His ancestors were rice traders, but he has grown beyond the small rice shop to expand his business into jewellery, real estate, finance, shopping complexes and lot more.

"I mean, why not a syphilitic middle- 255aged rice trader in Lahore, India, with, um, um, a collection of taxi-dermied squirrels."

Thai Petrochemical was established in 1978 by an ethnic Chinese family of rice traders, the Leophairatanas.

Under his various names, Shennong is the patron deity especially of farmers, rice traders, and practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Thian Hee later returned to his family profession as a rice trader and became one of the country's most influential merchants.

In 1913 Sir Po Tha, a rice trader of Rangoon, had the pagoda repaired and regilded.

In addition, Chinese millers and rice traders were blamed for an economic recession that gripped Siam for nearly a decade after 1905.

Vietnam, fearing shortages due to a cold wave on the Red River Delta in mid-January 2008, banned sales to international rice traders.

Being a major rice producing town, it is the home of several rice mills and rice traders.

For all the attention being paid to Japan, rice traders say the current price bullishness relies just as heavily on several more transient factors.