It was the striking picture of Mao Tse-Tung--with ‘slashes’ of black paint across his face--that caught my eye as I was perusing the CS Monitor this morning. And I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the image is actually from the cover of the latest book by Denise Chong, from my hometown of Vancouver.

Chong, an economist working for the Canadian government, changed careers in the 1980s and ended up an award-winning writer. She is also the author of The Girl in the Picture (2000), a biographical and historical account of Kim Phuc, the young girl whose screaming and naked image taken during the Vietnam War is still known around the world.

Chong’s much anticipated latest book is Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship, and it has already been getting some good reviews.

The Montreal Gazette calls the book a ‘gem,’ saying, ‘While telling this highly charged political story, Chong never loses sight of the human factor, nor of the toll that an authoritarian society takes on the individual.’ Meanwhile, the Quill and Quire also praises the book, noting: ‘Chong is a masterful storyteller. . . .Egg on Mao is a lovely and fascinating look at not only China, but also the power of friendship and human decency.’

Egg on Mao is, like The Girl in the Picture, a historical and biographical tale centered on Lu Decheng, a rural bus mechanic who in 1989, along with two friends, infamously defamed a portrait of Mao Tse-tung in Tiananmen Square with paint-filled eggs. The Canadian Newswire describes the account as an exploration of ‘whether repression and imprisonment, or even time itself, can douse the flame of desire for human rights.’

Agus Purnomo, considered a rising young star in Indonesia’s abstract art scene, is going international--including to Tokyo, where his work is currently on display. His accolades already include the Nokia Art Award, the Jakarta Art Award in 2007 and being selected for the International Print and Drawing Biennale in Taiwan in 2006.

For some captivating details on Purnomo’s background, there’s no better person to turn to than Asian Collection gallery owner Robert Tobin. Tobin, who also goes by the moniker ‘Tokyo Art Guy’, explained to me recently how an ill-fated trip by Purnomo to the supermarket some years ago actually became the catalyst of the young artist’s career.

According to Tobin, after being overcharged for his groceries, Purnomo went back to the store to complain, but couldn’t get his money back. ‘He thought “everything is being reduced to numbers today”--and then took out his frustration on the canvas,’ Tobin told me. ‘At [that] time he did more figurative works [but] the irony is that the numbers in his work are now a way for us to rediscover our humanity.’

Tobin added that Purnomo uses his pieces to express a wide variety of emotions, and says the process is both cathartic and like a diary for him. Visitors also have said they find his work joyful and engaging.

And Tobin says some of his own assumptions have proven wrong when it comes to Purnomo’s art. ‘I thought they would be most popular with people in banking and finance--numbers people,’ he said. ‘But they’re much more universal. Some people don't notice the numbers until we point it out.’

Purnomo’s work is currently on display at Asian Collection in Tokyo.

Five times as many people have died from heroin overdoses in NATO nations over the past 8 years than the total number of NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan, according to the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). This week the group released their report on the issue: ‘Addiction, Crime and Insurgency: The transnational threat of Afghan opium.’

It says 100,000 people die from opium abuse each year, out of an estimated 15 million users worldwide. Europe tops the user list, with China, Pakistan, India and other parts of Asia also ranked as major consuming nations. Aids/HIV are cited as a closely related problem.

In quite a vivid statement, UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa describes the situation in the region: ‘The Silk Route, turned into a heroin route, is carving out a path of death and violence through one of the world's most strategic yet volatile regions.’

Afghanistan now produces 92 per cent of the world's opium in a market worth around $65 billion, and the production of the substance has surged in the past decade, exceeding worldwide consumption levels.

The report also notes an interesting fact: there is an unaccounted stockpile of 12,000 tons of opium believed to be stored in Afghanistan and possibly also in transit.

But in an interesting opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal some time back, Theodore Dalrymple questioned the conventional wisdom on opium consumption (‘Poppycock’). He basically argued that quitting opium is perhaps not as tough as some would like to make it out to be, and came up with some unique perspectives to try and back this up, including one which actually credits Chairman Mao as a drug therapist for the masses:

‘Thousands of American servicemen returning from Vietnam, where they had addicted themselves to heroin, gave up on their return home without any assistance whatsoever.’

‘…In China, millions of Chinese addicts gave up with only minimal help: Mao Tse-Tung's credible offer to shoot them if they did not. There is thus no question that Mao was the greatest drug-addiction therapist in history.’

This week a study revealed possible good news for type 2 diabetics…of drinking age. The new findings suggest that a compound contained in red wine may work to moderate insulin levels, as was shown in experiments with mice. Resveratrol, found in red wine, is a plant substance that is also sold as a nutritional supplement for claimed potential anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory and blood-sugar-lowering effects. This is just another in a steady flow of pro-wine reports.

And certainly for reasons beyond just its potential health benefits, Asian markets have been rapidly taking up the wine trend in recent years. This week alone, two major spirits events are taking place in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Wine for Asia, an annual three-day wine and spirits show runs from October 22 to 24 at the Sun-Tec City in Singapore. Organizers are said to be very upbeat despite the global recession. At last year’s event, they reported a growing Thai, Indian and Chinese presence, judging from the number of country delegates in attendance.  

Wine & Gourmet Asia in Macau will also run between October 22 and 24, and is a large-scale industry event that is supported by organizations like the Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute and the Macau Government Tourist Office. This event is expected to draw in over 10,000 visitors.

And coming next month is the 2009 Hong Kong International Wine and Spirits Fair which will be held from November 4 to 6 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and feature ‘the world’s first truly Asian wine competition.’

The Asian market for wine, minus Japan, is forecast to grow at an ‘extraordinary 10 to 20 per cent’ rate per year over the next 5 years according to Allen Gibbons, who is the executive director of the International Wine and Spirit Competition in London.

Since Hong Kong and Macau dropped their taxes on wine in 2008, the overall price of wine has fallen in both regions, while foreign imports and sales have soared. For some local information on HK, there’s an article of interest in the Wall Street Journal this week (‘In Hong Kong, The Stirrings of a Serious Wine Scene’). Jake Lee asserts: ‘…venues for wine—shops, tasting bars and even a winery—now flourish in the city’ and goes onto describe some of the ‘best and most interesting sites’ for wine to be found right now in Hong Kong.

On Saturday, 250 or so Sri Lankan refugees ended their 2-day hunger strike at an Indonesian port. And while they continue to appeal to Kevin Rudd for permission to seek asylum in the land down under, the Australian PM is standing firm in his resolve to uphold current national anti-smuggling policies.

It’s ironic that this show of resistance coincided with World Food Day on Friday, Oct 16. The day was created 64 years ago to mark the founding of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

This year’s World Food Day theme is: ‘Achieving food security in times of crisis.’ The day is now often dubbed ‘World Hunger Day’ to reflect current reality--the FAO estimates that the number of people going hungry could increase by 100 million this year and therefore pass the 1 billion mark for the first time in history.

The seriousness of the situation is underscored in the 50-plus page 2009 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report released this month by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Congo tops the list of hungry nations this year while Bangladesh, India, Cambodia and Pakistan stand out in the Asia-Pacific region as being in the ‘alarming’ level category. An overall tool for calculating hunger and malnutrition around the world, this year’s report focuses heavily on the idea that a key part of the solution is increasing gender equality. The evidence presented shows that higher levels of hunger are associated with lower literacy rates and access to education for women.

The World Summit on Food Security will take place in Rome, Italy, between November 16 and 18 this year.

Meanwhile, Australia continues to see a huge increase in asylum seekers as of late--the Sri Lankans assert that the recent defeat of the Tamil Tigers has put them in danger of becoming victims of genocide. Harry Purwanto, an immigration chief in West Java attests to this, saying, ‘You got to ask yourself why these women and children...men risk their lives coming over this ocean, stay in the jungle for one month…It is out of desperateness to run away from genocide.’