Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province — It shouldn’t come as any surprise that one of the great perks of working in China is the food.  I’m only half-joking when I say that my colleagues and I rate field assignments here more on the cuisine than anything else.

And for that reason alone Hunan is certainly one of the better places to visit.  Considered one of the great eight regional cuisines of China, its food is best known for its fiery flavor.

Moreover, I’d been cheated out of an opportunity to sample local dishes the last time we were in the central China province.  It was around two years ago, when the worst ice storms ever to hit the country struck the eastern parts of central and southern China.  My memory of Hunan was of downed power lines and rice paddies covered with a thick layer of ice. Certainly not of food.  Trying to make our way up by perilous road from neighboring Guangdong, we didn’t have time to eat.

So once we knew we were off to Hunan this week, my stomach started rumbling.  Particularly after a month-long assignment in Haiti, where for thirty days I dined on rice and beans almost every dinner.  Yes, rice and beans for thirty days.

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By Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent

BAGHDAD _ For a country recovering from a single party dictatorship, Iraqis have had more elections in the last five years than Americans. But elections in Iraq, while once hailed as a proof of success, have also created bloodshed and chaos. This election is has the potential to be no different, but could also put Iraq on a peaceful path and allow American troops to leave here with their heads high and finally – honestly – say, mission accomplished.
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Barry Keller is a hydrogeophysicst who has a home in Pichilemu, a beach town in central Chile known as a surfer’s paradise.

He shares this FirstPerson report:

We were at home during the quake at 3:34 a.m. local time. There were very strong motions for about a minute. Our house in Pichilemu is a four-story (counting the roof deck) structure of poured concrete and blocks, with lots of rebar, anchored by meter cube concrete blocks into the bedrock. It is strong! Being tall, the house DOES move – a natural analog seismometer. 

The night of the quake, 3:34 a.m. local time, was clear and calm. The bright full moon may have helped evacuations. We live on a hill and the roundabout below our driveway was filled with 20 to 30 cars within minutes. We quickly had a lot of company. At the next hill over, the one authorities told people to evacuate to, there were about 300 cars. By the next night, people were camping in both spots.

Our home’s window latches rattled with every aftershock but the damage was definitely minimal compared to what was suffered about
100 kilometers southeast.

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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province – It was an interesting formula.

“One Japanese tourist spends the same as two Korean tourists,” said Wang Ai Ming, an official from the Hunan tourism bureau.  “And one Korean spends as much as three Chinese tourists.”

Unfortunately for our minor functionary from Zhangjiajie, the Japanese and especially the Koreans haven’t been spending much lately.

While most of China’s economy has powered through the global recession, tourism has not.  Remote destinations like Zhangjiajie in northwestern Hunan have been hit hard.

A mountainous region of stunning beauty in the heart of China, Zhangjiajie attracted nearly as many as half a million people in the 2006-07 season.  The bulk of them came from South Korea, followed by Japan, and then so-called Greater China, includes Hong Kong and Taiwan.

But when the downturn swept east from west in late 2008, severely weakening
South Korea’s economy, the number of tourists to Zhangjiajie more than halved. 

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Chinese netizens went into somewhat of a tizzy last week when they discovered their president had set up an account on the microblogging section of www.people.com.cn, the Web portal of the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of Communist Party of China.

With no advance notice or publicity, his name and title attracted tens of thousands of followers in just a few hours. Not that Hu Jintao, also known as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, was sitting at desktop typing away — the photo of President Hu was a default cartoon figure, and there were no posts under his account.

Despite the blankness of the president’s “scarf” (the word “scarf” is used as a shorthand for “microblog” because they sound the same in Chinese), fans expressed their opinions in thousands of posts. Some wished the president a happy new year, some wanted direct communication, and some conveyed disappointment.

A user called Wine Red Ice Blue expressed impatience: “Let all of us just say something to Brother Hu … we are all waiting!” Many others also left messages saying they are anxious to read Hu’s first post.

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