China has the third largest train system in the world (with both old-style conventional passenger trains and modern cross-country bullet trains) http://www.chinahighlights.com/tour/china-train-travel/ Romantic train journey in China? The only things you need are your passport and the E-numbers. Independent travelers love Chinatour http://chinatour.net/ because you can find all above services in one place (and yes, you can book whatever you …

Chinese music continues to evolve in the modern times, and more contemporary forms have also emerged, but different types of music have been recorded in historical Chinese documents from the early periods of Chinese civilization. Traditional Chinese music can be traced back 7,000 – 8,000 years based on the discovery of a bone flute made in the Neolithic Age. In …

His works are epic historical novels (always characterized by hallucinatory realism), and containing elements of black humor. Guan Moye (better known by the pen name Mo Yan), is a Chinese novelist. He was born in 1955, in Gaomi County in Shandong province to a family of farmers, and was 11 years old when the Cultural Revolution was launched. At the …

Chinese critics prefer to interpret Li Shangyin’s love poetry as allegory. Li Shangyin, is the love poet par excellence in the Chinese tradition. His poems set a trend for later Chinese love poetry. He was born into the lower aristocracy but lost his father, a low-ranking official, when he was 10 years old. Much of his love poetry has a …

AMRITA SHER GIL 1/3 – She was an Indian painter born to a Punjabi Sikh father and a Hungarian Jewish mother (sometimes known as India’s Frida Kahlo). An exceptional colourist, she was able to achieve special effects with colours that were unbridled and bold, in direct contrast to the pale hues in vogue among her contemporaries. Today she is considered …

It was in the 10th century that authentic Hindi poetry took its form. About 500 million people speak Hindi, in India and abroad, and the total number of people who can understand the language may be 800 million. Hindi can be traced back to as early as the seventh or eighth century. Hindi is the Fifth most spoken language in …

Writer, journalist and Indian anthropologist Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta. The son of a diplomat, he grew up in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. At the age of 13, he went to study in Dehradun, while the family had moved to Iran. Move briefly in the United States, knows his wife Deborah. He has taught creative writing at Columbia University …