Culture

Veteran chef Yutaka Sasaki has a plan to remove the fear of eating one of the most poisonous fish on the planet: He wants to feed it to the emperor. The blowfish, known here as fugu, carries a deadly neurotoxin with no known antidote. An average-sized fugu is chock-full of the poison tetrodotoxin -- in its blood, liver and even its sex organs, Sasaki says. But he scoffs at the centuries-old ban on the Japanese monarch eating the delicacy, sought after by many Japanese as daring cuisine.

For 25 years, the Lucky K.T. Noodle Factory in El Monte has been making fresh rice noodles for hundreds of Asian restaurants and supermarkets in Los Angeles and around the country. But a state law requiring manufacturers to refrigerate the pasta instead of allowing it to be stored at room temperature threatens to alter a long-held Asian tradition, said factory owner Tom Thong. "The health inspectors don't understand our culture," said Thong, 53. "We've been eating it this way for thousands of years and we've never had a problem.

Sadie couldn't wait to welcome in the Lunar New Year. She helped her parents decorate their home with red and gold banners for luck, picked out a red embroidered outfit to wear to school and made sure to tidy her blue-walled room to sweep out evil spirits. It is the Year of the Ox, the first time that zodiac sign has appeared since the year she was born, thousands of miles away in China's Hunan province.

They've been coming to Urartu Coffee for months, and every day it's the same. They sit. They sip. They smoke. It's hard to explain, the men say -- there's just something about the taste of tar joining java. But Jack Kakoyan, 28, and his friends may soon stop meeting at their usual table, where they spend hours socializing in the sun.

Even before the morning dew dried on the knolls of Rose Hills Memorial Park and Mortuary in Whittier on Saturday, hundreds of Chinese families were lined up outside the gate, their cars packed with bountiful offerings: fruit, noodle and vegetable dishes, whole roasted pigs. The long procession of cars -- 15,000 to 20,000 are expected through this afternoon -- meandered up the steep pathways to the west side of the cemetery, where many of Southern California's Chinese are buried.

The police in Greenfield, a Monterey County farm town, had heard the rumors before: Migrant workers from rural Mexico were marrying off daughters as young as 12 and receiving sizable dowries. But no such cases were ever prosecuted -- until this week. Marcelino de Jesus Martinez, 36, is in Monterey County Jail, charged with crimes related to an alleged attempt to set up a marriage for his 14-year-old daughter.

Xie Lihua's parents wanted a boy. But on the day Xie was born in a poor village in rural Shandong province, her mother learned she had given birth to a second daughter. She wept in anger. And she slapped her new baby. "Another girl!" she cried. The year was 1951. Girls were considered a worthless commodity in an agrarian society that relied upon the strength of young men to flourish. Xie grew up knowing her place -- as a handmaiden to her younger brother.

Foreign banks trying to gain a foothold in booming Vietnam face a tough cultural barrier: Most people don't use banks, and many don't trust them. Instead, they stash their money at home and rely on informal lending networks of family and friends for loans. "Banks require too much paperwork, and the charges are too high," said Cao Thi Dong, 40, a housekeeper. "If I borrow from people I know, I can get a much better interest rate."

Squeezed into segregated public buses with scant seats reserved for women, schoolteacher Suneela Mohsin thinks of Benazir Bhutto. She thinks of the slain leader when she walks crowded streets, forbidden to talk to strange men in public or even make eye contact in this society dominated by men. "Our culture offers women very little public space," she said, wearing a deep maroon dupatta, the traditional shawl-like covering, around her head and body. "Benazir was our last hope of change.

People in this town know the man with the stooped, halting walk and the burning eyes. They point out his house, and they talk about "what he did" and about how they admire "what he did" and wonder if they too would have the strength to do "what he did."