Tradition

ATOP a hill in the sprawling Donghe Cemetery, on a spot said to have good feng shui, sits a 10,000-square-foot semicircular tomb adorned with a pagoda, stone dragons and a massive upended boulder. Cemetery workers say the plot, bought by a karaoke parlor owner, cost about $110,000. "He's only 40 years old, but he bought a five-generation tomb," said Li Daxi, who has worked at the cemetery in Inner Mongolia for six years. "Now that's thinking ahead."

When Lucy Huang was a child, she scoffed at the idea that she was supposed to be stubborn and aggressive just because she was born in the Year of the Tiger. She hated that her first-generation Taiwanese American parents made her go to Chinese school on Saturdays when all of her mostly non-Chinese friends got to play. But this week, the 32-year-old commercial cookware executive is taking on the customs and rituals of the Chinese New Year with gusto.

Toscanini forbade it. La Scala's management discouraged it. But the "encore" calls from the balconies proved too much for Juan Diego Florez to resist. The Peruvian tenor repeated his first-act aria "Ah, mes amis" in a revival of Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment" in Milan, Italy, this week -- the first encore of an aria at La Scala since Russian Fedor Chaliapin flouted the tradition in a 1933 production of "Il Barbiere di Siviglia."

The lucky ones learned spirituals as children, from grandmothers whose own grandparents may have been slaves. Not only did they memorize "Wade in the Water," but they heard how fleeing slaves trudged through rivers and creeks to escape search parties and their dogs.

A 75-year Los Angeles tradition came to an end Wednesday as officials disclosed that last year's Hollywood Christmas Parade was the final one. Rising costs and shrinking revenues are to blame for the cancellation, leaders of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce said. "This is a very difficult thing for us to have to do," said Jeff Briggs, chairman of the chamber's board of directors. "We're disappointed and sad. But we're out of the parade business."

The weather agency inspectors had fanned out to examine designated trees across Japan, eyeballing the branches, looking for blossoms. Government computers had crunched years of temperature data. TV camera crews climbed ladders to get close-ups of the buds' progress. On Tuesday, inspectors in Tokyo saw what everyone was waiting for: at least six cherry blossoms on one of the talismanic trees on the grounds of sacred Yasukuni Shrine. They proclaimed \o7sakura\f7 season officially underway.

THE Rev. David Brown Jr. preached so passionately that he started to shiver. Sweat flowed down his face as words poured out of him. The gospel gave way to song. The song gave way to a name, and he let it ring out over the pews with a piercing scream that seemed to echo for an eternity: \o7JESUS!\f7 "There is no high better than a Jesus high," Brown boomed with a wide grin. "I used to drink that California wine. I used to think I was high. But this Jesus high -- it just gets gooder and gooder."

Calling all chocoholics. Put down the truffles and power up the PC. It's time to weigh in on a fundamental question: What \o7is \f7chocolate? Two of California's oldest confectioners, See's Candies Inc. and Guittard Chocolate Co., are battling an attempt to loosen government rules that dictate what ingredients go into the sweet stuff. Legally, the candy that melts hearts and comforts the brokenhearted is made with cocoa butter and, in the case of milk chocolate, whole milk.

For Hollywood's elite, it was the place to gather on Monday nights. Table location determined your position in the pecking order. On Oscar night, winners clutched their awards as they made their way through a gantlet of air kisses and fawning congratulations. Now, the Mortons era is ending. On Friday, the iconic West Hollywood eatery announced it would close its doors at the end of the year.