Eva Chin writes for RECATOOLS on business and commerce in Southeast Asia: the commercial decisions small businesses actually face, and the markets and regulation around them. She also covers Chinese naming and cultural practice, education and qualifications across the region, and the arithmetic of a tropical home. Coverage of cultural practice is educational — it explains what a tradition holds and where it came from, and does not make predictive claims.

194
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Business
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Jul 2026
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~1230 min
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Articles Showing 51–60 of 194

Indonesian rupiah banknotes of 10,000 and 100,000 held in a hand
Business

Bank Indonesia Holds at 5.75% in Destry Damayanti's First Meeting as Governor

Indonesia's central bank kept rates unchanged under its new leadership. The rupiah is near 17,855, credit is outrunning forecast, and Singapore joins the local-currency settlement scheme.

27 Sep 2026 · 5 min read
Espresso pouring from a machine spout into a white cup
Business

Jollibee Sold 11 Per Cent of Highlands Coffee, Giving the Founder Majority Control

The buyer is the founder's own company, which rises to 51 per cent. The price values the Vietnamese chain at about US$800m, and a listing is planned for early 2027.

26 Sep 2026 · 5 min read
Banknotes from several different countries spread out together
Business

Indonesia and Hong Kong Talk QR Payments That Bypass the Dollar

The memorandum is exploratory, with no timetable and no pilot. What it actually rests on appears in the Indonesian reporting and not in the English.

25 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
Rows of round red lanterns with gold tassels strung in lines across a traditional Chinese street, with a white hanging banner of brushed characters at the left
Chinese Culture

Chinese character riddles, and how to solve them

一口咬掉牛尾巴 — one mouth bites off the ox's tail. Bite the tail off 牛, put 口 underneath, and you have written 告. That is nine riddles in ten: we worked all 88 in our own collection by hand and 88 per cent were solved by taking a character apart, not by thinking about oxen.

25 Sep 2026 · 8 min read
Bamboo steamer baskets filled with assorted dim sum
Home & Living

What dim sum names mean, and why menus translate them so many ways

Har gow is a shrimp dumpling, cheung fun a rice-noodle roll, and Singapore's carrot cake is really white radish. We copied the English names of 12 classic dishes from 11 restaurant menus: 97 of 102 labels were different, and only har gow and siu mai usually keep their Cantonese names.

23 Sep 2026 · 5 min read
An antique brass balance scale with two hanging pans
Chinese Culture

What bone weight (称骨) most people get

In the 称骨 bone-weighing reading, the most common weight is 3两9钱 and the middle one is 4两. We added up the weight for every hour of every day from 1950 to 2009 to see how often each result comes up, how the four tables work, and where they came from.

22 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
A fruit stall piled with durians under a hand-written price sign
Home & Living

The Chinese words Singapore and Malaysia use that the mainland does not

In Singapore you shop at the 巴刹, live in a 组屋 and wear a 大衣 that is a suit, not an overcoat. Here are the everyday words of Singapore and Malaysian Chinese, where each came from — Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, English — and the words that have crossed into the mainland's dictionary.

22 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
The skyline of Ho Chi Minh City at dusk, seen across the river
Business

Vietnam Got Its FTSE Upgrade and the VN-Index Fell

Index funds must now hold Vietnamese stocks, and the weight arrives in four steps to September 2027. Vanguard talks of 2.5 billion dollars; its estimated first day was 240.5 million.

22 Sep 2026 · 5 min read
A palace gate plaque written in traditional Chinese characters
Chinese Culture

How China, Taiwan and Unicode each choose between 峰 and 峯

峰 and 峯 are one word with one sound. Whether they count as one character depends on who is asking. Here is how the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Unicode classify variant characters, with worked examples and what it means for search.

21 Sep 2026 · 6 min read
Close-up of a microphone grille against a blue background
Chinese Culture

Counting the sounds a Mandarin tongue twister is built to drill

Mandarin tongue twisters are built from pairs of sounds that some speakers pronounce the same. Counting those pairs in the pinyin shows which speakers each twister catches, and that they barely touch the tone changes they are often used to drill.

21 Sep 2026 · 6 min read
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