China Exotica: Yoga at 2,000 metres and vending hot Noodles

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to internationalise yoga may be yielding unexpected results. China, which boasts of its own exercise regimes, may be taking to the Indian way of healthy moves. So much so that yoga is being projected as the latest in thing.

China’s People’s Daily on Tuesday carried a series of photographs showing young girls practicing yoga on a mountain peak 2,000 metres high. The cliff exercises at Funiu  mountain in country’s central Henan province may be China’s way of popularising it even more.

Hot Beef Noodles: China has unveiled what may be the world’s first hot beef noodles vending machine in Shanghai. According to China Daily, customers can choose the flavour on a screen and one minute later they can enjoy a bowl of “delicious beef noodles cooked by the machine”. The machine is expected to be widely installed in Shanghai this October, the daily said.

Worshipping Beauty: Move over Aphrodite and Venus, China has its own contemporary Goddess of Beauty which even has a festival named after Yang’esha. Several activities are held during the cultural festivities in Jianhe County, in southwest China’s Guizhou province, according to official news agency Xinhua. Yang’esha is worshipped by the Miao ethnic group in the region.

Stock market dishes: Those who have lost a fortune on the stock market may take heart. A restaurant in Beijing has ‘invented’ a series of ‘red-coloured-dishes’ which are supposed to bring customers a rebound in stock prices, according to Chinanews. Red is for rising prices and green for a fall in China, opposite of the colours in India and rest of the world.

Among the exotic dishes to reverse the misfortune in scrips is Hot and Spicy Crayfish, Duck Blood and Vermicelli Soup and Red Burned Lion Head. Lion head (made from Pork meatballs in the shape of a lion’s head) and stock market bulls have a similar pronunciation in Chinese. (IANS)