Lifestyle
What gets eaten, celebrated, watched and played
Five ways into Kotoba’s cultural library: food and its recipes, beauty and brands, festivals and seasons, screens and stages, video games. Places have moved to the map.
Festivals & seasons
What is being celebrated right now, and the calendar that decides it.
138 entriesExplore
The next festivals
Recomputed for this year, across the seven territories covered.
ChinaTaiwan
Qixi Festival七夕
The Chinese Valentine’s Day: the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd, split by the Milky Way, meet one night a year on a bridge of magpies.
South Korea
Chilseok칠석
The Korean take on Qixi, in the middle of monsoon: that day’s rain is the tears of the two reunited lovers.
19 AugustLunar calendar
ChinaTaiwanSingapore+1
Hungry Ghost Festival中元节
The month the gates of hell open: food offerings by the roadside, opera performed for deliberately empty front rows.