Jesuit’s rich portrait of 17th century China, as told to a Florentine scientist, intrigued a fragmented Europe Florentine writer Lorenzo Magalotti published Relazione della China after a colourful evening’s chat in 1665 with Austrian Jesuit priest Father Johann Grueber, who had spent several years in China. Photo: Wellcome Library, London.
Marco Polo wasn t the only adventurer who returned from China with a treasure trove of tales and mesmerising accounts of the Orient. For centuries, missionaries and traders were the savvy travellers who unlocked the mysteries of the Far East, relating them to avid European scholars and readers hungry for all things exotic.
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Is Covid-19 terminal for the rising middle classes of Malaysia and Indonesia? A woman sits on an art installation at Trans Studio in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo: Reuters
Before Covid-19 hammered the Malaysian economy, Kuala Lumpur native Jeremy Johnson, 43, made 7,000 ringgit (US$1,670) a month as the general manager of a coffee company and even had a car as part of his work benefits. His family of six were firmly entrenched in the middle class - what Malaysia calls the M40, for the 40 per cent of households considered middle income , defined as those earning 4,850 ringgit to 10,959 ringgit a month.
But movement restrictions forcing people to work from home and cautious spending from consumers hit his company hard and Johnson lost his job in August last year. Since he was the sole breadwinner, that one change swept his family into the low-income group. He is unable to access government handouts and relies on assistance from his family and friends from church.