Longreads

Nearly 50 years ago, Nicholas Shakespeare's family was forced to flee Cambodia. Now he and his father return for the first time since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and find ordinary Cambodians…

To clarify what Old World Wandering will produce, we’ve decided to offer all of our backers – present and future – a subscription to Old World Wandering’s long-form…

Of the 34 miners killed at Marikana, no more than a dozen of the dead were captured in news footage shot at the scene. The majority of those who died, according to surviving strikers and researchers,…

Angkor Wat’s pinecone-tower contours are already etched onto my mind when Iain and I cycle towards them in the crisp dawn air. You can’t avoid images of the temple in Siem Reap, where…

It is a tree like many others. Neither old nor distinctively tall, it has rough, brittle bark and a pile of bricks at its base. Sticks of incense left unlit between the bricks might mark the tree out…

People doing early-morning taichi in Shanghai Photograph: Eugene Hoshiko/AP When I moved to Beijing in August 2003, I believed I had the best job in the world: working for my favourite newspaper in…

The Reincarnated Capital May 24, 2012 Southeast Asian history is the story of city-states like Bangkok and Ayutthaya, which are reincarnations, in their way, one of the other, with a shared karma.…

Bill Porter Author and translator Bill Porter It’s a Sunday afternoon and Beijing’s biggest bookstore is preparing for a major event: the launch of a new book by a bestselling American author, who…

Claire van den Heever on chaos and collective prayer at the Attukal Pongala festival in Trivandrum, India:

"Every year in India’s southernmost city, millions of women build millions of fires in the open street and cook a pot of rice on the flames. They travel to the city on slow trains or local buses crammed full, spend days guarding the bricks on which their fire will burn and, during a long day of sweltering heat and crowds and noise, remind the city of their strength and devotion, to both their families and Attukal Devi, the goddess to whom the Attukal Pongala Festival is dedicated. It is their belief in her powers – to bless, to help and to heal – that once a year transforms Trivandrum."

"The festival has become hugely popular over the past decade. When 1.5 million women assembled to cook rice for the goddess in 1997, the festival had entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest annual gathering of women anywhere. This year, there were said to be up to 3 million women participating."