Switzerland’s most beautiful regions. Board a historic steamer at Lucerne’s quayside and enjoy a three-course meal while gliding past ancient Swiss sites such as the Rütli Meadow, Schiller Stone and Tell’s Chapel.

At Flüelen, change to a first class panorama car for the rail journey to Canton Ticino.

If you love impressionistic beauty, the Pre-Alpine Express is for you. Behold gently undulating hills, picture-perfect

villages and mellow orchards through your panorama windows, with the peaks of the Churfirsten range adorning the backdrop. Travel through the Toggenburg region past Rapperswil, an attractive old town, and via the Rothenturm upland moor to lakeside Lucerne.

The Grand Train Tour of Switzerland also features top excursion attractions and can be booked at any time throughout the year.

At Lucerne, Titlis (the only glacier in Central Switzerland) provides panoramic views of the surrounding snow-capped summits and unspoiled Alpine landscape.

The trip to the top is by the Titlis Rotair— the world’s first revolving cable car.

From Zermatt, ascend the Gornergrat and be greeted by a panorama with more 4,000 metre peaks than anywhere else in the alps. For the finest views of the mighty Matterhorn, one of the Alps’ highest peaks on the Swiss-Italian border, take the trip by cogwheel railway from Zermatt to the Gornergrat. The observation platform located at 3,131 metres offers a spectacular vista of 29,4000 metre summits.

Other excursion options include Appenzell (the smallest Swiss canton that looks like a winter fairytale), Bern (a historic UNESCO World Heritage site with six km of shops), Jungfraujoch (Top of Europe), the Arosa Line and the Centovalli Express, which brings you to the northern Italian city of Domodossola located at the foot of the Italian Alps.

What’s more, you can start the Grand Train Tour from any point; there is no prescribed travel direction or duration.

Best of all, the entire tour can be travelled with a single all-in-one ticket—the Swiss Travel Pass. A 4-day pass starts from S$337 (after a 25 percent discount with tickets bought online).

For the ultimate rail experience, embark on the full 8-day Grand Train Tour, where you can travel on half of the 10 world-famous routes and go on the recommended excursions. An 8-day pass starts from S$487.

Just reserve your seats in advance on the special panorama trains (except PreAlpine Express), and you’re ready to go!

Tour Itineraries & Apps

Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul.

Seoul is the perfect city for stunning sights and breathtaking views.

By Cecilie Antonsen MyDestination.com

1. GET “HIGH”

Chase the view. Seoul is the perfect city for stunning sights and breathtaking views. The Seoul skyscrapers atop 15th floor is a must-see around Gangnam Station.

2. GET LOST

Walk around the city and get lost.

It’s easy to get lost and explore the unplanned and unexpected. You are never too far away from a taxi or subway station…

3. EAT PATBINGSU

Want more? Have a rail of a time with these free apps and itineraries:

Make sure you eat plenty of the Korean ice dessert; Patbingsu made from shaved ice and red beans. It comes in many different shapes, sizes and flavours. Delicious and very addictive. Seoul serves up some of the best patbingsus around.

http://goo.gl/K4i5eH

http://goo.gl/LU9Mgl

http://goo.gl/1oVr5r

4. HAVE BREAKS AND OBSERVE

10 Panorama Pleasures (The Grand Train Tour of Switzerland)

4-Day and 8-Day Grand Train Tour Suggestions

MySwitzerland Mobile Apps (e.g. Swiss Hikes, City Guides, Family Trips, Swiss Events, Best Swiss Hotels, etc.)

The Swiss Travel Pass can be purchased via Dynasty Travel (6532-0031) or PriceBreaker (6317-2888). For more information, visit www.myswitzerland.com/rail.

Terms and conditions apply.

Seoul will inspire, exhaust, tempt, drain and fill you up at the same time. Make sure to take a break once in a while, soak in the big city feel, its people and culture. Do people watching, go to a coffee shop or munch on street food and observe the city that never sleeps…

5. FIRE IT UP

Spice up your life with a Korean BBQ,

but make sure you have it the authentic Korean way. Roll it, dip it, mix it, grill it, smell it, taste it.

6. GET AWAY

Get away and explore the countryside.

Seoul can take your breath away, literally…this consuming city and it’s hustle and bustle. Seek mountains, villages, fields and ocean, there’s plenty of it nearby.

7. GO SIGHTSEEING WITH FRIENDS

A little bit of traditional sightseeing is a must when in Seoul. This modern, yet historical city has plenty of ancient sights and breathtaking landmarks to explore. Best advice…wear comfortable shoes!

8. GET BLINDED BY THE CITY LIGHTS

The city of neon signs. They are everywhere. Remember to look up and down. Best experienced at night when Seoul is lit up by millions of neon signs. Simply awesome!

9. EXPLORE THE RIVER AND THE ARCHITECTURE

Bridge after bridge, crossing the Hangang River. Beautiful, colourful, powerful and industrial architecture.

Get down to the river and explore the underdog beauty of Seoul.

10. SHOP TILL YOU DROP

Seoul is a shopper’s paradise! Shop luxury brands, the latest highstreet fashion, cosmetics, shoes and traditional souvenirs. Go crazy in the many shopping malls, the local food markets and speciality shops. Simply, shop till you drop!

Copyright © 2014 by My Destination.

This article was written by Cecilie Antonsen and originally published at My Destination Seoul.

Values Virtues

34 February 6 – 19, 2015

Epoch Times

d n a e v Lo

e c n e i t a P

Saved a Boy With ADHD

By Li Wei | Translated by Tan Shuyan Epoch Times Staff

T

here are many problems in life that you will never have immediate solutions to; but so long as we sincerely and whole-heartedly put our efforts into them, the results will surely show one day.

This was a lesson I learnt from a story of a boy named Lin, his mother, and his teacher.

When Lin first returned to visit his primary school three years after his graduation, we could hardly believe that he had grown into the mature and responsible young adult we now saw.

He was now just about to enter junior college, and had returned specifically to visit Ms. Li, a former teacher of his. Many of us teachers were surprised at how much he had changed.

As a child, Lin had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Back in primary school, he was easily distracted during lessons and often wandered around the classroom, distracting his classmates.

Because of this, Ms. Li would often end up having counselling sessions with him.

He also had reading difficulties and often handed in his homework late, so teachers would often have to spend time after school to give him

Ms. Li would always tell me to ‘be responsible for my own actions’.

remedial lessons.

On top of this, he had no way of controlling his emotions, and would sometimes burst out in anger,

shouting and swearing incessantly, or even begin bashing his head against the chalkboard.

Whenever these outbursts happened, it always took much effort from the teaching staff to calm him down again.

However, even when faced with such a difficult student, Ms. Li would always treat him with the greatest of patience and kindness.

After each of his outbursts, she would give him a good, long chiding, with the hope that he would be able to control himself better the next time. Even so, his disruptive acts continued right up until his graduation.

Continued on the next page

Epoch Times

Values & Virtues

Continued from Page 34 On the eve of his graduation, he was stopped by a prefect for running up an escalator in the opposite direction, and had another outburst.

Unable to control his emotions, he turned and sprinted out of the school.

The teachers later found him standing at the side of a busy road, and none of them knew how best to approach him.

Ms. Li wanted to walk over and grab him by the arm, but whenever any one of the teachers tried to take a step forwards, Lin would warily take a step back.

Whenever the teachers stepped back however, Lin would return to his original spot.

Just as the teachers had run out of ideas however, Lin’s mother arrived huffing and puffing. She calmed Lin down and coaxed

So long as we sincerely and whole-heartedly put our efforts into our students, the results will surely show one day.

him back into the school.

Although all the teachers knew that research had shown that the symptoms of ADHD could grow milder as the child grew up, nobody knew exactly when this would happen for Lin, and whether he would ever be able to

lead a normal life.

Yet, three years later, he had returned a completely different person. He told me that he had managed to get into the second junior college of his choice, and that he had learned how to control his emotional outbursts.

Seeing how much he had changed, I asked him out of curiosity, “who did you feel the most gratitude over these years?”

“Ms. Li and my mother,” he replied. “They’ve always been there by my side, helping me.

And every single time, they would explain nicely to me what I did wrong, afterwards.

“Back in primary school, Ms. Li would always tell me to ‘be responsible for my own actions’.

My mom also cared for me a lot; she came to school with me almost every day when I was in primary one. Every time I had an emotional outburst, she

February 6 – 19, 2015 35

would come to school for me, until I gradually learnt to control myself.

“Even now, she often calls me to ask if I’m doing well. I feel that I now have better control over my emotions, and I don’t get into conflicts with others so easily anymore.” I felt deeply reassured after hearing his words.

At this moment, his phone rang and he answered it.

“Mom, I’m talking to Ms. De now, I’ll be heading home soon.”

Seeing how much he had changed, I realised that we as teachers may not be able to solve all our students’ problems; but so long

as we sincerely and whole-heartedly put our efforts into them, the results will surely show one day.

Human Day Missing During Chinese New Year Celebrations

By Zhou Huixin Epoch Times Staff

D

uring the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the legend of Human Day was considered one of the most important celebrations in China. Unfortunately this deep and meaningful tradition has been forgotten in China today, although this tradition continues in Japan.

Origin of Human Day During the Han Dynasty, observing Human Day became part of the Chinese New Year tradition, and it was set on the seventh day of January.

The Book of Divination says, “first day is about fowls, second day dogs, third day hogs, fourth day sheep, fifth day oxen, sixth day horses, and seventh day humans.”

After the Wei and Jin dynasties, a new legend emerged regarding Human Day. According to China’s mythology, Goddess Nu Wa used clay to create humans on this day; therefore, humans regarded Jan. 7 as their birthday.

Nu Wa came to be known as the Goddess of Creation and Master Goddess. As an almighty goddess, she is able to create and transform all matter. She created a group of small people modeled after her own appearance. In this way, the land was quickly covered with traces of humanity.

Epoch Times

Nu Wa also set forth the marriage system, so that humans could continue family lines.

Therefore, she was China’s first matchmaker and was later espoused as the Master Goddess of marriage.

Childless married couples prayed to Nu Wa for children. So, Nu Wa was not only the goddess of marriage, but also the goddess of childbearing.

Later, Nu Wa fixed the broken sky by melting down stones, saving humanity from extinction.

So, she is also worshipped as a Protector Goddess for human beings.

The ancients believed that the seventh day of the first month was best if it was a sunny day, symbolising longevity and prosperity, as well as world harmony.

Dongfang Shuo of the Han Dynasty wrote The Book of Divination, in which he explained: “On the seventh, which is human day, fine weather from dawn to dusk and a bright moonlit night with visible stars (is the most desirable) and signals people’s safety. The monarch and his officials are united in harmony.”

However, if the seventh day is “severe chilly weather, it means diseases and weakening of health”.

Every year, people made a string of paper figures, connected together, to honour the Goddess who created human beings,

If New Year’s Day (Yuan Dan) symbolises the restart of everything, Human Day represents the rekindling of human life.

In China’s mythology, Goddess Nu Wa is seen as the Goddess of Creation and a Master God. As an almighty goddess, she is able to create and transform all matters; she used clay to create humans and melted down stones to repair the broken sky.

praying to her for abundant descendants.

Seven Treasure Soup Human reproduction is very important for mankind, so people placed particular emphasis on the Human Day Festival, which led to various festival activities.

On the south side of Yangtze River, one of the Human Day customs was to make a seasonal soup with seven kinds of vegetables.

In Chinese, the pronunciation of the word soup (Geng) is the same as the Chinese word for renewal or “starting over”, so having this customary soup symbolised renewal. It was

Human Day: Humankind’s birthday—a day to show gratitude to the goddess Nu Wa, who created the Chinese people. believed that the soup helped to remove evil influence and heal many diseases.

Human Day Costume Ancient Chinese also wore a special costume, a headdress known as Ren Sheng or Cai Sheng.

Starting from the Jin Dynasty, people began to cut paper into flower shapes and human shapes, or engrave gold foil with human shapes to decorate folding screens and to wear in their hair.

The purpose of cutting a human shape is to represent the spiritual renewal of humans. In fact, the custom was not only based on wishes for reproduction, but more importantly, based on the ancient Chinese society’s view of human life—that people have souls, which must be constantly renewed.

Human Day Hiking Up until the Tang Dynasty, people hiked in groups on Human Day, symbolising the first spring outing after a long winter.

Ancient scholars hiked up high mountains, where they wrote poetry and created paintings.

Human Day: humankind’s birthday—a day to show gratitude to the mother of the great Chinese nation, who created humankind, protected the human race, and ensured its endless reproduction.

Values & Virtues

36 FEBRUARY 6 - 19, 2015

过 无闻闻 能心誉过 改非恐怒

归 名闻闻 于为过 誉 无错欣乐

倘 有直损 掩心谅友 饰非士来

增 名渐益 一 为相 友 辜恶亲却 *

若 唯 见 见彼 凡 事 衣 德人 人说 道 非 服 学 恶 善长 字 宜

若 唯 即 即此 重 勿 饮 才 内 思说 且 轻 食 艺 省 齐短 舒 诺

不 不 有 纵不 勿 苟 如 如 则 去关 急 轻 人 人 改 远己 疾 诺

勿 当无 以莫 勿 进 生 自加 渐闲模 退 戚 砺 警 跻管 糊 错

见奸话 未巧说 真语多

勿秽不 轻污如 言词少

知市惟 未井其 的气是

勿切勿 轻戒佞 传之巧

凡 出 言

信 为 先

诈 与 妄

奚 可 焉

信

Epoch Times

弟 子 規

* According to Dizi Gui (弟子规), “If I react angrily to criticism and happily to praise, then bad company will come my way but true, well-meaning friends will shy away. If I am afraid to receive praise but am glad to receive criticism, then honest and upright people will gradually become my good friends. ” lessons from dizi gui

Handling Criticism and Praise Effectively NTDTV

By Jade Pearce Epoch Times Staff Dizi Gui (弟子规) (Standards for Being a Good Student and Child) is an ancient Chinese text for children that teaches moral values and etiquette. It was written during the Qing Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Kangxi (康熙帝) (16611722) by Li Yuxiu.

Beneath the conservative, “oldschool” verbose of this ancient classic, one can still find gems of wisdom that remain surprisingly relevant to our modern society. A new lesson is covered in each issue.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s at home, at school, or at work.

Regardless of where we are or what we do, we will always be exposed to criticism and praise.

And between the two, praise goes down a lot easier than criticism does. Criticism makes us judge ourselves more harshly.

Occasionally, there is the rude shock of learning something awful about yourself that you’d never realised before.

It’s no wonder that we instinctively want to reject criticism and welcome praise.

But as aptly put by author Norman Peale, “The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.” Indeed it is criticism, and not praise, that is the best way for us to identify our faults and grow.

In addition, the way we deal with criticism and praise affects

“The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”

Norman Peele our growth as a person for the rest of our lives.

In Dizi Gui, we are taught that “If we react angrily to criticism and happily to praise, then bad company will come our way and true, well-meaning friends will shy away.” This becomes a vicious cycle – the less criticism we accept, the less criticism we receive, and the less we improve.

In contrast, being “afraid to receive praise and glad to receive criticism” invites honest and upright company, who aren’t afraid to point out our shortcomings.

This lesson is perfectly illustrated by two stories from ancient China: Zhou Ji’s (周岌) understanding of praise, and Emperor Taizong’s reaction to criticism.

Being Blinded By Praise

During China’s Warring States Period, there was a high official for the State of Qi named Zou Ji, and a gentleman named Xu Gong who was well-known for

being extremely handsome.

Zou Ji considered himself to be a very good-looking man. One morning after dressing himself, he asked his wife, “Between Xu Gong and me, who do you think is more handsome?” His wife smiled and said, “Of course you’re more handsome! How can Xu Gong compare to you?”

Zou Ji was delighted by her response, but doubted that his wife was being completely honest. So he went to ask his mistress the same question. She replied without a pause, “Xu Gong is nowhere near as goodlooking as you.”

Later, when a friend came to visit Zou Ji, Zou Ji asked him the same question again. His friend immediately replied, “Xu Gong’s looks can’t compare to yours!”

One day later, Xu Gong paid Zou Ji a visit. After taking a good look at Xu Gong, Zou Ji came to the realisation that he was nowhere near as handsome as Xu Gong. But what really troubled him was why his wife, mistress and friend had not been honest with him in the first place?

After spending a sleepless night thinking about it, Zou Ji finally realised the answer. The next day, when he met with Qi King, he told the King what he had encountered and said, “Although I’m not as handsome as Xu Gong, my wife told me I was more handsome because she loved me; my mistress said I was more handsome because she was afraid of me; and my friend said I was more handsome because

By keeping honest and transparent advisors like Wei Zheng (魏徵) by his side, Emperor Taizong’s (唐太宗) reign became one of China’s golden ages.

he wanted to ask me of a favour.

They were not telling me the truth, and so I remained blind to

the truth.

Continued on the next page

Epoch Times

Values & Virtues

FEBRUARY 6 - 19, 2015 37

Handling Criticism and Praise Effectively Continued from Page 36

“This made me think of Your Highness—all of your concubines and servants love and worship you; all of your generals and officials are afraid of you; and all of your citizens and even the rulers of neighbouring countries have something to ask of you.

“If none of them are willing to be sincere and honest with you, imagine how seriously blinded to the truth you’ll be.”

Upon hearing this, the Qi King immediately issued an order: “Any person who can point out my mistakes, or submit a report advising me to improve, will be highly rewarded.”

This order dramatically transformed the Qi’s state of affairs as an endless stream of officials fought to present their suggestions to the King. Thereafter, the State of Qi’s rule improved and it became even more powerful and properous.

Welcoming Critics and Criticism

remarked angrily to Empress Zhangsun(长孙皇后), “One day I will kill that upstart! That Wei Zheng criticises me in front of the entire court every day, and even contradicts me in public. It’s infuriating!”

Upon hearing this, Empress Zhangsun immediately congratulated the Emperor, “Your Highness is truly blessed. Because you are a wise and able emperor, you draw subordinates of integrity and responsibility.” The

Emperor calmed down after hearing her words.

Emperor Taizong is considered one of China’s greatest emperors, and his exemplary rule was made possible by his constant self-reflection and openness to criticism.

As demonstrated by him and the Qi King, handling criticism and praise positively attracts people of integrity, and provides an honest mirror for one to reflect upon and improve to higher standards.

Attn to all Ice-Skaters:

During the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang, there was a chancellor named Wei Zheng who was not afraid to directly criticise the emperor. Emperor Taizong respected and valued him, but occasionally he found Wei Zheng’s bluntness and persistence difficult to stomach.

During one such occasion, Emperor Taizong

ancient chinese wisdom

Keeping One’s Promises

By Epoch Times Staff

Zhuo Shu (卓恕） was well known during the time of the Three Empires (the kingdoms of Wei 220-265, Shu 221-263 and Wu 222-280). He was known for his honesty, and always kept his promises.

One day, Zhuo Shu visited his friend, the General Zhuge Ke （诸葛恪）, to say goodbye to him before traveling from Jianye (建业) (today’s Nanjing) to his hometown Huiji (会稽) (today’s Shaoxing/绍兴 in Zhejiang province). Zhuge Ke asked him when he would return from his hometown, and Zhuo Shu told him the time and day.

On the day when Zhuo Shu was supposed to return, Zhuge Ke invited several guests. He asked his guests not to start eating yet. He said: “Let us wait a little while for Zhuo Shu, he will certainly come. I know him well.”

The guests were surprised. “Huiji is one thousand miles from here, and besides, there are many rivers and lakes which separate Huiji and Jianye. How can you be so sure that he will return today?” While the guests asked this question, Zhuo Shu arrived as planned. The guests were very surprised.

Zhuge Ke said casually: “Neither a contract nor a person will hinder Zhuo Shu. Thus far, he has always kept his word and fulfilled his promise, because he truly lives by the maxim ‘to be true to one’s word’. It is just as what Yuan Fu (元符) from the Song Dynasty taught in his book about family discipline. Everything that was promised had to be fulfilled. One had to abide by the agreed upon time. That is called conviction.”

e at The Rink, Jcub

E

xperience a special Valentines Day and Spring ng Fes Festival at The Rink, Singapore’s one and only Olympic-size ice rink located in JCube!

A series of special events await lovebirds on 13 and 14 February from 8.45pm to 11.45pm.

First, enjoy a pink snowfall on The Rink, complete with a free flow of candy floss. Skaters can also look forward to The Rink’s mini snowman contest where participants with the best decorated snowmen get to walk away with a LG Pink Pocket photo printer worth $229. Don’t worry if you do not win, as the first 100 twin admission ticket holders who both turn up in pink will be given a free Valore Dome 3,000 mAh powerbank worth $49.90.

Skaters also enjoy an additional complimentary hour of ice skating with every purchase of public skating sessions from 13-15 Feb 2015. Visit www.TheRink.sg/happenings for more details.

Last but not least, there will be a special appearance by The Rink’s polar bear mascot JR as DJ for the night on 13th February between 8.45pm to 11.45pm.

After Valentine’s Day, enjoy an icy Spring Festival! The Rink is presenting a LED drum and dragon dance performances on ice with special water drum segment on 1 March, between 5.15pm to 7.15pm to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Expect an explosive night of sight and sound from a 15-men drum and dance crew featuring members of the Stamford Dragon Lion Dance Arts & Cultural Troupe, and students from Singapore Polytechnic and Yuhua Secondary School who only just recently learnt ice skating through The Rink’s Learn-to-Skate programme. Skaters can also look forward to a 30-mnute skating and photo-taking opportunity with The Rink’s bear mascot JR on the same night.

February is an exciting month for the The Rink @ JCube and it is not to be missed!

Singapore’s First Pink Snowfall on ice at The Rink (Valentine’s Day)

Singapore’s First LED water drum performance on ice at The Rink (Chinese New Year) Date and time

Date and time

1 Mar 2015, Sun (5.15pm – 7.15pm)

13 & 14 Feb 2015 (8.45pm – 11.45pm)

Ticket prices

Ticket prices $14 Adult, $12 Children (Admission) Skate under pink snowfall in a magical and romantic evening complemented with free flow of candy floss and take part in mini snowman building contest.

For enquiries, please contact:

The Rink

$14 Adult, $12 Children (Admission) Enjoy a LED dragon dance performance on ice that features a special water drum segment. To top it off, The Rink’s polar bear mascot, JR, will be making his appearance at the Rink.

2 Jurong East Central 1, Level 3, JCube, Singapore 609731 Email: info@therink.sg Website: www.therink.sg

Values & Virtues

38 FEBRUARY 6 - 19, 2015

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Epoch Times

15 Taboos

You Avoid on Chinese New Year Day

By Epoch Times There are many taboos during Chinese New Year according to traditional Chinese culture, and people still take them seriously. Here are 15 top things that people should avoid doing on the first day of the Chinese New Year, which fell on Jan.31 this year.

1. Married Women Should Not Visit Family

If a married woman goes home on New Year’s Day, she may eat her family out of house and home—meaning she’ll invite poverty. The other meaning is that a married woman has her own home, she is someone’s wife, and therefore she may also have a lot of visitors herself.

2. Don’t Eat Congee, Meat, or Fish for Breakfast

In the old days only the poor had to eat things like congee (Chinese porridge) for breakfast on New Year’s Day, so eating it suggests poverty.

Instead, you should eat cooked rice to invite wealth to the family for the whole year.

The morning of New Year’s day is also a time when all the gods are out and about, so out of respect Chinese people have a vegetarian breakfast and do not put meat or fish on the table.

3. Don’t Say a Person’s Name to Wake Them

On New Year’s Day morning, don’t use the person’s name to wake them up or encourage them to get up—otherwise you will have to urge them to do things all year.

12 3r

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4. Don’t Wake People with “Happy New Year!”

On New Year’s Day, do not wake sleeping people up with New Year greetings. You must wait until they rise or they will be bed-ridden the whole year.

5. Avoid Taking Medicine

The saying goes, “If you take medicine on New Year’s Day, you’ll be sick all year.” People also take that to include using preventive cures. Even the very ill should avoid taking medicine.

6. It’s Taboo to Use a Knife or Scissors

There is a saying: ”If you use a knife or scissors on the first day, quarrels or disputes are inevitable.”

7. Avoid Moving Financial Needle

the

The saying goes, “If you move the needle on new year’s day watch out, you may prick the dragon which will make you grow a stye.

It’s a play on words, as the character for stye and needle eye sound the same. Moving the needle refers to changing or making progress in a certain area. So, no money maters on New Years day.

8. Don’t Chop Wood

“On the first day, if you use an axe and split firewood, it can never come back (be mended).” Another play on words, it means is that you will not have wealth because firewood in Chinese is “chai,” which sounds a lot like the word for wealth, “cai.”

9. Avoid Borrowing Money

It is said: “If you start the year with someone else’s money, all year you’ll need loans; if you start the year lending money, all year you will suffer (household) losses.”

10. Avoid Breaking Furniture and Other Home Items

All year round broken furniture is considered unlucky. However, in today’s society, when children accidentally break furniture it will not matter as long as an elder quickly says: “A New Year has come, a New Year comes (for the broken object); no mishap in every New Year;” then you can change the bad luck to good luck.

11. Don’t Nap During New Year Celebrations

If you nap during Chinese New Year celebrations, you will likely be lazy all year. It is also considered rude to do because during that time you should receive many guests.

12. Do Not Sweep or Take Out Garbage

No sweeping or taking out the garbage on New Year’s Day because you might accidentally sweep or dump out the good luck or good fortune from the house.

13. Don’t Ask Others To Take From Your Pocket

During the New Year, don’t ask others to take things from your pocket, otherwise, all year others will take away your fortune.

14. Avoid Debt Collection

During the Chinese New Year, it is considered bad luck to collect debts from one another.

Do not collect debts or allow others to collect debt from you.

15. Avoid Doing Laundry

There is a water god, and the water god’s birthday is two days after the Chinese New Year begins. So, you don’t want to do laundry during the days in between.

Another tip for Chinese New Year is to avoid bickering of any kind. You should avoid yelling at children, young people shouldn’t fight, and there should be no family feuds. In the past, if these things occurred, friends and neighbours would come to persuade the quarrelers to stop.

Epoch Times

February 6 – 19, 2015 39

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Glacier Express, Landwasser Viaduct near Filisur, Graubünden

Grand Train Tour of Switzerland.

The Grand Train Tour of Switzerland represents the very best of Swiss public transport. It comprises the most attractive panorama rail routes across the country such as Glacier Express, Bernina Express, GoldenPass Line and Wilhelm Tell Express and can be booked at any time throughout the year.

You can start and stop off wherever you like along the way. And best of all you need only one ticket – the Swiss Travel Pass.

The key to Swiss public transport In Switzerland, travelling by public transport is pure pleasure. A 26,000-kilometre transport network – covered by a single system. The Swiss Travel System is your way for trouble-free travel by train, bus and boat to every corner of the country.

Exclusively for visitors from abroad, the Swiss Travel System has created a

selection of special tickets, covering virtually every travel requirement. With Swiss Travel Pass & Co travel by public transport is attractive, easy and trouble-free.

Whether you travel on one of Switzerland’s popular panorama routes, by PostBus over Alpine passes or set sail on a ship to new shores. And that’s still not all. With a Swiss Travel System ticket come along

General information

Regular and reliable The Swiss public transport system has been operating to a reliable and regular interval daily timetable for many years. To this day trains, buses and boats have lost nothing of their legendary precision and punctuality. They operate at regular half-hourly or hourly intervals – incl. direct connections from Geneva and Zurich airports.

For more information about the Grand Train Tour of Switzerland see SwissTravelSystem.com/ grandtraintour Booking information For more information, please call the following travel agency: ■■ Dynasty Travel 65364966 ■■ PriceBreaker 63172888 or visit MySwitzerland.com/rail

other bonus benefits such as free admission to more than 480 museums nationwide and 50% off most mountain railways. Children under age 16 travel free of charge with the Swiss Family Card when accompanied by at least one parent. Prices for a Swiss Travel Pass 3 days start from € 171 in 2nd class and from € 273 in 1st class.

Bernina Express, Brusio, Graubünden

ÉQUIVALENCE PANTONE

TRIANGLE TYPOGRAPHIE

PANTONE Process Cyan C DÉGRADÉ CYAN + MAGENTA + JAUNE