https://www.scmp.com/rss/142051/feed Edith Terry is an author and consultant who has spent nearly four decades in Asia. A former editor of the op-ed pages of the South China Morning Post, she was also a foreign correspondent for Business Week magazine and East Asian economics correspondent for the Globe and Mail newspaper, based in Tokyo. She is the author of How Asia Got Rich: Japan, China, and the Asian Miracle. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com “Liberate Hong Kong; revolution of our times.” The slogan serves as a red flag to Hong Kong government loyalists and the central government alike. It was first used in 2016 by activist Edward Leung Tin-kei, now imprisoned for his part in the violent Mong Kok protests in February 2016, when democracy activists tore up paving stones to throw at police trying to break up street vendors assembled for Lunar New Year celebrations, an illegal but usually tolerated act.  That one night of violence is... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3022947/passion-hong-kong-should-guide-protesters-initiate-way-out-deadlock?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3022947/passion-hong-kong-should-guide-protesters-initiate-way-out-deadlock?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 Aug 2019 22:00:11 +0000 Crowded by a tangle of trees, the entrance could be that to a ghostly theme park. The heraldic emblem on the gate features two crossed flagpoles, each standard bearing the cross of St George and the enigmatic letters “VRC”. Other signs warn “Members Only” and “No dog is allowed” in English and Chinese, and potholed concrete tracks wind towards a clubhouse hidden beneath a mass of acacia, ficus, flame of the forest, camphor and maple trees, many damaged by the recent Typhoon Mangkhut. At the end... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2174353/hong-kongs-recreational-clubs-are-remnants-its?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2174353/hong-kongs-recreational-clubs-are-remnants-its?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Nov 2018 09:15:15 +0000 In 1964, a young German, fresh off the plane at his first job, went in search of a social group. He found a home away from home in Hong Kong’s oldest private recreational club, newly relocated from a prime location on Victoria Harbour, where City Hall is today, to a modest flagstone boathouse beneath Island Road on Hong Kong’s south side. Fifty-five years later, Frank Pfeiffer, a Zen Buddhist and mountain climber, is still an active member of the Victoria Recreation Club, established in 1849. He... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2136126/why-hong-kongs-private-clubs-deserve-their-cushy-rental?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2136126/why-hong-kongs-private-clubs-deserve-their-cushy-rental?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 Mar 2018 01:03:22 +0000 Numismatics /ˌnjuːmɪzˈmatɪks/: The study or collection of coins, banknotes, and medals – Oxford English Dictionary   Sunlight barely reaches the depths of the caver­nous, 5,000 sq ft warehouse space in Chai Wan where Dr Werner Burger and his Taiwanese-born wife, Tsai Yui-mei, who goes by the name Lucy, house seven tons of coins. Dating from between 1636 and 1911, the span of China’s last imperial dynasty, the coins represent not only an extraordinary trove of rare and unique items coveted by... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2116027/coin-stash-puts-new-spin-chinas-100-years?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2116027/coin-stash-puts-new-spin-chinas-100-years?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Oct 2017 01:15:00 +0000 For most of its 50 years, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has refused to be categorised, even as it tiptoes towards an ever-greater role in the regional and global economy. Writing in 1992, one of its architects, the French-trained diplomat Thanat Khoman, by then retired, asserted wistfully: “Our model has been, and still is, the European Community … International realities forced Asean to deviate from its original path.” On the occasion of its golden anniversary on August 8, Asean’s... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2105746/asean-50-model-has-aged-surprisingly-well?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2105746/asean-50-model-has-aged-surprisingly-well?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 07 Aug 2017 06:48:37 +0000 A few hours after the second US presidential debate, I marched to the Central Post Office to cast my vote. Two postmen served as witnesses to my absentee ballot that I sent to the courthouse in tiny Perry County, Alabama. There, I hope, the county clerk will enter my vote for the Democratic ticket - Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Never have I been so excited about my right to vote for the US president. Never have the stakes seemed so high. In Barack Obama, I see a candidate who could restore... https://www.scmp.com/article/656698/americans-abroad-debt-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/656698/americans-abroad-debt-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Every community has them - the questions that you just don't ask. In Hong Kong, lots of people want to know: 'Why is the sky black?' But they avoid the related question: 'Who dunnit?' The reason is easy to understand, because nearly every one of us bears part of the responsibility. If the novelist Michael Crichton were to write a thriller about Hong Kong's air quality, titled perhaps Dark City, its characters would include tycoons, their Shenzhen mistresses, earnest bureaucrats, corrupt... https://www.scmp.com/article/625226/city-dark?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/625226/city-dark?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:00:00 +0000 One of the great views of Shenzhen is from Hong Kong's closed boundary area near the border crossing of Lok Ma Chau. The towers of the special economic zone, a chaotic jumble, rise sheerly from the black and lifeless waters of the Shenzhen River. Derelict concrete buildings with prominent patriotic signs stand next to glass high-rises. Across the river from the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation's immaculate new train station, scheduled to open today, lies its double, nestled among... https://www.scmp.com/article/604247/fortress-mentality?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/604247/fortress-mentality?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:00:00 +0000 When Chinese and international artists tackled the subject of the Pearl River Delta at the second Guangzhou Triennial in November 2005, the result was scary - installations with drifting plastic bags blown by factory fans and images of giant piles of slag and rubbish. The artists weren't exaggerating. All it takes to view some of the grimmest industrial scenes on earth is to hop on the bus to Guangzhou or Foshan, the city that holds first place for air pollution in the delta. The view from... https://www.scmp.com/article/600495/farewell-sad-wasteland?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/600495/farewell-sad-wasteland?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:00:00 +0000 In the last two weeks, an ugly 'red tide' has made beaches unusable and introduced new perils to dragon boat training. It is also a troubling symbol of Hong Kong's missed opportunities. Unusually warm weather has unleashed the algae bloom. The brown scum and red colour are byproducts of an algae, Cochlodinium, feeding on raw sewage coursing down the Pearl River Delta, to which Hong Kong adds its own sewage from 19th-century nullahs that open into typhoon shelters in Central and elsewhere. The... https://www.scmp.com/article/596826/turning-tide-creative-leadership?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/596826/turning-tide-creative-leadership?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:00:00 +0000 As the 10th anniversary of the end of British rule in Hong Kong approaches, it is tempting to compare then and now. Relative to the star-studded, media-clogged handover ceremony of July 1, 1997, the government's lengthy but pedestrian list of anniversary events is uninspiring. From Beijing's point of view, the celebration will be part of the preliminaries to the 2008 Summer Olympics in the capital, planned as the nation's coming out ceremony as a superpower. The rest of the world is likely... https://www.scmp.com/article/592065/what-about-next-10-years-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/592065/what-about-next-10-years-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 08 May 2007 16:00:00 +0000 Most of us are satisfied with gazing from a distance at the vast empty lots that scar the city. Not Peter Lee, who decided to take a walk around one of them - the rocky knob of reclaimed land built to serve as a platform for the Western Harbour Crossing. The tunnel's air shaft is currently the only structure on this 40-hectare plot, the rump end of an $8 billion, 340-hectare reclamation project designed to link the city centre with Chek Lap Kok, an even grander engineering feat. There are... https://www.scmp.com/article/492895/hong-kong-deserves-gift-green?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/492895/hong-kong-deserves-gift-green?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Mar 2005 16:00:00 +0000 Last Thursday, a crowd of well-dressed women assembled in the atrium of a Central office building to launch a new charity, the Women's Foundation. Sipping wine, they bid for photographs of women from an exhibition - the most popular was a 1950s street scene of prostitutes from the archives of the South China Morning Post. The event was exceptional only in the sense that it underlined how eclectic Hong Kong's culture of giving has become. It is a measure of Hong Kong's tolerance that it... https://www.scmp.com/article/491850/rules-charity?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/491850/rules-charity?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 08 Mar 2005 16:00:00 +0000 Last September, the death of Yang Huanyi marked the end of a secret sisterhood among the Yao minority people of Guangxi province. They had their own script, based on the dots and curves of embroidery, their own plaintive literature of mutual support, and haunting music. Yang, whose last years were captured in a documentary, Nushu: A Hidden Language of Women in China, was a merry sprite whose memories were full of other women, not men. At a showing in Hong Kong last week, the audience, mostly... https://www.scmp.com/article/490899/new-script-men-and-women?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/490899/new-script-men-and-women?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 01 Mar 2005 16:00:00 +0000 If you ask the average person on the streets of this city about the World Trade Organisation, the answer is likely to be brief. Yet few places depend as much on the WTO as Hong Kong, where trade amounts to three times the gross domestic product, provides nearly half the jobs and is shoring up an otherwise sluggish economy with double-digit growth. Nearly all Hong Kong's celebrity tycoons owe their wine collections, Bentleys, yachts and other emblems of wealth to the gradual lifting of trade... https://www.scmp.com/article/490010/lets-give-globalisation-fair-hearing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/490010/lets-give-globalisation-fair-hearing?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 22 Feb 2005 16:00:00 +0000 Over the next two weeks, New Yorkers will be braving chilly temperatures to view a US$20 million temporary artwork, a gift from the husband and wife artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The couple has been wrapping urban geography since 1961, and this project, like many before it, involves drapery: The Gates consists of 7,500 metal arches hung with sheets of orange nylon, creating a billowy passage through Central Park. To me, the gateways look like oversized croquet hoops, but they are giving... https://www.scmp.com/article/489129/lets-open-gates-opportunity?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/489129/lets-open-gates-opportunity?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Feb 2005 16:00:00 +0000 Deep within the hillside, compressed by the office towers of Central, is a catacombs of underground glaciers, lakes and a mortuary where victims of wartime air raids lie in chill silence. Ghosts walk these corridors, some in chains, others perhaps licking ice-cream cones. These are some of the myths and imaginings that are evoked by the modest Edwardian building on Ice House Street that once housed Dairy Farm, one of the first establishments to sell refrigerated milk and ice-cream in Hong Kong,... https://www.scmp.com/article/487919/history-making?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/487919/history-making?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:00:00 +0000 Recently, the University of Toronto has been looking for a new president. According to the recruitment notice, it 'especially welcomes applications from visible minority group members, women, Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, members of sexual minority groups, and others who may contribute to further diversification of ideas'. While the Canadian university may not end up with a gay, female, Aboriginal president in a wheelchair, the description immediately evokes Canada's liberal... https://www.scmp.com/article/486988/differences-worth-celebrating?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/486988/differences-worth-celebrating?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 25 Jan 2005 16:00:00 +0000 Every morning, as I jog my 7km up and down Bowen Road, I see abundant examples of organic growth. There are vines and moss, kittens and puppies that grow into cats and dogs, social groups that wax and wane, babies that become toddlers, and early morning sword dancers who become stiffer with age. There are even elements of organic art, or at least organic contributions to the path's ambience. Last week, somebody slipped in two lifesize plaster of Paris tigers at one stream junction. More and more... https://www.scmp.com/article/486139/build-it-and-it-will-flourish?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/486139/build-it-and-it-will-flourish?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:00:00 +0000 On the banks of a clear stream, in the shade of a mountain whose Chinese name means 'carrying fuel wood' lies the renovated Hakka village Pak Sha O. Prettier than a picture, with grey roof tiles and whitewashed walls, its townhouses and ancestral hall are lived in by expatriates, many with small children who play beneath lush bouquets of bougainvillea. Feral cattle squish contentedly in the muddy remains of rice paddies. On a hill above, a diminutive, abandoned church stands behind locked... https://www.scmp.com/article/485108/back-future?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/485108/back-future?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 11 Jan 2005 16:00:00 +0000 The animals were having a contest to see who could get to the opposite side of the river first. A powerful but dimwitted ox swam fastest but failed to notice the rat on his back, which jumped off at the last minute to win. This explanation of the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac is a familiar fairy tale, with each year represented by animals, beginning with the rat. It also makes an apt metaphor for the Tung administration which began in an ox year, 1997, and has displayed most of the... https://www.scmp.com/article/484271/how-save-city-rats?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/484271/how-save-city-rats?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 04 Jan 2005 16:00:00 +0000 Forty years ago, at the height of the civil rights movement, key states in the Deep South of the United States embraced racism and abandoned the Democratic Party, which had just pushed through racial desegregation at the polls and in public schools. In doing so, they began a long decline. As a result of choices made in the 1960s, with few exceptions, the American south is mired in poverty, drugs and ignorance. The public school system is a national disgrace. Its young people move out as soon as... https://www.scmp.com/article/483554/our-defining-moment?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/483554/our-defining-moment?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 28 Dec 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Like many expatriates, I am spending Christmas far from Hong Kong - in my case, in a small town in the southern United States. The first settlers arrived in the 1820s, and the region known as the Black Belt became wealthy on King Cotton, and poor as the king moved elsewhere. Like derelict hulks on a forgotten stage set, mansions with names like Indian Camp, Reverie and Pitt's Folly glimmer through the pines. My 80-year-old mother lives in Marion, Alabama (population 6,000), where there are no... https://www.scmp.com/article/482973/trading-places-successful-double-act?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/482973/trading-places-successful-double-act?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:00:00 +0000 As I entered the United States recently, a nosy immigration official asked what I did in Hong Kong. When my answer included the phrase 'sustainable development', he scoffed: 'Pollute and profit. I thought that was what Hong Kong was all about.' I shrugged and collected my passport. When it comes to the rest of the world, Americans tend to deal in superficial sound bites. For anyone who has lived in Hong Kong over the past two years, the city has seemed awash in civic activism, much of it... https://www.scmp.com/article/482204/view-afar?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/482204/view-afar?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Everyone needs a hero, and for the moment, mine is Sarah Liao Sau-tung, secretary for the environment, transport and works. Since early last month, when a prominent think-tank criticised her department for its failure to provide details of its ongoing discussions with Guangdong province over air pollution, she has been working overtime to do just that, making a case that breakthroughs are just around the corner. It is less what she says than how she says it. With a portfolio that has suddenly... https://www.scmp.com/article/481220/last-leader-who-really-cares?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/481220/last-leader-who-really-cares?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 Dec 2004 16:00:00 +0000 It is after midnight in Victoria Park, and in eerie silence, human-powered vehicles speed around a convoluted circuit. The scene is one of cool efficiency until I clamber into a bullet-shaped HPV, miss the toe clips, mow down some orange divider cones, and whoosh haplessly into the night. Mastering the technique out of desperation, I gradually fall into the groove, weaving in and out of a surreal traffic. This is the annual 24-hour Pedal Kart Grand Prix charity race, now in its 18th year in... https://www.scmp.com/article/480248/be-careful-how-you-tread?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/480248/be-careful-how-you-tread?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:00:00 +0000 The day is riveting in its sunshine, and the nine peaks of Kowloon are etched against the haze. Deep in a courtyard of the King George V School in Ho Man Tin, 190 schoolchildren and their parents have discovered a thirst for speed. As the early morning shadow retreats, teams from 17 primary and secondary schools unleash vehicles with names like Sun Storm and Wind Rider. Made from plastic noodle containers, bottle caps and other recyclables, the tiny race cars are powered by miniature solar... https://www.scmp.com/article/479401/here-comes-sun?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/479401/here-comes-sun?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:00:00 +0000 In Jungian psychology, as in Taoist philosophy and the I Ching, the feminine principle lies within each of us, but perhaps in some more than others. Lu Ping, Taiwan's unofficial cultural ambassador to Hong Kong, so clearly embodies the multifaceted, nurturing yin side of yang that she could take out a patent on the rights to it. In the relatively short time since she arrived in Hong Kong in January last year, after an 11-month wait for a visa, the 50-year-old novelist and journalist has... https://www.scmp.com/article/478445/mistress-cultural-fusion?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/478445/mistress-cultural-fusion?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 16 Nov 2004 16:00:00 +0000 As air pollution worsens across the Pearl River Delta, the smog may soon bring with it a new form of civic activism - consumer boycotts aimed at the 63,000 Hong Kong companies that help generate the problem through environmentally unfriendly practices. Organising consumer boycotts is easy. Activists work backwards, from brand name products to suppliers. A British watchdog organisation, Ethical Consumer, offers advice on its website about how to organise a boycott, together with long lists of... https://www.scmp.com/article/477498/shoppers-guide-fighting-smog?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/477498/shoppers-guide-fighting-smog?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 09 Nov 2004 16:00:00 +0000 To learn a language, immerse yourself in its culture. That has been my excuse over the past few years for using the Luk Yu Teahouse as a base for studying Cantonese. Founded in 1933, it exists in a time warp of its own. Waiters are considered 'new' if they have been there less than 10 years. Profits are of little consequence to the 26 shareholders, who include some of the city's legendary tycoons. In 1982, my teacher, Linda Liang Ling-ling, was a newcomer to the institution. By now, she is... https://www.scmp.com/article/476635/mind-your-language?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/476635/mind-your-language?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 02 Nov 2004 16:00:00 +0000 When a yacht the size of a 25-metre Maxi Sled comes about in 25-knot winds, you know it. The deck turns into a slippery wall, and 20 crew members become a single clockwork organism vectoring against a jade ocean. 'Coming about' takes seconds, as the bow turns through the wind to set a new course. The move is common to dinghies and the giant yacht, Jelik, whose crew I joined last weekend for the China Coast Regatta, as a guest of owner Frank Pong. On a day when racing yachts under luminous... https://www.scmp.com/article/475669/charting-new-course?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/475669/charting-new-course?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Contract cleaning is not a glamorous business. The workers come in when most offices close, wielding vacuum cleaners and cloths. When Ali Tuet was a teenager, his father woke him one night to say: 'Come with me to see how we do things.' The company had a new contract at the Mandarin Hotel, and the work began after midnight. Wilson Tuet took food to the workers and chatted with them during their breaks. 'The secret of my father's success was to treat each one of our employees as a member of the... https://www.scmp.com/article/474778/cleaning-their-corporate-act?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/474778/cleaning-their-corporate-act?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 19 Oct 2004 16:00:00 +0000 In the spring of 1989, as the government of Japan's prime minister, Nobuo Takeshita, was crumbling, I had a series of extraordinary interviews with some of its most senior politicians. At least I thought that they were extraordinary. My news assistant, Tamaki Uchida, felt otherwise. As we headed to Nagatacho, Tokyo's parliamentary district, Ms Uchida's mood would grow progressively foul. Finally, I asked what was wrong. Japanese regarded their politicians on the same level as yakuza, or... https://www.scmp.com/article/473956/career-politics-get-real?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/473956/career-politics-get-real?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:00:00 +0000 So Tat-wing is nobody's fool. On Monday, he joined several dozen Hong Kong residents in a workshop on 'sustainable' urban living space, but only after sending an assistant, Ivy Yim, to monitor an event last Saturday on waste management. Both were organised by Hong Kong's Council for Sustainable Development. What he learned from Ms Yim must have been encouraging, because two days ago Mr So was one of the six people who sat down at my 'world cafe', in a larger room of about three dozen. The... https://www.scmp.com/article/473087/lets-sit-down-together-world-cafe?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/473087/lets-sit-down-together-world-cafe?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 05 Oct 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Last week, I left my windows open and the bonsai underneath promptly wilted and nearly died. That was during Hong Kong's record-breaking smog attack. Halfway around the world, my 79-year-old mother, stepfather, and two elderly cousins huddled without power while Hurricane Ivan screamed through the town of Marion, Alabama, in the southern United States. Along the white beaches of Alabama and Florida, in towns with names like Gulf Shores and Gulf Breeze, rescuers are picking bodies out of... https://www.scmp.com/article/471287/lets-change-climate-indifference?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/471287/lets-change-climate-indifference?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 21 Sep 2004 16:00:00 +0000 At the entrance to the giant Sands Macau casino, a pretty devil clad in red spandex plays with her tail, while a red-faced Peking Opera warrior glowers menacingly (red is the colour of loyalty and courage). Pass through the metal detector, go up acres of escalators and past a bevy of restaurants. Then look down. It is a view called money. Thousands of tourists, many from the mainland, are elbow to elbow at the baccarat and blackjack tables, or hunkered over slot machines. Arriving by jetfoil... https://www.scmp.com/article/470385/fortune-favours-brave-new-plans?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/470385/fortune-favours-brave-new-plans?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 14 Sep 2004 16:00:00 +0000 I am blue-eyed and fair-haired, now greying. In 1981, when China was cautiously opening its doors to foreign tourism, it suddenly became possible to spend the night in a yurt, the dome-shaped traditional tent of Mongolian herders. A group of friends, all foreigners working in Beijing, promptly took an overnight train with me to Huhehot, in Inner Mongolia. My companions played bridge, while I read and looked out of the window. Two elderly men wandered up to check us out. I was close enough to... https://www.scmp.com/article/469489/best-both-worlds?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/469489/best-both-worlds?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 Sep 2004 16:00:00 +0000 One of my professors at university, Harold Conklin, was an expert on an unusual tribe in the southern Philippines called the Hanunoo. The language of this remote community was in constant hyperdrive, changing rapidly through elaborate word play. Three years after finishing his dissertation, Dr Conklin revisited the island of Mindoro and was unable to understand a word. The children just giggled at him. I always think this is a powerful illustration of the gap that can arise between words and... https://www.scmp.com/article/468683/one-country-one-economy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/468683/one-country-one-economy?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 31 Aug 2004 16:00:00 +0000 It is Friday night at the China Club, and a chanteuse clad in shimmering aquamarine coos love songs in Putonghua while a pianist in tails plays a grand piano. It might be a set from Temptress Moon, a mid-1990s film directed by Chen Kaige and inspired by nostalgia for Shanghai in the 1930s. Or it might be the carefully crafted, ironic vehicle of one of Hong Kong's leading design entrepreneurs, David Tang Wing-cheung. The retro Shanghai fad seems dated now, but it was cutting edge when Mr Tang... https://www.scmp.com/article/467755/designs-hong-kongs-uniqueness?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/467755/designs-hong-kongs-uniqueness?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:00:00 +0000 In 1980, as a reporter and guest of China's State Economic Commission, I drove down the coast of Fujian province from Fuzhou to Xiamen. These were the bad old days. My minder was a sturdy, middle-aged female cadre who stuck to me like glue. The timid provincial officials who met me would read from prepared texts. In Xiamen, what was to become a special export zone was then a grassy hilltop with roaming goats. On the streets, vehicles were rare and transport meant bicycles or push carts.... https://www.scmp.com/article/466984/tale-dragons-tail?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/466984/tale-dragons-tail?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 17 Aug 2004 16:00:00 +0000 In 1993, when Japan's J-League was formed with 10 teams, football fans cheered but the public greeted the move with cynicism. Not only did the J-League seem like a straight marketing ploy by its Japanese corporate backers - its business model was based on American-style sports marketing - but nobody could believe that Japanese players could get anywhere. The cynics have long since disappeared amid throngs of fans. Over the past decade, the runaway popularity of international football in Japan... https://www.scmp.com/article/466189/hong-kongs-winning-attitude?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/466189/hong-kongs-winning-attitude?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 10 Aug 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Remember 'tea money'? In the 1960s and 1970s, Hong Kong's rule of law was a polite fiction. A 'culture of corruption permeated every aspect of the community', observed Alan Lai Nin, a former commissioner of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, writing in 2002. 'Subtle hints turned into outright solicitation', and even hospital patients had to give bribes for extra care. The creation of the ICAC in 1974 has been an outstanding success story in the global fight against corruption. It is... https://www.scmp.com/article/465333/tragedy-societys-own-making?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/465333/tragedy-societys-own-making?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 03 Aug 2004 16:00:00 +0000 In the sweet trough of summer, as the first typhoons blow in clear skies and cool breezes, the season invites clear thinking as well. In Hong Kong, only a few months ago, the Legislative Council election excited fear, dismay and visions of persecution. Now that the campaign has begun in earnest, it is a model of civility. The worst one can say about Hong Kong's political season is that it is framed around a single issue, with constitutional reform and democracy crowding out all other concerns.... https://www.scmp.com/article/464499/hong-kongs-summer-promise?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/464499/hong-kongs-summer-promise?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 27 Jul 2004 16:00:00 +0000 On the wall in my study hangs an ink painting by the social critic and former journalist Fong So. The subject is two feral cats, a monogamous couple that used to live near the flat of Fong and his partner Hark Yeung, in Sai Kung. Lean, amused survivors, their feline gaze overlooks my writing. Until a year ago, I would have taken Fong's cats as a symbol of the Hong Kong public in relation to its government - hardy despite abuse, fed on scraps, and never allowed indoors. Now, the attitude of... https://www.scmp.com/article/463716/open-invitation-people?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/463716/open-invitation-people?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 20 Jul 2004 16:00:00 +0000 In 1981, when Alice King founded Alisan Fine Arts Gallery, there was little interest in contemporary Chinese art in the classical tradition. Mainland artists were just beginning to rid themselves of the shackles of socialist realism and Mao's art for ideology's sake. Outside China, artists of the Chinese diaspora found themselves stereotyped as genre painters if they worked in traditional ink, and ignored if their output was too western. Collectors overlooked artists who worked in a synthetic... https://www.scmp.com/article/463068/queen-contemporary-chinese-art?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/463068/queen-contemporary-chinese-art?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:00:00 +0000 The elegantly dressed middle-aged woman standing next to me smiled and shared her parasol. It was so hot that Queen Victoria's statue seemed to beg for shade. College students with backpacks sat on the grass, chatting quietly. I had expected the mood in Victoria Park to be confrontational, or angry, like last year's handover day demonstration. Instead, the 530,000 people that marched last Thursday were confident, calm and practiced. This well-dressed, healthy, comfortable crowd understood the... https://www.scmp.com/article/462189/getting-politics-street?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/462189/getting-politics-street?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 06 Jul 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Last July, on handover day, I joined the hundreds of thousands who marched peacefully against misgovernment. I will do so again tomorrow, in a spirit of respect and gratitude for the small improvements that have taken place over the last year in this great Chinese city in transition. None of these changes would have happened without the enormous shock created by last year's demonstration, or the central government's harsh reaction. In the past year, Beijing has used classic united-front tactics... https://www.scmp.com/article/461384/wine-vines-protest?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/461384/wine-vines-protest?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 29 Jun 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Nearly 150 years ago, a Eurasian boy in Shanghai was nicknamed Donggua, or 'winter melon', because of his long, narrow head. The nickname became history when he adopted the name He Dong, combining schoolyard slang and the surname of a lodger in his Chinese mother's boarding house. As Sir Robert Hotung, the boy later became chief comprador to Jardine Matheson and financier to the Chinese revolution. His children and grand-children enlarged the family fortune with ventures in Shanghai, Hong Kong... https://www.scmp.com/article/460489/good-samaritans-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/460489/good-samaritans-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 22 Jun 2004 16:00:00 +0000 Is Hong Kong a creative city? Sadly, judging from the near-complete lack of celebrated Hong Kong artists and writers, the answer must be no. Some will also point out the persistence of stuffy and exclusive clubs, a community that is diverse but mingles little, and political camps that prefer name-calling to constructive dialogue. Such barriers and divisions dampen creativity because they restrict the free flow of ideas. Even more basic, in Hong Kong the arts are regarded as a form of... https://www.scmp.com/article/459664/city-brink-arts-boom?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/459664/city-brink-arts-boom?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Jun 2004 16:00:00 +0000 In different corners of China this week, pillars of Hong Kong's community sent out two very different messages. In Hong Kong, 300 professionals and academics published a declaration defending the city's core values. In Beijing, a 100-strong delegation of Hong Kong's Chinese business elite and their families began an eight-day tour of the rust-belt northeastern provinces, looking for investment opportunities, at the invitation of the central government. In terms of political theatre, the script... https://www.scmp.com/article/458723/whos-looking-after-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/458723/whos-looking-after-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 08 Jun 2004 16:00:00 +0000