Society

IN a private room in a mysterious little restaurant in Chengdu, my fellow diners goaded me to eat the turtle. It was soft-shelled, they said — as if that made it more enticing. They laughed and joked in Chinese, which I do not speak. Eating turtle grows a man’s bank account, my translator said. I didn’t get the meaning at first. Then it sunk in.

I plucked bibs and bobs of turtle from between the top shell and underbelly. It was bitter, spicy in that classically

Sichuanese way, and startlingly good. It was paired with a mouth-cooling chaser, a gazpacho of coconut milk and buoyant tapioca balls.

We were at Zi Fi, a restaurant in the capital of Sichuan province in south-central China. Chengdu is one of many Chinese cities little known by the West but exploding with activity nonetheless. And Zi Fi is one of many Chengdu restaurants that are daring in these heady times to experiment with one of China’s most beloved cuisines.

The leaders of China and Japan held their first formal talks on Saturday since clashing two months ago over disputed islands, in what appeared to be a hastily arranged attempt to patch up differences between the two Asian powers.

The leaders of Japan and Russia, who have also sparred recently over the Kurile Islands in the Pacific, also met Saturday, but appeared to remain divided.

The meetings took place on the sidelines of a summit meeting of 21 Asia-Pacific nations that Japan is hosting in this port city.

U.S. President Barack Obama visited Indonesia with a U.S. business delegation last week. How successful was the trip for U.S. companies? How will the visit affect commercial relations between China and Indonesia? We exchanged by email on Sunday with Justin Doebele, the chief editorial advisor for Forbes Indonesia, the licensed Indonesia edition of Forbes magazine.

Q. How was President Obama received in Indonesia?
It doesn’t matter that Obama had postponed his trip twice, and then when he came stayed only for a short visit and just in Jakarta. He’s a rock star in Indonesia. He’s the first American president to speak some of Indonesian language, and to have lived here. As one headline put it, “Barry’s back.”

Within 10 years, China’s entertainment industry has the potential to create more new wealth than any other industry in the country. At least, that’s what Rupert Hoogewerf, publisher of the Hurun Rich List, says in a recently released report – his first — on the entertainment industry’s top moneymakers.

Hurun’s entertainment rich list isn’t what you’d expect. Instead of movie stars, models and the like, China’s entertainment industry is dominated by suits – possibly a consequence of Hurun’s definition of “entertainment,” which includes new amusements like instant messaging and online gaming in addition to traditional diversions like movies and sports.

Pony Ma, founder of Tencent Holdings, China’s largest Internet portal and provider of the popular QQ messaging service, topped the new list. Hurun calculates that 23 billion yuan, or 3.5 billion dollars, of Ma’s total worth comes from his company’s entertainment business, which generates roughly 80% of Tencent’s total market cap. Ma fell just outside the top ten on Hurun’s 2010 general list of the richest people in China and finished second to Baidu CEO Robin Li on Hurun’s latest IT industry rich list.