May 2019 Amazing Argentina WeChat: Paper online: PAPER MAGAZINE PAPER www.neo-ads.com/paper May 2019 04 cover story 20 eureka Argentina is one of the most exciting countries facebook.com/NeoPaperMagazine in the world with spectacularly panoramic natural 22 athlete landscapes, legendary tango performances and its own unique culture and art. Exciting 23 fighting fit instagram.com/NeoPaperMagazine adventures and breathtaking experiences await visitors at this passionate and seductive South 24 yummy twitter.com/paper_neo American paradise. 27 cheers 08 city window Contact enlightenment living Tel: (8620) 8365 2811 10 arts & events Email: [email protected] 29 education 12 fortune Chief Operating Officer: LC Chau witty wine Consulting Director: Allan Au 14 jetsetter Editing Consultant: May Guan 30 cru Editor in Chief: William C Guest Editor: Ben Chu 32 mice Financial Controller: Takuto S. Marketing Director: 33 living Ambro Chow Area Marketing Manager: 34 supremos Kitty Chik, Shirley Tse, Purple Lau Creative Director: Rita Shi Mr. Ricardo Maria Betta Roel, Consul-General of the Argentine Republic in Guangzhou, shares Publication Co-coordinator: Nana Au his insights on Sino-Argentine relations and his Photographer: recommendations for Chinese tourists. Leona, Purple, Hiroly 36 destination Contributors: Majestic buildings, stunning European Allan CW Au, Anna G, Gregory Louraichi, architecture, Parisian-style cafes and an enduring 37 cotchin GiGi Chik, Jessie Huang, John Chu, love for tango blend seamlessly to create a Kenny Tan, Kee Lee, Lena Liu, Peter Fenton, unique dose of Latin flavour. 38 out n about Roy Moorfield, Sukanya Mukherjee, Yuyao.K., Han Peiyi, Rain L. 17 auto 39 bulletin 18 muse 42 diary 04 cover story cover PAPER MAGAZINE PAPER Amazing Argentina Argentina is one of the most exciting countries in the world with spectacularly panoramic natural landscapes, legendary tango performances and its own unique culture and art. Exciting adventures and breathtaking experiences await visitors at this passionate and seductive South American paradise. FALL IN LOVE WITH THE ARGENTINIAN PASSION FOR TANGO As midnight beckons, the couple takes centerstage; she in a dress with fiery red-hot flower stripes and he in jeans and a white shirt. They embrace intimately in a dim, vaulted milonga, or tango club, the famous La Catedral in Buenos Aires. As the bandoneon and violins conjure up the tango tune, couples glide across the parquet floor, the women swiveling on the balls of their feet in strappy tango heels, ankles flicking around their partners’ legs. The men, with their graceful movements, holding their partners’ hands while hugging their waists in a passionate embrace. The above scene exemplifies the hot fiery passion of the Argentine Tango which originated from the slums of Buenos Aires and serves as a liberating experience which allows the dancers to develop an intimate connection between themselves, the music, and the environment in which they are dancing. It is no wonder that the Argentine Tango has often been regarded as the Lovers’ Dance and many couples have fallen in love with each other while dancing the tango. Yet, when the dance first began in the late 1880s, it was initially deemed as overly sexy and forbidden due to the physical closeness of the dancers and the contortions of the dancers in public, something which is considered taboo back then. It wasn’t until the rich and famous of Argentina who also picked up the dance, brought it to Paris, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, where it became all the rage before World War I, before the Argentinian elite began to claim the dance as an Argentine invention. And just like that, the tango’s popularity skyrocketed. However, even as tango music started to permeate the cafes and even the taxis, and couples dance to the beat of the tango in an expression of their romantic passion, the lyrics are often nostalgic, bitter-sweet and sometimes even bordering on Greek tragedy, which explains the soulfulness of tango music and dance rhythm. As the greatest Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges once wrote, “To study tango is to study the vicissitudes of the Argentine soul.” Nonetheless, at 2am on Saturday at La Catedral, the dancers continued to dance to the tango beat as they give free reins to their body movements. A frequent guest couldn’t have said it better, “People fall in love with tango because gives them an emotional outlet for a fantastic feeling that can’t be expressed in words and they become addicted to it.” For Argentina, the tango has become a source of national pride – it was included in the UNESCO Intangible Heritage List in 2009, but for the dancers at the milongas, it sets them free from the chains of restraint in their normal routine lives. PAPER 06 cover story EMBARK ON EXTRAORDINARY TREKKING AND MOUNTAINEERING EXPEDITIONS Argentina is home to some of the most stunning mountain scenery this world has to offer. The soaring peaks of the Andes are softened by beautiful azure lakes, roaring glacial torrents, and the famous pampas. This reputation attracted Chinese mountaineer Ms Miao Zhong who embarked on an expedition to scale the tallest mountain in South America, Aconcagua. Having already scaled some challenging peaks such as Muztagh Ata (7450m) in 2016, Manaslu (8163m) in 2017 and Ama Dablam (6856m) in 2018, the avid adventurer who is an international sales and marketing staff for the mountaineering brand, Kailas, eventually chose Aconcagua because it was the tallest mountain outside the Himalayas and she was curious to explore another continent. For her Argentina expedition, the adventure started in Mendoza where they enjoyed delicious Argentinian steak and wine for a few days before driving up to Penitentes (2300m), an abandoned ski resort in summer. After entering IMMERSE IN THE UNIQUE ART OF the national park, along with her expedition ARGENTINA members, they started hiking to a camp called Having studied under fileteado master Leon Confluenicia (3300m) where they made their first Untroib for two years because he was initially acclimatization. surprised that fileteado was not on the curriculum in the Prilidiano Pueyrredon School of Fine Arts, Alfredo Genovese eventually quitted his sign-painting job and became a fileteador. His passion for this unique Argentinian art form is unsurprising. Just as the tango has come to become synonymous with the cultural identity of Buenos Aires, the fileteado porteño is its iconographic graphic art. What initially started off as decorative art by Italian For new-age master, Alfredo Genovese, who immigrants who painted on wagons in the early has been practising the art of fileteado for more 20th century soon began to find its way to trucks, than 2 decades, this unique Argentinian stylistic buses, shop windows, metal plates in markets art is not just a commercial creation although and even huge advertising billboards around he has painted fileteado for clients such as the Argentina. The highly stylized art form with its iconic Faena Hotel, Coca Cola, Nike, Evian and colourful motifs rapidly evolved as Argentinian Mercedes Benz. He enjoys the challenge of taking Getting used to the climate is one of the artists soon add their own touches of neo-classical an old way of working and pushing it to its limits challenges that every mountaineer must face and architectural influences and infuse their fileteados and seeing how far it can go. according to Miao, Aconcagua is a dry and windy with their own social and cultural themes to place that reminded her of the Tibetan plateau in comment on the Argentinian society. He considers himself to be a true artisan who China. The team had to abandon their first summit insists on handcrafting his designs without digital attempt from Colera due to strong winds and reworking. First, he would draw the design by difficulty with the terrain. Aconcagua’s slopes are hand onto paper and then use powdered lead covered with small volcanic stones which make to transfer the image onto the surface where the walking on big mountaineering boots extremely image will finally appear on. This process can take strenuous, and the weather is extremely cold at up to a week, but Alfredo Genovese is insistent on -25 °C. Furthermore, the strong winds will make his artistic techniques. the attempt to scale the mountain even more challenging. In the future years ahead, Genovese is continuing his efforts at spreading the influence of fileteado Only after 6 hours of wait for the winds to subside to the rest of the world by giving seminars were they able to advance again. They continued internationally and he is also currently exploring their climb with a traverse to the “Candaletta”, how fileteado can be developed as a form of the crux of their climb. At such high altitudes, they body art. He admits he is not good at tango but have to overcome the difficult terrain with its huge at least for him, he found his love and passion in boulders and snowfields but they finally reached fileteado. the last snowfield and after 10 hours of gruelling hard work, they stood on the highest point in South America and took in the spectacular beauty of their surroundings from the peak. Having conquered Aconcagua in Argentina, Miao’s next challenge: The tallest mountain of North America, Denali (6190m). PAPER 08 city window Hengqin District to be trans- Guangzhou to host Asian Cuisine Dengue fever alert in Guangzhou Chimelong Water Park’s Slide- formed into international tour- Festival Guangdong is scrambling to prevent the wheel receives top accolades ism hub From 16 to 23 May 2019, Guangzhou will spread of dengue fever with already 79 The Slidewheel in Guangzhou’s Chimel- China’s National Development and host the Asian Cuisine Festival (ACF) confirmed cases in 13 prefecture-level ong Water Park has been awarded Reform Commission (NDRC) recent- featuring the bet of Asian gourmet, cities so far in 2019.