Dubai’s luxury shopping scene

Derek Khan is a lifestyle consultant and personal shopper for some of Dubai’s wealthiest and most famous residents. With a little black book full of VIP contacts from around the world, he does much of his shopping at the Dubai Mall, one of the world’s largest shopping centres.



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Why children as young as three are sent to boarding school in China

Family ties are hugely important in China, but thousands of Chinese parents are still sending children as young as three away to boarding school. Why do they do it?

Kelly Jiang bounces into her kindergarten classroom, her parents a few steps behind.

"Bye Mum and Dad," the four-year-old trills, with barely a backwards glance.
As her parents wave farewell, she's already happily chatting to her teacher and her classmates.

Japan's amazing lunchboxes

Making a packed lunch for your children to take to school is a chore performed by parents around the world. 
But in Japan, it is not just the taste and healthiness of the meal that is important - but how it looks. 
The country's ancient emphasis on food presentation has been transformed into a trend for character bento - packed lunches made to look like pandas, teddy bears or even real people. 
The BBC's Tokyo correspondent Roland Buerk has been finding out more.



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Why piano-mania grips China’s children

In Mao’s China, pianos were destroyed as despised symbols of the bourgeoisie – but now an estimated 40m children are learning the instrument. What has changed? Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore investigates. 

Keng Zhou holds a prestigious position as dean of the International Piano Academy at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. But he first learnt to play in 1973 not on a gleaming grand piano but on an instrument’s battered remains. The legs had been sawn off for fuel and its cover removed to create a makeshift table. For years in Mao’s China, Western classical music was viewed suspiciously as a tool of imperialism and the piano a despised instrument of the bourgeoisie.

Salmonella in Spices Prompts Changes in Farming

IDUKKI, India — Spices grown in the mist-shrouded Western Ghats here have fueled wars, fortunes and even the discovery of continents, and for thousands of years farmers harvested them in the same traditional ways. Until now. 

Science has revealed what ancient kings and sultans never knew: instead of improving health, spices sometimes make people very sick, so Indian government officials are quietly pushing some of the most far-reaching changes ever in the way farmers here pick, dry and thresh their rich bounty. 

China thirsty for wine

Tom Brook profiles a documentary in the market for distributors at Cannes that examines China’s growing interest in fine French wines. China’s economic ascendancy has created a thirst for luxury goods – and produced a bubble in wine prices. But whereas the buyers of the most expensive wines in the West tend to be investors, the Chinese are buying them to drink. 

Directors David Roach and Warwick Ross’ film Red Obsession examines the effect of China’s new wealth on the wine industry in Bordeaux, on domestic drinking habits and on China’s perception abroad.



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Why this could be one of the happiest countries on earth?

Bhutan is one of the poorest and least developed nations in the world but it has been ranked the happiest nation in Asia and eighth happiest in the world in a survey. Plastic bags are banned, tobacco is almost illegal and the country measures the wellbeing of its people by Gross National Happiness (GNH) rather than Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Carmen Roberts went to find out why Bhutan is such a land of contentment.



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Gulf gets a taste for luxury foods

Thousands of food producers are in the United Arab Emirates this week, looking to get their goods on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus.

Food imports into the Gulf are expected to double by 2020, making it an important market in the face of sluggish economies elsewhere.



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Meet the 'tutor kings and queens'

In Hong Kong, good exam results are essential. The pressure for success has created a new generation of tutors with a rock star approach to self-promotion. They strike glamorous poses in posters in shopping malls and on the sides of buses.

But they are not movie stars or supermodels: they are Hong Kong's A-list "tutor kings" and "tutor queens", offering pupils a chance to improve mediocre grades.

In Hong Kong's consumer culture, looks sell. Celebrity tutors in their sophisticated hair-dos and designer trappings are treated like idols by their young fans who flock to their classes.

And they have earnings to match - some have become millionaires and appear regularly on television shows.



Full article here.