ASIA
Title: Asia Food
URL: http://www.asiafood.org/features.cfm
The Asia Society has provided the features of this site replete with information on the foods, the recipes, and the eating habits and customs of many Asian nations. In addition to separate pages for each Asian country and a search engine for recipes by keyword, region, or type of dish, there are articles about Asian food and some video clips.
Title: Puppetry in Asia: A select bibliography
URL: http://www.nla.gov.au/asian/guides/puppetry.html
This is not a bibliography of Internet resources but rather of print information on puppetry in Asia. The most extensive sections pertain to Indonesia and Japan; not all citations are in English.
Title: IMDb Country Browser
URL: http://us.imdb.com/Sections/Countries/
A huge collection of Web pages, useful for information on films made throughout the world. One clicks on the name of a country and can either search or browse the listings. The individual listings provide casting, dates, and commentary about the movie.
Title: History of Tea
URL: http://www.geocities.com/lgol27/HistoryTea.htm
This site describes the history of tea and the manufacturing processes which lead to creating the variety of types and grades of tea. There are separate pages describing the history of tea in China, Japan, and Sri Lanka with links on those pages to other sources of information about tea.
SOUTH ASIA
Title: The Music of South Asia
URL: http://www.eyeneer.com/World/Sa/
This article, written by an ethnomusicologist, discusses the history and the form of the music of the region with a focus on the culture and music of India.
Title: South Asian Women’s Cinema
URL: http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/users/sawweb/sawnet/cinema.html
Annotated listings of the films of female filmmakers in South Asia dominate this site. There are also links to reviews, to filmmaker homepages, and to sources where one can rent or purchase films.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Title: Southeast Asian Musical Instruments
URL: http://www.larkinam.com/MenComNet/Business/Retail/ Larknet/seasia
This commercial site, which sells instruments from many world cultures, has photos and annotations to describe the musical instruments used in several Southeast Asian nations.
Title: Fiction in Southeast Asia
URL: http://www.cpamedia.com/articles/20010608_01/
In this article a brief overview of fiction with Southeast Asian themes is followed by short reviews of the “Fictional Top Ten” novels of this genre.
CHINA
Title: Hong Kong: Chinese Dining Beliefs and Etiquette
URL: http://www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/hongkong/ hkdine.html
This article, along with many others linked to this page, explores the customs and traditions followed at Chinese meals. There’s information on seating, on chopsticks, on teatime, and on other Chinese culinary topics.
Title: Novel Translations
URL: http://www.wuxiaworld.com/moinllieon/
Translations of popular Chinese novels appear on these pages. There are translations of some chapters of books by the most popular novelist, Jin Yong, and of Gu Long. Links are provided to other sites for these authors and for other popular novel and TV sources.
INDIA
Title: The Indian Food Reference Guide
URL: http://www.sanjeevkapoor.com/reference/default.asp
This page is part of a portal to Indian recipes and nutrition. The “Reference Guide” has two major categories: “Glossary” and “Cuisine of the Month.” The glossary consists of words pertaining to food translated from English into many other languages such as Hindi, Tamil and Bengali. The “Cuisine of the Month” offers information on the region, the festivals and traditions, and the cuisine. There is an archive of previously described regions in India.
Title: Sports in India
URL: http://www.meadev.nic.in/sports/sports.htm
The core of this site is the subject of traditional games in various regions of India. There are also some pages dedicated to other sports like cricket and golf.
Title: The Bollywood Movie Database
URL: http://www.bollywood.de/
The size of the movie industry in India is legendary so it is no surprise that there are many sites devoted to “Bollywood.” What might be most surprising is that one of the best sites is this one, created and maintained in Germany. This database has extensive documentation about the actors, the directors, and the films of India in addition to reviews and other data of interest.
INDONESIA
Title: Gamelan, Balinese Music
URL: http://www.balifolder.com/reference/dance/09,01.shtml
This site covers many aspects of Gamelan, a group of percussionists, from the history to the making of the instruments to the types of performances and occasions at which one hears the Gamelan orchestra. To hear sound clips of Gamelan performances, one can go to an unrelated site, “Gongcast,” which has ongoing broadcasts of Gamelan: http://www.gamelan.org/AGI/gongcast.html
JAPAN
Title: Japan-Japan: Philatelic Resources
URL: http://www.japan-japan.com/resource.htm
For those who are interested in learning about stamp collecting in Japan, this site offers a good introduction. In addition to on-line galleries, there are links to other sites that specialize in subjects connected to Japanese stamp collecting.
Title: Japanese Popular Culture in the Classroom
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~japan/digest3.html
Part of the Japan Digest series from the National Clearinghouse for U.S.-Japan Studies, this article provides guidance for teachers who may wish to use Japanese manga or anime to shed light on contemporary issues in Japan. Although the article was written in 1994, the suggestions and the references still are useful today.
Title: Aikido Net
URL: http://www.aikido.ne.jp/english/main_e.html
This site has a number of nice features; among them are the short “Flash” movies of the moves one can make in Aikido. There is also a search engine for Dojo sites in Japan.
KOREA
Title: Hidden Korea
URL: http://www.pbs.org/hiddenkorea/
While the focus of this site, and the associated PBS video, is food, other aspects of the Korean culture are also discussed; these include religion, ancestral traditions, and village life. In addition to descriptions of typical foods, there are recipes for Korean dishes.
TIBET
Title: Music, Chants, Mantras of Tibet
URL: http://www.mehndiskinart.com/tibet_music.htm
This site highlights twelve recordings of Tibetan music which can be purchased through links to Amazon.com. Once on the Amazon site, there are numerous thirty-second sound bites for these recordings. In this way, one can get a sampling of Tibetan music.
Title: Tibetan Musical Instruments
URL: http://www.larkinam.com/MenComNet/Business/Retail/Larknet/tibet
This page, which is part of a larger site mentioned above in the Southeast Asian section, deals with the traditional musical instruments of Tibet. There are photos and notations for each instrument.