Editorial lens

Before It's Gone

Culture on a clock.

Before It's Gone documents the practices, places, and traditions that are closing, changing, or vanishing. The last generation of Hong Kong's bamboo scaffold builders. Trades on a timer. See them while the context still holds.

Comănești, Romania

Japanese Tourists Fly 9,000 Kilometres to Watch Men in Bearskins Dance in a Romanian Coal Town

Comănești, Romania

Japanese Tourists Fly 9,000 Kilometres to Watch Men in Bearskins Dance in a Romanian Coal Town

Every December 30 in Comănești, Romania, hundreds of men wearing real bearskins weighing up to 50 kilograms perform Jocul Ursului — a pre-Christian ritual tracing to a bear-god named Zalmoxis. Japanese tourists fly 9,000 km for it. UNESCO has been considering it since 2011. The villages keeping it alive are emptying.

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