分类： entertainment

On July 4, 2026, durian enthusiasts and cultural tourists marked a milestone for Malaysia’s most iconic agricultural product with the official opening of the Kuala Lumpur Durian Experience Centre (KLDEX), Asia’s first one-stop immersive destination dedicated entirely to the so-called ‘King of Fruits’. The launch coincided with the 2026 Malaysia Durian Festival, bringing fresh attention to a crop that has become one of the Southeast Asian nation’s most valuable export commodities.

Located along the bustling Jalan Ampang corridor in central Kuala Lumpur, the 1,900-square-metre facility was developed by local enterprise MyBolehBoleh, with official backing from Malaysia’s Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture. Backers of the project frame it as more than just a tourist attraction: it is designed to elevate the profile of Malaysia’s durian industry globally and cement the country’s reputation as a leading culinary and cultural tourism hub. Cofounded by Ang Kean Wee and Edison Ang Wei Phang, with curation led by cultural historian Enzo Sim, KLDEX caters to visitors of all ages, combining education, entertainment, and hands-on culinary experiences under a single roof.

The centre integrates a range of unique offerings, from a fully curated durian museum and immersive 4D-style theater to specialty food and beverage outlets, interactive cultivation workshops, and in-depth cultural storytelling sessions. Guided durian tasting sessions, a core draw for visitors, require advance registration, while the museum operates daily from 10:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on a paid ticketing model.

What sets KLDEX apart from ordinary fruit-themed attractions is its deep dive into the layered history and cultural significance of durian in Malaysia. The museum’s collection includes rare medieval manuscripts from both Chinese and European seafarers who documented their encounters with the pungent, creamy fruit during early voyages to the Malay Archipelago, alongside a full-scale replica of a working durian plantation that lets visitors experience what cultivation looks like on the ground. Curators spent years cross-referencing oral histories from smallholder farmers and cross-checking archival documents to fill gaps in recorded durian heritage, much of which was passed down through generations rather than written down.

Sim, the centre’s chief curator, noted that key well-documented historical encounters — including 15th-century Ming Dynasty Admiral Zheng He’s documented meeting with durian during his voyage to Melaka, as well as notes from European explorers operating in the region — anchor the museum’s historical narrative. To capture the specific stories of Malaysia’s most internationally celebrated varieties, including the premium Musang King and Black Thorn strains, Sim traveled directly to Penang and Kelantan to interview the original farmers and their descendants who worked with Malaysia’s Department of Agriculture to formalize registration for these iconic cultivars.

A dedicated ‘durian orchard experience’ zone breaks down the entire supply chain that brings Malaysian durian to global consumers, highlighting the interconnected work of smallholder farmers, export operators, and tourism workers that have turned the fruit into a global phenomenon. The immersive theater hosts four original productions daily, telling a lighthearted story of two competing durian traders whose rivalry eventually blooms into friendship. The performance weaves together rap, local humor, and deep cuts about Malaysia’s dozens of prized durian varieties to celebrate the fruit’s deep roots in local culture.

Additional installations including original paintings, custom sculptures, and recreated lifelike local market stalls highlight the deep emotional connection that generations of Malaysians have maintained with durian. Co-founder Ang explained that the project’s core mission is to preserve Malaysia’s durian cultural heritage and systematically document the untold histories behind popular varieties ranging from D24 to Musang King and Black Thorn. ‘While Malaysian durians are renowned worldwide, their histories are seldom fully told,’ he noted.

As Kuala Lumpur continues to expand its cultural tourism offerings, the launch of KLDEX fills a long-empty niche, turning a beloved local staple into a curated cultural attraction for both domestic and international visitors. For a city increasingly prioritizing cultural preservation and culinary tourism, the arrival of the world’s first dedicated durian experience centre feels less like a novelty and more like a natural evolution of Malaysia’s celebration of its most famous fruit.

The global entertainment community is in mourning this week after the passing of iconic New Zealand actor Sam Neill, who died Monday following a public battle with a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Neill was 78 years old, leaving behind a decades-long acting career that shaped global cinema and cemented New Zealand’s growing reputation as a world-class hub for film production.

Neill earned international household recognition for his career-defining turn as Dr. Alan Grant, the sharp-witted paleontologist at the heart of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park. The role cast him alongside co-stars Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough, as his character was drawn to a remote Costa Rican theme park where scientists had successfully cloned prehistoric dinosaurs. The franchise would go on to become one of the highest-grossing in film history, and Neill reprised his beloved role in later installments of the series.

Beyond his blockbuster success, Neill built an award-nominated career spanning television and documentary work. He earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for his lead performance in the 1998 miniseries *Merlin*, and a second Emmy nod for his work as narrator on the 2017 documentary *Wild New Zealand*. He also collected three Golden Globe nominations across his career, for *Merlin*, *One Against the Wind*, and *Reilly: Ace of Spies*, showcasing his range as a performer across genres and formats.

Tributes have poured in from across the entertainment industry and New Zealand’s political sphere, celebrating Neill’s talent, kindness, and lasting impact. Fellow actor Richard E. Grant, who collaborated with Neill on the 2018 film *Palm Beach*, wrote on Instagram: “Knew Sam Neill for 3 decades and finally worked with him on ‘PALM BEACH’ in 2018. An officer and a Gentleman in the truest sense. Guided and helped me through a very difficult time in my Life … Sail on, kind Sir.”

Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy shared in a statement: “Like everyone who knew and worked with Sam, I admired him and adored him in equal measure. He was one of the kindest, funniest and gentlest people, and one of the finest actors … RIP.” Colin Trevorrow, who directed Neill in Jurassic World Dominion, remembered the actor’s steadying presence on set, writing on Instagram: “Sam Neill was a deeply soulful and beautiful man. He was a friend and collaborator at a challenging time, and his strength gave us all strength. I’ll remember him for his tranquility, his love of wine, and for the calm assuredness he brought to his characters. It’s not every lifetime you get to befriend a legend. Forever grateful.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon highlighted Neill’s foundational role in building his home country’s film industry. In a post on X, Luxon said: “Sir Sam Neill was one of the greats. He started out when there was barely a film industry in this country to speak of. For more than fifty years he took New Zealand stories to the world and his talents helped make our film industry into what it is today — one of our greatest cultural exports.”

Fellow actors also shared personal memories of Neill, celebrating his warmth and on-screen talent. Actor Sharon Morgan credited Neill with bringing immense joy to the industry, recommending his performance in *Dean Spanley* as a testament to his skill. New Zealand-born actor Joel Tobeck recalled Neill’s encouraging presence and their shared love of rugby, calling him “a true gentleman.” Actress Rachel Griffiths referenced Neill’s own winemaking venture, writing that she would toast his memory with two bottles of wine from his vineyard. Global pop icon Kylie Minogue shared a simple tribute, writing “Vale Sam” — a term common in Australia and New Zealand meaning farewell. Australian actress Toni Collette summed up the widespread grief, writing: “I love you, dear Sam. You hero. You legend. You sweetheart. Our great friend. You are already missed so very much. Continue in peace wherever you are.”

Legendary actor Sam Neill, whose decades-spanning career spanned everything from groundbreaking independent art house films to global blockbuster franchises, has died at the age of 78. The news of his passing was confirmed in an official statement shared to the actor’s social media channels, which confirmed he died on a Monday at his home in Sydney, Australia.

In 2023, Neill revealed he had received a diagnosis of angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. However, the statement clarified that his death was “sudden and unexpected”, and that he remained cancer-free at the time of his passing. No official cause of death has been released to the public. “Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life,” his family shared in the statement.

Born in Northern Ireland in 1947, Neill moved to New Zealand with his family at age 7, settling in Dunedin on the country’s South Island. He launched his professional acting career in his adopted home country, taking the lead role in 1977’s *Sleeping Dogs* — the first full-length feature film produced in New Zealand in more than a decade. Just two years later, he gained his first international exposure through Gillian Armstrong’s celebrated 1979 drama *My Brilliant Career*, which also introduced audiences to fellow Australian acting star Judy Davis.

Neill rose to global prominence as part of a wave of Australian and New Zealand acting and directing talent that broke through onto the international stage starting in the late 1970s, alongside household names including Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion and Peter Weir. Widely praised for his extraordinary versatility, he took on wildly divergent roles across genres, from the menacing Antichrist Damien in *Omen III: The Final Conflict* to the gentle, conflicted husband of Holly Hunter’s character in Jane Campion’s Oscar-winning *The Piano*, to the tormented protagonist of sci-fi horror *Event Horizon* who gouges out his own eyes. He earned two Emmy Award nominations: one for his lead performance in the 1998 miniseries *Merlin*, and another as narrator for the 2017 documentary series *Wild New Zealand*.

Of all his hundreds of on-screen roles, Neill earned the most global recognition for his portrayal of paleontologist Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 cultural phenomenon *Jurassic Park*. Starring alongside Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough, Neill’s grounded, thoughtful character warned of the catastrophic risks of cloning dinosaurs for commercial entertainment, delivering one of the franchise’s most iconic lines: “Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?” Though he skipped the franchise’s 1997 sequel *The Lost World*, he reprised the role of Grant for 2001’s *Jurassic Park III* and 2022’s *Jurassic World: Dominion*, telling the *New York Daily News* in 2001 that he had grown more comfortable in the role over time.

Beyond *Jurassic Park*, Neill built an iconic filmography that included a memorable turn as a Soviet submarine officer dreaming of a quiet life in Montana in *The Hunt for Red October*, a lead role in John Carpenter’s cult horror *In the Mouth of Madness*, and two on-screen collaborations with Meryl Streep in *Plenty* and *A Cry in the Dark*. On television, he memorably played the ruthless Chester Campbell in the hit series *Peaky Blinders*, portrayed Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in the CBS miniseries *Sally Hemings: An American Tragedy*, and most recently starred opposite Annette Bening in the 2024 Peacock drama *Apples Never Fall*.

Off-screen, Neill was an accomplished vintner, running the Two Paddocks winery in New Zealand’s Central Otago region, where he produced award-winning pinot noir and riesling. A prolific social media user, he often shared lighthearted photos of his farm animals, which he named for celebrity friends and colleagues — including a chicken named Laura Dern, a duck named Kylie Minogue and a cow named Helena Bonham Carter.

In 2023, the same year he released his memoir *Did I Ever Tell You This?*, Neill was knighted for his outstanding contribution to film, an honor approved by the late Queen Elizabeth II. Reflecting on his cancer diagnosis and treatment that same year, he told *The Guardian*: “I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments. But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends.”

Decades before photography emerged as the dominant visual medium of British colonial rule in South Asia, a sharp-eyed and talented English artist and writer named Emily Eden traversed northern India, documenting the vast diversity of people she encountered with a curiosity and attention to detail rare among her 19th-century contemporaries.

Born into one of Britain’s most politically powerful families, Eden journeyed across the Indian subcontinent between 1836 and 1842, accompanying her brother George Eden, the first Earl of Auckland and then Governor-General of India, on his official travels. Unlike many European artists of the era who focused almost exclusively on elite imperial figures or grand colonial landscapes, Eden’s sketchbook captured a far broader cross-section of Indian society: from ruling maharajas and Afghan nobles to Akali Sikh warriors, court servants, traveling Himalayan traders, common travelers, holy fakirs, hill communities, and even the exotic animals that moved with imperial processions.

This extraordinary body of work is now the centerpiece of *Princes & People*, a new exhibition at Delhi’s DAG gallery curated by prominent art historian Mary Ann Prior. The show brings together the full published series of hand-colored lithographs created from Eden’s original field sketches, which were first released to the public in 1844 under the title *Portraits of the Princes and People of India*.

Eden’s experience of India was not without struggle. When she first disembarked in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in March 1836, she was thrown into a chaotic schedule of official events and overwhelmed by the alien culture around her. Deeply homesick and disoriented, she did not pick up her sketching tools for three weeks, and waited two months before completing her first finished painting. Her small traveling party, which included her sister Fanny, nephew William, maids, a personal nurse, cook, valet, physician, and a collection of pets, helped lift her mood and adapt to her new surroundings.

As Prior notes, the sea voyage to India had already begun to expand Eden’s creative perspective, as she encountered new communities, customs, and ways of life long before reaching shore. “The diversity of people and places motivated and improved Emily’s artistic output, and her natural curiosity sought out the unusual. She meticulously documented her observations through her sketches and paintings,” Prior explains. Rejecting the familiar European subjects of castles, churches, and pastoral English landscapes that dominated contemporary British art, Eden turned her full attention to the strangers, vibrant traditional costumes, distinct architecture, and uncharted landscapes that surrounded her.

Traveling across northern India at a moment of massive impending political upheaval on the subcontinent, Eden’s sketches offer a uniquely intimate, unfiltered glimpse into a world on the brink of change. Most notably, her work captures the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, whose powerful Punjab Kingdom stood as one of the most influential states in South Asia at the time, documenting the final years of his reign just as the Victorian era began to reshape the region’s political future. She also sketched exiled Afghan Amir Dost Mohammad Khan and his family during their exile in India following British intervention in Kabul, offering a rare visual record of a key figure in the 19th-century “Great Game” rivalry between Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia.

Beyond her skill as a visual artist, Eden was a gifted and engaging writer. Her lively personal journals are filled with dry humor and sharp observational detail, with place and personal names transcribed phonetically as they sounded to her English ear. Upon arriving in the holy city of Benares (now Varanasi), for example, her traveling party sailed along the Ganges before journeying to Ramnagar, where the local ruler maintained a country estate. The scene so captured Eden’s imagination that she wrote in her journal: “We mean to keep our steamer here and to go out sketching in it.”

That warm enthusiasm took time to develop. In her first months in India, the deep cultural divide between her native England and her new home left Eden longing for her old life. She chafed at the heat, persistent mosquitoes, constant cacophony of street and wild animals, and the social customs that felt alien to her, confining her indoors for much of each day. But as months passed, she began drawing prolifically, and her work quickly found an audience: her paintings sold briskly at charity fairs in Shimla, won praise from the British colonial community, and were even copied by local Indian artists.

Prior ranks Eden’s Indian sketches among the finest works produced by any British woman artist of the Regency and Victorian eras. Only two other British women artists working in India—botanical painter Charlotte Canning and later travel artist Marianne North—matched the scope and quality of her achievement, she says.

Even as her observational skills and curiosity set her apart, Eden still reflected the common colonial biases of her social class and era. She held an unwavering belief in Britain’s so-called “civilising mission” in India, framing her years on the subcontinent as “an unwelcome ordeal to be endured for a higher purpose,” as Prior writes, and viewed colonial rule as a necessary obligation to “civilise” the country.

The Eden family left India for Britain in 1842, eager to return to their home. Back in Europe, Emily continued to paint, but the urgent drive that pushed her to document unfamiliar people and landscapes in India had faded. Her later works were far fewer in number, and focused on the familiar English landscapes she had grown up with. Increasingly, writing became the medium through which she shared her Indian experiences with a broader British audience: her collection of lively travel letters *Up the Country* was published in 1866, followed by *Letters from India* in 1872. Though Emily Eden died in 1869, her reputation has outlasted the initial association of her work with her family’s role in the First Afghan War, and today her legacy rests on her own independent accomplishments as both a writer and a visual artist.