Asian Geographic Magazines

Fifteen explorers embarked on the trip of a lifetime, tracing the history of the Silk Road in China. Asian Geographic’s Shellen Teh shares her experience of the expedition – the first in a series of three

MICHAEL YAMASHITA has been shooting for National Geographic magazine for over 30 years, combining his passions for photography and travel.

Artist Yang Liu challenges the boundaries of art with her bold works and tongue-in-cheek perspectives on modernity and cultural difference. Presented in minimalistic spreads with striking colours, her crystal clear messages are a testament to the oppidan life and a comfort to all caught at the cultural crossroads of our cosmopolitan world. Yang Liu speaks to Asian Geographic's Sarah...

A Singaporean traveller shares a travelogue of his journey from Lanzhou to Dunhuang, offering a taste of what explorers can look forward to on the Asian Geographic Silk Road China Expedition in 2017.

It’s seven in the morning, but the frosty Mongolian steppe is still pitch black. With a thick blanket of clouds covering the starry sky, darkness is pierced by the hundreds of eerie lights emanating from the eyes of a large sheep herd.

Not many people in the Middle East have the freedom to enjoy art and marvel at their cultural history. This fear has been cultivated by certain doctrines which state that the admiration of artistic work is heretical. There is a link in some Middle Eastern cultures between statues and the worship of idols; the appreciation of statues is therefore often construed as blasphemous in some religious sects. The rampant looting of centuries-old artefacts and the ongoing destruction of thousands of years of antiquities have brought about a sense of deep loss and bewilderment for many people, in the Middle East, and abroad.

As the sun sets, a vanguard of boys enters the ceremonial grounds, shouldering large V-shaped objects covered in colourful plastic streamers and bells. They bounce up and down to set a beat while seated onlookers look towards the line of approaching Saisiyat tribespeople. As they begin to flood into the grounds, rocking their bodies as they step in time with the jangling bells, their haunting singing – energetic, but mournful – rises in volume.

For well over a century, women of the South Korean island province of Jeju – “the Land of Women” – have made their living by freediving – ill-equipped – to the depths of the ocean to harvest seaweed and shellfish. Reaching depths of over 10 metres in chilly waters, and lasting between two to three minutes on a single gulp of air, over 100 times a day, the Hae-Nyeo, or “sea women”, are often seen as myth-like mermaids.