814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS Reading Exercises Tuesday 1 February marks the Lunar New Year for 2022 - celebrated in China, East Asia and across the world. The celebrations see people feast with relatives, watch parades and pray for good fortune in the year ahead. What happens in the festival? Celebrations begin with the rising of the second new moon after the winter solstice (21 December). This can occur on any date between 21 January and 20 February. Also known as the Spring Festival, New Year festivities usher out the old year and are meant to bring luck and prosperity in the new one.
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS There are family banquets and outdoor spectacles featuring firecrackers, fireworks and often dancing dragons. The major celebrations are held on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. In China, millions travel - sometimes thousands of miles - to celebrate with their families. People decorate their houses with red for good luck and children are given money in bright red envelopes. Celebrations last for two weeks, ending on 15 February this year with the lantern festival, which marks the full moon. Since the 1990s, people in China have been given a week off work for New Year. According to China's Ministry of Commerce, people nowadays spend more than 820bn yuan (£96bn) on shopping and dining during this period. Year of the Tiger Each year is associated with one of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac. This year is the Year of the Tiger. It is said that children born in the year ahead will be brave, competitive and strong. In Cantonese, the main language of southern China and Hong Kong, the New Year greeting is "Gong Hei Fat Choy" (恭喜發財), which means "wishing you prosperity." In Mandarin, people say "Xin Nian Kuai Le" (新年快乐), which simply means "Happy New Year". What are the origins of the New Year festival in China? Chinese New Year is thought to date back to the 14th century BC, when the Shang dynasty ruled. Its origins are steeped in legend. One story says that a monster named Nian ("Year") attacked villagers at the start of every year. Nian was afraid of loud noises, bright lights and the colour red. People used these things to chase the beast away. Since the dragon is a Chinese symbol of power and good fortune, many areas of the country have dragon dancing, during which a long, colourful dragon puppet is paraded through the streets, as the highlight of festivities. New Year is also the time when people clean their homes thoroughly to get rid of any bad luck left over from the old year. How do other Asian countries celebrate? In Vietnam, the day is called Tết Nguyên Đán, or Tết, for short, meaning Festival of the First Morning of the First Day. People clean their houses and decorate them with fresh flowers, such as peach blossoms and kumquats. The pink of the peach blossom represents energy and the kumquat represents prosperity. In North Korea and South Korea they celebrate Seollal, which lasts for three days. Korean families serve food to ancestors in a ritual called Charye, to gain their blessings for the coming year. In South Korea, Spam has become a favourite New Year gift, and people will pay up to $75 (£55) for gift hampers of the tinned meat.
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS In Mongolia, the festival is called Tsagaan sar. Some people in Mongolia call it The White Moon festival. People worship at ovoo - stone heaps used as altars or shrines. They also exchange snuff bottles, which are thought to unite people. How is Lunar New Year celebrated across the world? New York holds a firecracker ceremony, in which some 600,000 firecrackers are exploded in Sara D Roosevelt Park. There are lion dances and parades through the streets of Chinatown afterwards. Singapore hosts a street parade called Chingay, which features floats, colourful costumes, live performances and fireworks. Manchester is home to one of the UK's largest and oldest Chinese communities and at New Year its 53m-long dragon is paraded through the streets towards the city's Chinatown. Questions 1. What Chinese people in China celebrate in Lunar New Year? They are celebrations with see people feast with relatives, watch parades and pray for good fortune in the year. 2. What is firecracker? ประทัด 3. How attributes of children born in the year of Tiger will be? They will be brave , competitive and strong. 4. Specify the symbols of Chinese New Year. It is a dragon. It gives power and good fortune. 5. Do you celebrate Chinese New Year? Yes, I do, but when I study at university I rarely don’t celebrate Chinese New Year.
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS Chicken rice stalls have seen higher costs of ingredients, electricity and labour In South East Asia you don't get much more of a staple food than chicken rice. Found in almost every food court and hawker centre, it is considered one of Singapore's national dishes. Daniel Tan, who owns six chicken rice stalls, has previously charged $2.20 (£1.60) for a small portion. But Covid has seen the cost of his ingredients rise sharply. The price of chicken has gone up by 50% and vegetable costs have more than doubled since January 2020, he says. "We've been absorbing the costs for a significant period of time," he tells me as we meet at one of his OK Chicken Rice stalls in the north of Singapore. "When the pandemic hit our first thought was this was a short-term emergency - six months, maybe a year - so we held [prices] for as long as we can because we were hoping for the whole thing to be over."
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS But when his electricity bills also jumped, Mr Tan decided it was time to raise prices. "A thousand dollar electrical bill for a chicken rice store really is not sustainable," he says. "If I go on any further, either my staff are not paid or I have to close down some stores and that's not what we want to do." Due to border closures and new employment regulations, Mr Tan has faced staff shortages and higher salaries, which all feed into rising costs for his business. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says global food prices rose 28% in 2021. "The last time food prices were this high was in 2011, when policymakers were actually warning about a global food crisis," says Dr Abdul Abiad of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS These latest price rises are due to higher energy costs, which affect food and fertiliser production, with global supply chain issues compounding the problem. Even in a wealthy nation like Singapore, it means that the number of families seeking help has increased. "What we have seen when we make the door-to-door deliveries is that young families [with] both husband and wife working a part-time job or in the gig economy - these were the families that got impacted when Covid hit and all the part-time work dried up," says Nichol Ng, co-founder of Food Bank Singapore. It is not just the poorest 10% of the population who now need help, she says: "It has slowly crept to maybe 20% of the population including middle income families that might not even know where to get help in the first place." And it is also not just higher food prices that are affecting those in need. "Due to Covid, everybody's self-awareness about looking after themselves in terms of hygiene has increased," says Ms Ng. But higher palm oil prices mean that shampoos, hand soaps and sanitisers have also become a lot more expensive. "Up to 20% of our requests thus far, especially starting from the second half of last year, has been pivoting towards personal hygiene products," she adds. Ms Ng is also concerned that the current wave of inflation does not seem to be temporary. "In the past, at certain times of the year, you might see these price surges but it seems that this inflation is going to be persistent - and none of us really have that crystal ball to understand when it is going to end," she says. Elsewhere in the region the impact of higher prices is even more severe. The latest FAO report shows more than 375 million people in Asia faced hunger in 2020, an increase of 54 million from the previous year. In 2020, the Global Food Banking Network saw the number of people needing help increase by more than 130% to 40m, with half of them living in Asia. This is despite the fact that food price increases in Asia have been more muted than in the US or Europe, where inflation has soared to levels not seen in decades.
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS There are several reasons for this, including a good rice harvest in 2021, says the ADB's Dr Abiad. While maize prices rose 44% last year and wheat by 31% , rice prices dropped 4% . "So rice being the main staple in many Asian economies contributed to a food price inflation being lower in the region," he says. Asian nations also produce a lot of their own food, which has been sold in domestic markets rather than being exported. Governments have also been working to ensure that food supplies have been stable, says Dr Abiad. In the Philippines, for example, liberalisation of rice imports has allowed the supply of rice to improve which has kept prices low. Meanwhile, China has been stockpiling various important food products, which has resulted in it bucking the trend, with the country's food prices falling in 2021. But it has also led to criticism that the world's second biggest economy, which accounts for 20% of global population, is hoarding supplies as it is estimated to hold 69% of the world's corn reserves, 60% of its rice and 51% of its wheat by mid-2022, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS Singapore imports the majority of its foodstuffs, but so far big supermarket chains like NTUC FairPrice have decided not to pass on higher prices to consumers. To keep the prices of key products stable, the firm says it is employing various strategies including "stockpiling of daily essentials, forward buying and diversifying our import sources to over 100 countries". NTUC FairPrice also has more than 2,000 own-brand products such as rice, oil, toiletries and cleaning products that it says are at least 10% cheaper than comparable popular brands. Mr Tan of OK Chicken Rice, who also owns three mini supermarkets, says smaller retailers tend to take their cue from larger rivals when pricing goods. "They act like a central bank to the rest of the grocery players in Singapore. The good thing about it is that inflation doesn't spike up as much during a crisis but the bad side effect is that entrepreneurship is stifled and only semi-government players can survive," he says. "The question is, after the whole thing is over how many smaller players are left?" asks Mr Tan. Global food prices are expected to remain high this year and the FAO's David Dawe says this is of concern for Asian governments because price hikes have not yet worked their way through the system. "If global prices continue to rise, there will be an impact, especially for lower income families who spend bigger proportion of their income on food." Economists like Mr Dawe and Dr Abiad remain optimistic that Asian countries will continue to be shielded from double-digit food inflation. But for those on the ground, like Mr Tan and Ms Ng, the issue feels more acute. They wonder whether higher prices, rather than being transitory, will linger on just as the pandemic has. Questions 1. What is the antonym of inflation? Deflation 2. What does the Food and Agriculture Organization stand for? It’s stand for FAQ. 3. How is the cost of living in Singapore nowadays? The food price increases , and the electricity bills also jumped. 4. How is the global situation of the food prices? Global food prices rose 28 % in 2021. 5. From the first graph, which country have low effect from the food prices? It’s China , Japan and Thailand.
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS The Pollution Control Department (PCD) will establish a committee to evaluate environmental damage caused by a marine oil spill some 20 kilometres off the coast of Rayong province that occurred last week.
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS The department's chief, Atthapol Charoenchansa, said the committee will calculate how much compensation Star Petroleum Refining Plc is required to pay for clean-up after oil leaked from one of its pipelines in the Gulf of Thailand. The committee will be comprised of academics, experts and representatives from state agencies to find an accurate figure, ensuring transparency and credibility for all sides, he said. "The PCD doesn't know at present what the cost of the rehabilitation efforts will be, so we need time to get more information, but according to the law, the company must pay every penny to clean up the environment," Mr Atthapol said. He added that the department needs to monitor the situation as some of the oil might make it to the shoreline where seawater quality is currently in line with safety standards. On Jan 25, the company's crude oil undersea pipeline broke. Initially, 400,000 litres of crude oil were reported to be have been spilt but the company later adjusted the figure to 160,000 litres. The Department of Marine, the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources, the navy and the company have since applied measures to mitigate the impact of the oil spill by using buoys and dispersants. The company has apologised for the accident and expressed a willingness to cover the costs of the cleanup.
814315 ENGLISH FOR CREATIVE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS Meanwhile, the governor ordered a disaster zone in the area, together with warning people not to swim in the sea. He has also suspended seafood consumption. In an update, Varawut Silpa-archa, minister to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, added that wind has assisted in efforts to suppress the oil's spread. "The good news is that the oil spill hasn't gone to Ao Phrao Beach due to a change in the wind. However, we have not yet stopped the operation right now, we need to wait and see for at least one week, making sure that the dispersed oil is no longer found here," he said. The PCD, the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources, and the Department of Marine have filed a complaint with the police over the oil spill.