If there is one classic of sports celebrations, it is motor racing, where victories are showered with champagne (including competitors, hostesses and the team at the foot of the podium). It is something that has transcended to the point that other disciplines also do the same. But no one asks why, what is the reason…Continue readingBeijing-Paris, the automobile race of 1907 that inaugurated the tradition of celebrating victory with champagne
China
The classic image we have of piracy is that of a masculine and Caribbean world, something that would have to be quite nuanced. Firstly, because although it is true that buccaneers and filibusters operated basically in the Caribbean and its surroundings, it is also true that piracy is probably one of the oldest occupations in…Continue readingThe Chinese woman who became queen of piracy with a fleet of hundreds of ships
A few years ago I was invited to dinner by some Bengali friends and when we sat down what was my surprise to see that there was a knife but no fork, even though the menu was based on rice and chicken. They used their hands to eat it and, wherever you go, do what…Continue readingHow two Byzantine princesses scandalized Europe by using a fork
The famous terracotta warriors are only a part of the gigantic mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of unified China, who reigned between 221 and 210 BC. In fact, the complex, located 30 kilometers east of Xian in the northwest of the country, houses more than 400 tombs covering the impressive area of…Continue readingRivers and seas made of mercury inside the tomb of China’s first emperor, sealed 2,200 years ago
There are times when Nature seems capricious and turns something that should fall into the category of normal into a visual spectacle that, in the end, serves to draw attention to it and, paradoxically, to protect it. It happens with some of those living beings that we can consider rare and also happens in certain…Continue readingThe spectacular coloured mountains of China and Peru
Traditional medicine in Asia and the Middle East is truffled in miracle remedies based on products that, in reality, lack the slightest healing property. Cases such as the false aphrodisiac faculty of the rhinoceros horn or the use of tiger bones, in both cases endangering the respective species, are well known, but surely the most…Continue readingMellification, the process of dissolving a human body in honey to create a healing confection
Within the enigmatic and unknown that, in most cases, the history of China is already for us, there are some weird episodes in which it is difficult to establish where reality ends and where the myth begins, just as it also happens with some Roman emperors, whose strange behaviour is now being called into doubt.…Continue readingThe prank that caused the losing of the throne and the end of his dynasty to the Chinese king You