San Francisco’s Valencia corridor is a ribbon of ethnic restaurants, hip clothing and furniture stores, and family-run grocers clustered between Market and Cesar Chavez streets-a landscape with limitless shopping opportunities. Take a detour into a vintage apparel shop and pick up a ‘60s psychedelic print blouse, stumble upon a new independent designer whose fashion suits your style to a T, or explore a garden shop that has a bent toward the exotic.
 

Flashing neon and block-wide billboards may beckon the hungry diner, but there’s little that stirs the craving for a Japanese meal more than the heartwarming sight of a noren, the slit curtain swaying above the doorway of a restaurant.
 

Ever since my childhood, the holiday season never ended when the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve. On the first day of the New Year, instead of taking down the Christmas decoration, my parents were busy putting the final touches on a Japanese dinner, in celebration of Japanese New Year, comparable to what you taste in Tokyo, only we were living in rural Indiana. Every year, my mother brought out her special serving items: lacquered boxes, shiny new chopsticks and elegant porcelain bowls and plates, from the “osechi-ryori,” or home-cooked New Years food. The cold appetizers were presented in simple three-tiered lacquered tray, called “jubako,” with a pine branch painted in gold. The other mouthwatering fare included deep-fried tofu pockets stuffed with tangy vinegar-flavored rice and maki with nutty kanpyo (dried gourd strip) centers.
 

Founded along the banks of the Yongding River in the second millennium B.C., a ragtag frontier outpost would take the next thousand years to ride to the full status of Bei-jing (Northern capital). During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the completion of the Forbidden City-the oracle from which the emperor exercised. The mandate of heaven consolidated its position as the first city of Zhongguo (Middle Kingdom of China).
 

For many business travelers in Beijing, finessing a workout can be a major challenge. Between a drum-tight schedule and language challenges, a fitness routine is easily postponed until after the journey home. But don’t give in too easily. With a day off or even a two-hour window between meetings, the intrepid fitness-minded traveler has a trio of unique outdoor options in or near Beijing.
 

If you look a block south past the glass and chrome building on Huaihai Zhong Road, Shanghai’s most fashionable street, you’ll make out a cluster of shikumen longtang, or stone-gate houses, built along narrow alleyways. Conjuring the days of qipaos and rickshaws, a peek behind the old stone façade reveals modern day restaurants, boutiques and cafes. This tasteful mix of past and present is Xintiandi, part of an ambitious urban redevelopment project managed by Hong Kong-based Shiu On Group. Meaning “new earth and sky” in mandarin, you’ll find the dining, drinking and entertainment offering next to heaven.
 

China’s Rich Teahouse legacy is steeped in Chinese history and culture. Teahouses were the central gathering places for artisans, philosophers and local residents, where business deals were made, gossip circulated, and revolutions hatched over the ubiquitous pots of tea and dishes of dumplings or nuts.
 

Can someone who’s dined on sushi in San Francisco and Shanghai find raw fish satisfaction in the Champlain Valley? I was skeptical. But a recent sampling of local sushi purveyors left me pleasantly surprised. Three Burlington restaurants — Asiana House, Koto Japanese Steakhouse, and Sakura Bana Japanese Restaurant — offer traditional and modern takes on the Japanese specialty for both vegetarian and non-vegetarian diners. All three serve sashimi- or sushi-grade fish. Koto and Sakura Bana get their fish delivered through the same source twice a week. Asiana buys it every day in smaller batches.