Programs for the Week of Jan 31

Monday: People Power in the Middle East: Tunisia’s protests came as a surprise to much of the world, and are spreading across North Africa and into the Middle East. Why now, and are they likely to bring lasting change?

Tuesday: How Bulgaria Survived the Twentieth Century: In SOLO, a novel that won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book of 2010, Ulrich, a 100 year old blind musician who was born in 1901 in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, looks back at his life under a century of communism and fascism.

Wednesday: Woven Lives: In Oaxaca, world-renowned Zapotec textiles are helping to sustain local communities while in Panama, indigenous arts are flourishing as a response on the part of people caught in a war zone.

Thursday: Fortunate Sons: What happened when the Qing dynasty sent 120 boys to go to school in the US in 1872? The boys got good at baseball and picked up nicknames like By-Jinks Johnnie and Fighting Chinee. But they also confronted a struggle between traditionalism and modernity that ended up influencing both China and the U.S.

Friday: Tiger in the Kitchen: Growing up in Singapore, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan never spent much time in the kitchen. It was only after moving to the U.S. that she realized she had to return to her homeland to learn from the women in her family how to make the New Year’s dishes she simply couldn’t live without.