Mak Yuet Shan, 93, marveled at an old table that once had been used for washing and preparing Chinese vegetables. It brought back fond memories, she said.

Shan traveled by bus from Oakland on Friday with about 40 other Chinese-born senior citizens to see Marysville's old Chinatown, once California's largest outside San Francisco.

The group, affiliated with The Salvation Army Oakland Chinatown Corps and Community Center, had arranged in advance for tours of the Chinese American Museum of Northern California and the Bok Kai Temple, both on First Street in Marysville.

The sight of Romanesque architecture in rural China is a surprise that masks a greater problem for the emerging economic powerhouse. The country learnt of other cultures’ designs through the loss of its people to emigration. Foreign correspondent Clifford Coonan reports

The classic image of farmers tending their rice and tobacco fields in southern China is disturbed by the fortified castle in Italian Renaissance style.

Lovers, airport, goodbye kiss. Together these words did not make up a romantic story, but created an astonishing incident.

On January 3, at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Jiang Haisong, a 28-year-old Chinese overseas PhD student, trespassed into a restricted area in order to kiss his girlfriend goodbye.

This led to a six-hour closure of the airport and the delay of 100 flights and thousands of passengers' trips.

Malin Tom is an "emotional man," which explains why he kept his journey through Angel Island mostly to himself for 60 years.

"I did not want to cry in front of people," says Tom, now 81 and living in Santa Clara. "It is a sad story. I was so scared and poor. I was ashamed, and Chinese don't talk about their shame."

But he could not resist a granddaughter's plea a few years ago. Would he talk to her classmates about passing through the "Ellis Island of the West"?

"My granddaughter gave me courage."

Atlanta is one of more than 70 stops on Shen Yun Performing Arts' 2010 world tour. Shen Yun's mission is to restore the traditional Chinese culture through Chinese classical dance and music, that has been lost under decades of communist rule.

[Ms. Wang, Technology Company Marketing Director]:

MEMPHIS, Tenn.—World traveling flight attendant Ms. Wong wore red lipstick, sophistication, and a sense of humor to the Memphis performance of New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts. She joked about China’s contributions spreading to the rest of the world.

“The girls that looked like they were flowing on water—to see their delicate foot movements—and it seemed like they just floated across the stage, [that] was when the beauty of the artistry hit me,” she said with an open, tender expression.

Mainland tourists spent $42 billion overseas last year

China's statistics from 2009 are expected to show its first deficit in tourism, due to a weak global economy and a strong travel incentive at home, a senior researcher said.

China Tourism Academy, the think tank for the country's tourism authority, said that mainland tourists spent some $42 billion in overseas destinations including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan last year.

At the same time, overseas tourists spent only $38 billion on the mainland, down by 7 percent year-on-year.

The magnitude-7.3 earthquake, the worst and strongest ever recorded in the Caribbean nation of Haiti in 200 years, collapsed a hospital in a hillside district of Port-au-Prince, and the presidential palace, the mansions of the finance and public works ministries, and the parliament building and a cathedral in Port-au-Prince were also damaged.

Electric power supplies, transportation, communications and other facilities paralyzed on the whole, so people of the outside world could hardly get to know the post-quake damages and casualties in the country.

Following on the heels of Christmas 2009, the 2010 New Year is approaching. At the end of the economic winter of 2009, overseas Chinese are taking stock of their business in the past year, and at the same time pulling themselves together and looking forward to a better year.

Moscow

Rapper Jin’s career journey has been ‘ruff’ at times, now his music has taken him to his ancestors’ country.

If you think that rapper Jin Au-Yeung is lying low somewhere in the United States, you are mistaken. The “106 and Park” Freestyle Friday Champ has been living in Hong Kong since May 2009 where it is hard to walk down the street without seeing him.