https://www.scmp.com/rss/10579/feed Karen Angel is a freelance writer and former SCMP arts and culture reporter who lives in New Paltz, New York. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com After five years and eight doctors’ opinions, I finally found a surgeon who said she could remove my problematic uterus using keyhole surgery. At 1.3kg (2.9 pounds), my uterus, which typically resembles an upside-down pear, was fibroid-laden and had grown to 10 times normal size. I looked about seven months’ pregnant. The fibroids were non-cancerous and didn’t cause painful symptoms, so my long-time gynaecologist advocated a wait-and-see approach. Unfortunately, over the years of waiting and... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/3103302/no-more-pain-and-tiny-scars-how-laparoscopic-hysterectomy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/3103302/no-more-pain-and-tiny-scars-how-laparoscopic-hysterectomy?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 29 Sep 2020 11:15:16 +0000 Pets are more than ever providing emotional solace as well as entertainment and comic relief for animal lovers on lockdown at home during the coronavirus pandemic. Few things are as comforting as a picture of a cute dog. Research, meanwhile, has shown that gazing into your dog’s eyes elevates levels of the bonding hormone oxytocin for both of you, just as gazing into your child’s eyes does. Revelling in dogs’ cuteness allows us to return to a simpler time, when the activities of daily living did... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/3080376/cute-dog-photos-helping-pet-owners-deal-covid-19?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/3080376/cute-dog-photos-helping-pet-owners-deal-covid-19?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 20 Apr 2020 12:00:24 +0000 HERE'S A STATISTIC Hiroki Sakai and Ioannis Mentzas would like to change: for every 20 translations of foreign books published in Japan, just one Japanese book is translated into a foreign language. Sakai, founder of Vertical, a four-year-old publisher of translations of Japanese commercial fiction, and Mentzas, Vertical's editorial director, are betting that the time is right to get a western audience hooked on Japanese books. In the past few years, Americans, in particular, have become big... https://www.scmp.com/article/511228/operation-translation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/511228/operation-translation?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Aug 2005 16:00:00 +0000 AS A CITIZEN of two countries, Rattawut Lapcharoensap always feels like a tourist. 'I don't feel quite American enough when I'm in America, and I don't feel quite Thai enough when I'm in Thailand,' Lapcharoensap says from Ithaca, New York. 'So there's a sense of feeling like a cultural outsider in both places.' That psychological distance has reaped big dividends for the 26-year-old. His first book, Sightseeing, has won praise for the craftsmanship of its seven short stories and for... https://www.scmp.com/article/497941/accidental-tourist?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/497941/accidental-tourist?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Apr 2005 16:00:00 +0000 'I'M INTERESTED IN people and what happens to them,' says Jessica Hagedorn, sitting at a table at the trendy restaurant Pastis in Manhattan's meatpacking district. 'That's what engages me - human motivation. What draws some people into the forest and others out of it?' It's an apt question to ask on the paperback release of her third novel, Dream Jungle (Penguin). Using the jungle of Hagedorn's native Philippines as the backdrop, the novel centres on the 'theme of cultural mythmaking,' she... https://www.scmp.com/article/475333/way-myths?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/475333/way-myths?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Oct 2004 16:00:00 +0000 TERI WOODS LOADED up her Mazda sedan with 300 copies of her self-published novel True to the Game In December 1999 and drove to New York City from her native Philadelphia. Standing outside Harlem's famous Apollo Theatre in frigid weather, she hawked her book to passersby during the day and slept in her car at night. In four months, she'd sold out her first printing of 4,000 copies - despite having tried to interest more than 20 mainstream publishers in the book since 1992. Today, her two... https://www.scmp.com/article/471905/its-bling-thing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/471905/its-bling-thing?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Sep 2004 16:00:00 +0000 ANNA NING LIHONG learned to speak Cantonese fluently within a year of moving to Hong Kong from Beijing in 1996. Now, the 27-year-old has a big circle of Hong Kong friends and a local boyfriend. 'I hang out with Hongkongers more than mainlanders,' says the marketing director for art gallery J Gallery. 'We go to dinner, shopping, hiking, all kinds of stuff.' Ten years ago, mainlanders in Hong Kong were still stereotyped as country bumpkins and prime shoplifting candidates. After the handover,... https://www.scmp.com/article/456830/relativity?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/456830/relativity?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 23 May 2004 16:00:00 +0000 KAM PUI-FAN CHOSE Apple as her English name when she was in kindergarten. Now, the name is part of her identity. 'Everyone calls me Apple, even my mother and father,' says Kam, 24, a customer care manager at Fitness First's Quarry Bay gym. 'Some people don't like to be called by their Chinese names. They think they're not modern. People think, if you have an English name, you're very fashionable and trendy.' Hongkongers from their teens to their 40s are using English names more often,... https://www.scmp.com/article/456005/game-names?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/456005/game-names?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 May 2004 16:00:00 +0000 'I'M MARCO,' says the man who greets me in the lobby of Kowloon's InterContinental Grand Stanford hotel. 'I'm his agent.' Marco Bianchi, president of Form Art entertainment agency, is referring to Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, in Hong Kong as part of his Spring 2004 Asian tour, also taking in Manila and Singapore. 'No questions about his wife - he's divorcing,' Bianchi says, reading my list of questions and crossing off two. 'And don't ask him how he became blind - it upsets him.' Bocelli... https://www.scmp.com/article/454726/modest-tenor?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/454726/modest-tenor?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 06 May 2004 16:00:00 +0000 You can see Malcolm Golding's art around Hong Kong - adorning the lobby of the Kowloon Shangri-La hotel and the walls of the Bridge bar in Wan Chai, for example - but last Saturday was the first time anyone here had seen his work in an exhibition. At the Wan Chai restaurant Tango Martini, Golding unveiled an erotic painting series he has been working on for three years. His Fun Fetish Collection - 'it's fun rather than seriously frightening,' he says - follows a theme of playing cards, with a... https://www.scmp.com/article/454610/intimate-look-erotic-pleasure?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/454610/intimate-look-erotic-pleasure?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 05 May 2004 16:00:00 +0000 AH MAN DATED Sang for 14 years. They moved in together, with his family, two months after they met. Last year, Ah Man, 36, became pregnant - 'an accident', she says. Finally, after turning down several proposals from Sang, 37, she agreed to marry him. They were wed last September, when their baby girl was three months old. 'I was afraid to get married,' says Ah Man, a Hong Kong professional who didn't want to reveal her or her husband's surnames. 'I think a single woman has a better image... https://www.scmp.com/article/454274/doing-it-themselves?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/454274/doing-it-themselves?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 02 May 2004 16:00:00 +0000 WHEN DAVID HEWSON was a boy growing up in the small coastal town of Bridlington, England, entertainment options were few. He ended up spending lots of time at the local library, which had a surprisingly strong collection of American authors, from John Steinbeck to John Dos Passos, Ray Bradbury to Ed McBain. 'American writers gave us this pace, the feeling of a lot of narrative drive,' says Hewson, 51, who was in Hong Kong last week on a publicity tour for his latest thriller, The Villa of... https://www.scmp.com/article/453306/american-booty?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/453306/american-booty?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Apr 2004 16:00:00 +0000 ELDER CLAYTON Nylander strides along the streets of Kowloon City, waving and uttering a hearty jou san to other pedestrians. Despite his honorific, Nylander is only 20, and he isn't just being friendly. He's trying to win converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for which he is serving a two-year mission in Hong Kong. Within 45 minutes, Nylander and his companion, Elder Cheng Wai-lun, 23, a native Hongkonger, have managed to engage at least three people on the street in... https://www.scmp.com/article/453205/word-street?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/453205/word-street?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Apr 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Peter Millward never would have guessed his iron stomach would end up being a career asset. In 1990, a colleague at a local music-production company, Eddie Chung, took him out for yum cha, and a great friendship was born. 'He fed me cow intestines, and I really liked it,' says the fortysomething former Londoner of Chung. 'We became friends.' In 1997, the two formed their own music production company, Drum Music, which since then has worked on TV commercials for at least 2,000... https://www.scmp.com/article/453127/peter-millward?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/453127/peter-millward?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 22 Apr 2004 16:00:00 +0000 THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT shut down Wenda Gu's first solo show almost 20 years ago. But rather than tone down the provocative content of his work, the visual and performance artist has been upping the creative ante ever since. Gu has used ink, paper, tea, stone, powdered placentas, menstrual blood and, most famously, hair in his work. He is experimenting with a semen series. The menstrual blood and placentas caused controversy in the US, but Gu also created a furore in China with his ink... https://www.scmp.com/article/452529/mane-man?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/452529/mane-man?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Apr 2004 16:00:00 +0000 LAURENCE BRAHM spent the summers of 2002 and 2003 hitchhiking across three provinces in China, from Tibet to Qinghai and Yunnan. The 42-year-old lawyer and former consultant wasn't trying to find himself, but rather answer the question: where is Shangri-La? 'I had witnessed the country going from being unmaterialistic to being completely consumed by materialism in a short time,' says Brahm, an American who has been living and working in China since 1981, and started a multimedia company... https://www.scmp.com/article/450701/soul-searcher?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/450701/soul-searcher?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 01 Apr 2004 16:00:00 +0000 THE STACK OF computer printouts at the Kowloon temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stands about half a metre high. At the bottom of the pile is the first name listed, Zeng Mo-zhe, born about 1392. Next is Zeng's brother, Yuan-hui, born about two years later. Xu shi ('wife of Xu'), born in 1904, is the last listing. According to ancient Chinese genealogical conventions, her first name isn't necessary because she is a woman. Danny Chin, Asia manager for the Genealogical... https://www.scmp.com/article/450285/pages-history?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/450285/pages-history?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 29 Mar 2004 16:00:00 +0000 In an atrium in Tsim Sha Tsui's Harbour City mall, under a stained-glass skylight, a man in a ragged grey jacket and pinstriped trousers slowly lifts a black bowler off his head. As mournful violin music fills the space, he pirouettes, kicks and dissolves into a heap on the floor. Lunchtime shoppers who have gathered on the three floors surrounding the atrium stand riveted. This free entertainment, courtesy of the City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC), is part of the Hong Kong institution's... https://www.scmp.com/article/450094/moving-masses-step-dance-theatre-direction?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/450094/moving-masses-step-dance-theatre-direction?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Mar 2004 16:00:00 +0000 ANNIE WANG HAS written nine books in Chinese. In 1998, she finished her first book in English, Lili, but the American literary agents she approached rejected it. Finally, in 2001, Lili was published by the US imprint Pantheon Books. 'China simply wasn't the interest of American publishers,' says Wang, 31. 'They wanted me to turn it into an autobiography. They said there has been a record of success if you tell in your own voice about your life. But if it's literature, it becomes ... https://www.scmp.com/article/449095/reading-east-wind?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/449095/reading-east-wind?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Mar 2004 16:00:00 +0000 LE THI DIEM THUY is talking about learning to swim as an adult, 28 years after her older brother drowned in the South China Sea and 24 years after her older sister drowned in the same sea while, as a refugee, she was on her way to the US. 'My mum had lost two kids in the water, so her reaction was to keep her kids out of the water,' says le, now 32. 'I'd been raised with the idea we couldn't swim, so I wanted to see if it was true. There's always tension between things that float and... https://www.scmp.com/article/448090/drifting-father-away?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/448090/drifting-father-away?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Mar 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Backstage at the Bryant Park Atelier, designer Jeffrey Chow Chi-keung stands calmly taking questions from fashion reporters amid a vortex of activity. A team of stylists buzzes around the models as alteration assistants make last-minute tweaks and publicists with tight, panicky faces rush around like traffic cops. Chow's face betrays no trace of whatever emotions may be rumbling inside him before this autumn Fashion Week show on a wintery, February day in Manhattan. But then, excusing himself... https://www.scmp.com/article/447240/en-vogue?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/447240/en-vogue?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Mar 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Shinichi Yoshida catches his winning wave about 100 metres off Cherry Point and rides it all the way to the shore. 'It's unbelievable - this is a dream,' says Yoshida after the awards ceremony, his substantial trophy standing in the sand next to him. An unprepossessing, stocky man with shoulder-length bleached hair, Yoshida has just won the 720 China Surf Open, billed by its organisers as China's first surfing competition. Hong Hoi Wan - which translates in English as the somewhat unimaginative... https://www.scmp.com/article/438895/surfs-north?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/438895/surfs-north?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Dec 2003 16:00:00 +0000 The aisles of the second annual Natural Products Expo Asia at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre were bustling last week with thousands of buyers from more than 50 countries hunting for natural products that hawked their ability to detoxify the body and boost immunity, among other claims. But local exhibitors were distracted from the business at hand by a new Department of Health proposal, which many believed would prevent them from marketing their products in Hong Kong - and would... https://www.scmp.com/article/438211/worse-cure?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/438211/worse-cure?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 14 Dec 2003 16:00:00 +0000