One of my favorite dumplings of all time is what is commonly known as the little soup dumpling, or xiaolongbao.

As a child abroad, I enjoyed the times when my mother would steam some of these frozen goodies bought from the freezer section of the local Chinese grocery. She always told us to be very careful while eating these little parcels as they were filled with hot soup and could easily scald us. We tried to listen, but they were so tempting, we often did just what she told us not to.

Xiaolongbao is usually filled with minced pork and a pork broth. It's always a test of our chopstick skills: Pick up a dumpling, dip it in the dark vinegar with ginger slivers, and get it to our mouths without breaking the thin wrapper.

We often wondered how they managed to wrap soup in the dumpling. I thought they froze the broth and added it. It seems I was not too far off. The soupy filling for the dumplings is made by adding a gelling agent to the broth. When it had turned to jelly, it would be cut up in cubes and mixed into the mince and seasoning.

When the dumpling is steamed, the heat turns the jelly back into soup.

In my years in Hong Kong I have tried many soup dumplings and compared notes with friends on where the "best" ones are.

One of my favorites was in a basement restaurant near Tin Hau subway station. Unfortunately, as with many small independent restaurants, it did not survive the high rents and running costs.

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KAMAISHI, Japan - When the earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, this city's last geisha was, fittingly, at home getting ready to sing that night at an 117-year-old ryotei, a type of exclusive restaurant, in Kamaishi where she began working as a 14-year-old seven decades ago.

She had already put on the white split-toe socks she would wear with her kimono and was preparing to put her hair up. Hired to entertain a party of four in honor of a colleague's transfer from Kamaishi, she had picked just the right song, one meant to steel young samurai going to their first battle.

A famous beauty, Ms. Ito both danced and played the shamisen, while most geishas were skilled only at playing the shamisen, said Setsuko Kanazawa, whose family owns Saiwairo, the ryotei where she performs. To cultural preservationists here, she is the guardian of a local culture that was fast disappearing.

After a marriage to a sushi restaurant owner, the birth of a daughter and a divorce, Ms. Ito went to Tokyo to study dance. Ms. Ito and a dozen other geishas were constantly on call at the ryoteis, as Kamaishi's economy began booming in the 1950s. Kamaishi is the birthplace of Japan's steel industry. But through the years, business declined and the demand for geishas diminished. Still, sometimes the calls came for Ms. Ito, some from old customers, and more recently from new customers reflecting the world's new economic order.

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Before visiting "Harry Potter: The Exhibition" at Discovery Times Square, I mistakenly assumed that the real point of this 1,300-square-meter display of movie sets, costumes and props would come at the end, where Potterphiles can purchase $44.99 replicas of Albus Dumbledore's magic wand or $49.99 replicas of Gryffindor's school tie.

Visitors begin in a gallery where an actor invites volunteers to try on the Sorting Hat, which directs them to the wizarding school of Hogwarts. Accompanied by video montages from the movies, we are led past teachers - villainous and eccentric - and magical objects.

Eventually we make our way to where the ghastly Dark Forces congregate. There were the fizzing whizzbee candies from Hogsmeade, "Cram It!" guides for school finals and a glimpse of Dobby the house-elf.

This places the Potter tales right at the center of the 20th-century fantasy tradition that grew out of the work of two British writers around World War II: Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. It also gives the series an almost touching nostalgia for a world about to be destroyed.

The show pays tribute to a lost world, just as the film series is about to come to an end. In a desire to hold off the apocalypse, I was almost inspired to buy a wand.

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The Potala Palace, named after Mount Potala, the abode of Chenresig or Avalokitesvara, was the chief residence of the Dalai Lama. After the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India during the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the government converted the palace into a museum.

The building measures 400 metres east-west and 350 metres north-south, with sloping stone walls averaging 3 m. thick, and 5 m. (more than 16 ft) thick at the base, and with copper poured into the foundations to help proof it against earthquakes.Thirteen stories of buildings – containing over 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and about 200,000 statues – soar 117 metres (384 ft) on top of Marpo Ri, the "Red Hill", rising more than 300 m (about 1,000 ft) in total above the valley floor  Tradition has it that the three main hills of Lhasa represent the "Three Protectors of Tibet." Chokpori, just to the south of the Potala, is the soul-mountain (bla-ri) of Vajrapani, Pongwari that of Manjushri, and Marpori, the hill on which the Potala stands, represents Chenresig or Avalokiteshvara.

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