Culture

To motorists whizzing by on Olympic Boulevard, Koreatown may seem like just another nondescript inner-city strip of shops, restaurants and bars. But to many of the 75 million ethnic Koreans around the world, Los Angeles' Koreatown is well-known and a very special place: It's the capital of Koreans in America. Despite Koreatown's sometimes tawdry appearance and high crime rate, Koreans enjoy coming here because it gives them a sense of belonging.

With international business travel booming, so is the risk that the naive visitor will make a costly cultural misstep in a strange land. Sondra Snowdon runs a New York-based consulting company that tells business travelers, among other things, that a kiss on the cheek may not really be continental and that diamonds may not always be a girl's best friend.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates looks at the Internet and sees a transformation in the way we get information. MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle looks at the Internet and sees a transformation in the way we view ourselves. Despite all the hype and babble about the information superhighway, Turkle says, most people actually have underestimated the coming knowledge revolution. When we log onto a bulletin board, chat room, forum or other cyberspace sites, she says, we are entering a world of possibility.

On this day of tradition we propose a toast to the Christmas rites that have come to us from distant lands. Over time the native tongue may slip and the stories of Old World kings and queens may fade, but something about the flame of childhood Christmases will not go out. And in time, like Santa Claus and Christmas trees, it spreads to us all. Some Christmas customs have become so familiar they seem almost like our own.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about Wycliffe Bible Translators and its mission to bring the Bible to all peoples. In fact, the group has been the target of sometimes virulent attacks, most recently in the form of a 960-page book published this year by HarperCollins. "Thy Will Be Done," by Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, intertwines the stories of Nelson Rockefeller and Wycliffe founder William Cameron Townsend, charging that oil interests, the U.S.

If you believe in legends, Patzcuaro owes its origins to nothing more dramatic than a stroll. Taking a walk one day, a Tarasca noble saw four large rocks, which he recognized instantly: They were the mythic boulders marking the entrance to paradise. Sending for his followers, he ordered them to build a city on the spot, which he named "Patzcuaro"--a word meaning Place of Happiness in the language of the native Tarascans.

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."