His talk focuses on specialty coffee markets and Maya farmers in Guatemala. The best coffees these days are selling for astronomical prices and even though farmers are not getting rich, they are benefitting from the market boom and have high hopes for coffee. 

Celebrate Chinese New Year with Hanfu Fashion, Dance, and Ancient Music Saturday, February 7 at the Singletary Center for the Arts Recital Hall.

 

The fashion show features traditional clothing of the Han Chinese ethnic group from the legendary Yellow Emperor to the end of the Ming Dynasty. Chinese zither music will accompany performances along with Chinese calligraphy, painting, and tea ceremony demonstrations.

 

“My vision was to introduce an aesthetic that I knew could be appreciated universally. In a rapidly modernizing world where the consciousness and exchange of different fashions continues to increase, I found the opportunity to highlight one of the pre-eminent fashions of the old world - a uniquely thrilling challenge” said Ms. Zhou Qi, Designer and Producer of the Hanfu Show.

 

Winners of the “2014 UKCI China in My Lens Photo Contest” will be announced before the performance. Photographs were selected for cash prizes from those taken on the UK Chinese Studies Study Abroad trip and on UKCI Summer trips, including the UKCI Short-term Faculty Trip, Educator Trip, High School Students’ Trip, and the UK Jazz Ensemble and Volleyball Trips. Winners will receive awards from $50 to $800.

 

The event is presented by the University of Kentucky Confucius Institute and the Mu Dan Hong Dance Troupe.

One of a group of Indo-European speaking peoples intrusive to Anatolia, the Hittites rose from a modest city state to establish first a kingdom on the central plateau and then an empire that fought with the kings of Babylon and Assyria, the Hurrians, and the pharaohs of Egypt for control of SE Anatolia, Syria and Palestine, and contended with one or more Mycenaean Greek kings over western Asia Minor. One of their many vassal states was Wilusa, certainly to be identified with Troy. The multiethnic Hittite kingdom absorbed heavy cultural influence from many peoples and played a role in transmitting Ancient Near Eastern culture to the Greeks. A combination of factors, including the assaults of the “Sea Peoples”, brought an end to the Hittite Empire shortly after 1200 BCE, but some former subordinate states inherited their name and culture and maintained a degree of independence for several centuries until conquered by the Assyrians. It is these “Neo-Hittite” states that are represented in the “Hittites” of the Old Testament.