https://www.scmp.com/rss/15649/feed Peter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books. A publisher and entrepreneur, he has been active in technology, culture and international trade and investment. He is the co-author of “The Silver Way: China, Spanish America and the Birth of Globalisation, 1565–1815”. He has been a resident of Hong Kong since 1985. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com An oft-quoted aphorism goes, “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” One can hardly think of a better example of history rhyming than the recently inaugurated Chinese-funded Chancay port on Peru’s Pacific coast. The new era of Chinese-Latin American commercial relations it heralds is a modern reincarnation of the “Silver Way”, a trading relationship between Asia and Spanish America that endured for two and half centuries from the 1560s. Arguably the most important conduit for... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/hong-kong-opinion/article/3289093/can-hong-kong-reclaim-its-role-asias-gateway-americas?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/hong-kong-opinion/article/3289093/can-hong-kong-reclaim-its-role-asias-gateway-americas?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 06 Dec 2024 01:30:09 +0000 Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World, by Michael Schuman. Published by PublicAffairs. 4/5 stars During a one-year sojourn in London in the 1970s, my secondary school history curriculum covered about a century from the mid-1700s on. A decade into a discussion of the Napoleonic Wars, my history teacher mentioned that after marching through a swamp, a detachment of British soldiers had burned down the White House. “That’s the War of 1812,” I interjected, finally twigging to what... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3093051/why-china-believes-it-should-be-superpower-and-history?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3093051/why-china-believes-it-should-be-superpower-and-history?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 14 Jul 2020 11:15:09 +0000 Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History’s First Global Manhunt, by Steven Johnson. Published by Riverhead. 4/5 stars On September 7, 1695, just off the city of Surat in the Indian state of Gujarat, an English pirate ship captured the Fath Mahmamadi, a vessel owned by an Indian trader who, according to a contemporary source, did as much trade alone as England’s colossal East India Company did all together at the time. The pirates had been waiting for it at the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3087527/real-life-jack-sparrow-famous-pirate-henry-every-who-sparked?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3087527/real-life-jack-sparrow-famous-pirate-henry-every-who-sparked?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 07 Jun 2020 09:00:14 +0000 Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education, by Yingyi Ma, Columbia University Press, 4/5 stars From being targets of American soft power, a significant service export and a major financial prop for institutions of higher learning, Chinese students in the US have recently come to be seen – in certain quarters, anyway – as vehicles for Chinese government influence. Yingyi Ma’s new study, based on data collected mostly in what were the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3052058/what-chinese-students-us-think-about-their-institutes-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3052058/what-chinese-students-us-think-about-their-institutes-and?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 24 Feb 2020 13:00:07 +0000 Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes by Susan Whitfield, Thames and Hudson/University of California Press, 4/5 stars Silk Roads is encyclopedic in scope and structure, and made up of several dozen short essays by almost as many different authors – each lavishly illustrated with indescribable photos of objects and places. The Silk Road is, as a term, a modern (late 19th-century) construction. Like the Holy Roman Empire – which was famously neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire – the Silk... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3040897/history-silk-road-bite-sized-pieces-lavishly-illustrated-has?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3040897/history-silk-road-bite-sized-pieces-lavishly-illustrated-has?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Dec 2019 04:00:13 +0000 There comes a time when, as people age, events move from being “within living memory” to “history”. There is great urgency to capture these voices in places such as China where, for reasons of war and turmoil, fewer voices were captured at the time. Hong Kong-based Earnshaw Books is now publishing the memoirs of two women, remarkable in their own ways and similar in others, who lived through these times and who, atypically, have set down their memories in English. Margaret Sun and Daisy Kwok... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3016889/women-wartime-china-two-memoirs-show-how-rise-communists?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3016889/women-wartime-china-two-memoirs-show-how-rise-communists?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 02 Jul 2019 10:00:05 +0000 The Great Firewall of China by James Griffiths, Zed Books Many potential readers of James Griffiths’ book will have experienced the Great Firewall referenced in the title, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find the book useful. Griffiths stitches events and issues, most of which are reasonably well known, into a coherent narrative, providing a readable and informative history of the internet in China. The book’s strength is in Griffiths’s measured tone and general even-handedness. He is as... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3002513/history-chinas-internet-examined-great-firewall-china-james?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3002513/history-chinas-internet-examined-great-firewall-china-james?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 21 Mar 2019 14:30:05 +0000 How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States , by Daniel Immerwahr, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 4/5 stars Asians, in general, need little convincing that the United States is, if not an empire per se, at least imperial. So the title of How to Hide an Empire might be seen as an attempt at irony. How Aladdin’s original Chinese identity was lost in Hollywood Daniel Immerwahr, admittedly, wasn’t writing for an Asian audience. His book is targeted squarely at Americans. It’s not that... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/2187560/united-states-imperial-reach-mexico-philippines-present-day?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/2187560/united-states-imperial-reach-mexico-philippines-present-day?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 25 Feb 2019 14:30:15 +0000 Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From by Tony Joseph, pub. Juggernaut. 4/5 stars The use of first-person plurals in the title of Early Indians: The Story Of Our Ancestors And Where We Came From should not put non-Indians off. The Kinship of Secrets – the tale of sisters separated by the Korean war Based on and catalysed by the most recent genetic research, Tony Joseph has written a clear, readable and, for those unfamiliar with the subject, fascinating history of... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2181932/indias-genetic-pizza-new-evidence-early-indians-influence-and-how?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2181932/indias-genetic-pizza-new-evidence-early-indians-influence-and-how?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 14 Jan 2019 10:03:15 +0000 The Court Dancer by Shin Kyung-sook (translated by Anton Hur) 3.5/5 stars The Court Dancer, the latest novel by Man Asian Literary Prize winner Shin Kyung-sook, is likely to be read in several different ways. The first, and in some ways the most commercial, is as East-West romantic period fiction in the tradition of, say, Alessandro Baricco’s Silk or any number of English-language examples. In the late 1880s, at a time of growing international threat to the Joseon dynasty, Yi Jin, a court lady,... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2159870/korean-woman-struggles-19th-century-france-man-asian-literary-prize?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2159870/korean-woman-struggles-19th-century-france-man-asian-literary-prize?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 17 Aug 2018 00:02:20 +0000 A City Mismanaged: Hong Kong’s Struggle for Survival by Leo F. Goodstadt Hong Kong University Press 3 stars A City Mismanaged is policy analysis as blood sport. Leo Goodstadt needs no introduction in Hong Kong circles; those outside might need to know that he was head of the colonial Hong Kong government’s Central Policy Unit from 1989 until 1997, the year Chinese sovereignty was restored. He has penned a no-holds-barred smackdown of the four post-colonial Hong Kong administrations. The policy... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2155510/ex-colonial-adviser-lashes-post-1997-hong-kong-governments-mismanaging?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2155510/ex-colonial-adviser-lashes-post-1997-hong-kong-governments-mismanaging?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Jul 2018 00:33:28 +0000 Hong Kong, and indeed China, may not be in the 2018 World Cup, but we have in the past few weeks been scoring goals on different pitches. In opera, that perhaps most sports-like of the arts (where else does the audience boo what they don’t like?), Hong Kong soprano Louise Kwong Lai-ling just debuted at the Rome Opera, singing Mimì, the lead role in Puccini’s La Bohème. An Italian reviewer wrote: “Kwong combines volume and an extremely pleasant timbre with a pleasant stage presence, and gave... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2153679/hong-kongs-musical-achievements-deserve-ovation-it?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2153679/hong-kongs-musical-achievements-deserve-ovation-it?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 04 Jul 2018 09:03:12 +0000 Petulia’s Rouge Tin by Su Tong (translated by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz) Penguin 4/5 stars Contemporary Chinese literature can sometimes be a bit of a struggle, whether due to heavy doses of politics or surrealism. The subjects can be obscure and the authors self-consciously literary. However worthy these works may be, it may come as something of a relief that Su Tong – of Raise the Red Lantern fame – stuck to good old-fashioned storytelling in Petulia’s Rouge Tin. The story opens in... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2152281/raise-red-lantern-author-pens-another-winner-petulias-rouge-tin?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2152281/raise-red-lantern-author-pens-another-winner-petulias-rouge-tin?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 25 Jun 2018 04:45:54 +0000 The Science of War: Sun Tzu’s Art of War Re-translated and re-considered by Christopher MacDonald 4/5 stars Every young pup sent to East Asia is probably given Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to read, especially if one is male, and especially if one’s boss is both male and Chinese. Anyway, I was. I found it a work of pithy aphorisms which, while undoubtedly useful, seemed – once stated – like common sense rather than revelatory. “Move only when it suits your purpose. Otherwise stay put,” is one example... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2149936/chinese-military-classic-art-war-gets-revealing-new-translation-book?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2149936/chinese-military-classic-art-war-gets-revealing-new-translation-book?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Jun 2018 23:33:42 +0000 Unlocking the World’s Largest e-market: A Guide to Selling on Chinese Social Media by Ashley Galina Dudarenok Alarice International 3.5/5 stars There is an old saying about advertising that only half of it works, but you never know which half. Meanwhile, it appears that despite all the data gathered and statistics generated, online advertising remains more art than science. To paraphrase former US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld, digital marketing involves navigating a number of known... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2135874/digital-marketing-chinese-social-media-how-guide-unlocking-worlds?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2135874/digital-marketing-chinese-social-media-how-guide-unlocking-worlds?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 06 Mar 2018 04:46:19 +0000 Red Swan: How Unorthodox Policy Making Facilitated China’s Rise by Sebastian Heilmann Chinese University Press 2.5 stars Sebastian Heilmann brings what is, for English-speaking readers, a somewhat rare European – or in this case, German – perspective to “China’s rise”. There are almost as many explanations for China’s economic development as there are books on the subject. These start, as they must, from the realisation that conventional economic development models and theories – which have... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2135464/maoist-roots-chinas-economic-rise-explored-red-swan-book-review?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2135464/maoist-roots-chinas-economic-rise-explored-red-swan-book-review?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Mar 2018 10:00:45 +0000 The Formosa Fraud by Graham Earnshaw 3/5 stars If George Psalmanazar sounds like a made-up name, that is because it is. Psalmanazar, whose real name seems lost to history, was a Frenchman who claimed, with no small success, to be the first native of “Formosa” (a former name for the island of Taiwan) to visit Europe. How Chinese Malaysian writers spurned at home found success in Taiwan, and why cultural identity is so often a theme of their novels In his new book, The Formosa Fraud: The Story of... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2126977/book-review-fake-news-isnt-new-formosa-fraud-fictitious-taiwan-tale?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2126977/book-review-fake-news-isnt-new-formosa-fraud-fictitious-taiwan-tale?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 08 Jan 2018 05:00:24 +0000 Is there such a thing as “Hong Kong writing” in English – that’s the weighty question British literary journal Wasafiri asks in its latest quarterly edition, devoted entirely to writing from the city. Launched at the British Council in Hong Kong late last month and entitled “Writing Hong Kong”, the issue contains essays, interviews, reviews, original fiction and poetry. TS Eliot Prize winner Sarah Howe and Commonwealth Poetry Prize and American Book Award winner Shirley Geok-lin Lim are names... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2123920/hong-kong-writers-have-much-say-and-not-just-about-democracy-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2123920/hong-kong-writers-have-much-say-and-not-just-about-democracy-and?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 12 Dec 2017 04:48:13 +0000 Unrest by Yeng Pway Ngon (translated by Jeremy Tiang) Balestier Press 4 stars For logistical, commercial and territorial reasons, books rarely circulate much outside the market they were published in. Books published in Asia can as a result often, regardless of merit, end up largely unknown outside a relatively small domestic market, something especially true when the book was originally published in a language other than English. Yeng Pway Ngon’s Unrest has a long journey. Originally published... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2121677/book-review-unrest-singapore-literature-prize-winner-gets-great?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2121677/book-review-unrest-singapore-literature-prize-winner-gets-great?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 27 Nov 2017 10:30:14 +0000 A Few Planes for China: The Birth of the Flying Tigers by Eugenie Buchan ForeEdge 3.5/5 stars The second world war created its fair share of myths: the “Flying Tigers” – a “small private air force that fought the Japanese over Burma and Western China”– became one of the first, providing as it did a few bright spots in the days after Pearl Harbour. From December 1941 to June 1942, the force which “rarely had more than 40 airworthy planes” managed to take down almost 300 Japanese aircraft. A John... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2116933/book-review-few-planes-china-birth-flying-tigers-unravels-myth-behind?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2116933/book-review-few-planes-china-birth-flying-tigers-unravels-myth-behind?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 26 Oct 2017 23:30:45 +0000 Sweet Potato by Kim Tongin (translated by Grace Jung) Honford Star 3.5 stars As contemporary Korean literature receives increasing acclaim in English-language circles – Han Kang’s The Vegetarian won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize – it is perhaps inevitable that efforts are being made to introduce older Korean classics to the English language mainstream. One of these is Sweet Potato, a newly translated volume of short stories by Kim Tongin (or Kim Dong-in) written mostly in the Japanese... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2114273/review-sweet-potato-korean-short-story-collection-gritty-introduction?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2114273/review-sweet-potato-korean-short-story-collection-gritty-introduction?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 09 Oct 2017 10:30:00 +0000 Harvard University has been named in a complaint by a group of several dozen Asian Americans claiming discrimination in the university admissions process. They make the statistically justified claim that Asians need higher grades and test scores to be admitted. The US Justice Department is reportedly now going to move the case forward. As an alumnus and the father of two (now post-university) Asian-American children, I admit to not being disinterested. Yet despite the alleged injustice, more... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2106030/why-asian-americans-claim-harvard-admissions-bias-misses?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2106030/why-asian-americans-claim-harvard-admissions-bias-misses?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 09 Aug 2017 04:30:40 +0000 Cantonese Love Stories: Twenty-five Vignettes of a City by Dung Kai-cheung (translated by Bonnie S. McDougall and Anders Hansson) Penguin 3.5 stars In terms of literature, most places are defined by works in the local language. For English readers in non-English-speaking places, this literature is accessed via translations. But the situation in Hong Kong is reversed: because Hong Kong Chinese works are so rarely translated, and because there is a considerable body of Hong Kong writing in... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2102387/book-review-dung-kai-cheungs-cantonese-love-stories-lifts-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2102387/book-review-dung-kai-cheungs-cantonese-love-stories-lifts-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 13 Jul 2017 05:31:56 +0000 Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination by Robert Bickers Allen Lane Western commentators regularly complain that China doesn’t always seem committed to “international norms”. Robert Bickers’ new book, Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination, helps explain why: “international norms” were used for a century to justify encroachments on Chinese sovereignty. This story is hardly unknown, of course, and it’s worth asking why it bears repeating. One... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2093913/book-review-out-china-shanghai-hong-kongs-handover-incisive-analysis?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2093913/book-review-out-china-shanghai-hong-kongs-handover-incisive-analysis?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 11 May 2017 05:16:35 +0000 Fixing Inequality in Hong Kong by Yue Chim Richard Wong Hong Kong University Press 3.5/5 stars Anyone wishing to give an opinion on Hong Kong’s apparently troubled present and possibly fraught future would do well to read Richard Wong’s Fixing Inequality in Hong Kong first. The value of the book lies not so much in Wong’s conclusions and prescriptions, about which there may be some legitimate differences of opinion, but rather in the way he reaches them: using as much data as he has been able to... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2085454/book-review-fixing-inequality-hong-kong-laundry-list-citys-challenges?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2085454/book-review-fixing-inequality-hong-kong-laundry-list-citys-challenges?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 07 Apr 2017 00:31:50 +0000 Long before the greenback there was the Spanish “dollar” and long before New York and London, there was Mexico City. The discovery of a route across the Pacific in the 16th century was a catalyst for the integration of the planet. In a new book, The Silver Way: China, Spanish America and the Birth of Globalisation, 1565-1815 (Penguin Random House North Asia), Hong Kong International Literary Festival founder Peter Gordon and Juan José Morales, a former president of the Spanish Chamber of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2061588/how-china-played-part-birth-globalisation-16th?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2061588/how-china-played-part-birth-globalisation-16th?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 12 Jan 2017 08:45:00 +0000 Once Upon a Time in the East: A story of growing up by Xiaolu Guo Chatto & Windus 4/5 stars Xiaolu Guo has always been a writer who has worn both her heart and her integrity on her sleeve, whether tearing pages from her own life for her novels or experimenting publicly with form or writing in what is for her an entirely foreign language. So it is hardly a surprise that her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East: A story of growing up, is by turns raw, intelligent, compelling, sad,... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2059209/book-review-once-upon-time-east-xiaolu-guo-fascinating-memoir-moving?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2059209/book-review-once-upon-time-east-xiaolu-guo-fascinating-memoir-moving?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 04 Jan 2017 04:32:48 +0000 Wartime Macau: Under the Japanese Shadow edited by Geoffrey C. Gunn Hong Kong University Press 4/5 stars Macau is endlessly fascinating in no small part because it is so anomalous. Dating back to the “Age of Exploration”, it was the only Iberian possession in East Asia that survived as such into the 20th century – and remained in European hands two years longer than Hong Kong did. In spite of all the recent development, it is still a city of baroque churches, blue tiles and black-and-white... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2056029/book-review-wartime-macau-under-japanese-shadow-investigates?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2056029/book-review-wartime-macau-under-japanese-shadow-investigates?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 21 Dec 2016 00:31:11 +0000 International politics, even more than nature, abhors a vacuum. And with America’s apparently headlong withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and metaphorically – if not yet physically – walling itself from Latin America, it is hardly surprising that Chinese-led alternatives were broached at the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima. “As Trump talks wall, China builds bridges to Latin America,” went the Associated Press headline. Right on the heels of President Xi... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2050454/chinas-belt-and-road-can-take-its-cues-worlds-first-model?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2050454/chinas-belt-and-road-can-take-its-cues-worlds-first-model?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 02 Dec 2016 03:05:36 +0000 Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women by Kittredge Cherry Stone Bridge Press 3.5 stars Princeton University, or at least its human resources department, recently promulgated new policies discouraging, if not quite banning, such terms as “man made”, “manpower” and “man” (as a verb). These are to be replaced with such gender-neutral terms as “artificial” and “staff” (as noun and verb). “Workmanlike” is to become “skilful” (although they don’t seem exact synonyms to me). It’s easy to make... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2028658/book-review-womansword-humorous-dissection-japanese-take-genders?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2028658/book-review-womansword-humorous-dissection-japanese-take-genders?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 17 Oct 2016 02:35:14 +0000 Any hi-tech future for Hong Kong will be based on the city’s inherent strengths, as well as a good choice in external allies. Hong Kong is unlikely, for example, to have much added-value input on driverless cars, one of the areas currently generating buzz. Similarly, it can be less than clear exactly what the city has to offer either Silicon Valley or China’s burgeoning tech sector. Hong Kong is, however, a leader in business infrastructure with low corporate overheads, an attractive tax regime,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2021254/how-russia-can-help-hong-kong-play-leading-role-digital?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2021254/how-russia-can-help-hong-kong-play-leading-role-digital?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 21 Sep 2016 06:03:08 +0000 True Crime Japan: Thieves, Rascals, Killers and Dope Heads; True Stories From a Japanese Courtroom by Paul Murphy Tuttle 3.5 stars Journalist Paul Murphy has spent a lot of time observing Japanese courtrooms.These stories, vignettes really, are drawn from the 119 cases he followed in Matsumoto, a city of 250,000 about 200km west of Tokyo. The cases are in some ways banal – petty shoplifting, drug offences, pimping, arson, a murder or two – but Murphy uses them to tell a story about Japan. One of... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2004111/book-review-true-crime-japan-vignettes-nation-through-its-court-cases?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2004111/book-review-true-crime-japan-vignettes-nation-through-its-court-cases?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 16 Aug 2016 00:02:07 +0000 Mariposa Gang and other stories by Catherine Torres University of Santo Tomas Publishing House 4.5 stars One of the joys of reviewing books is the unexpected surprise that sometimes appears out of the blue. One of these is Filipino writer Catherine Torres’ collection, Mariposa Gang and other stories. The 10 stories in this slim volume – a mere 100 pages – are polished, accomplished and structurally sophisticated. Laconic, Torres can say a page in a paragraph. Her characters are human, their... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/1991373/book-review-filipino-writer-catherine-torres-anthology-beautifully?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/1991373/book-review-filipino-writer-catherine-torres-anthology-beautifully?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 18 Jul 2016 23:46:10 +0000 Brexit has thrown up some knotty problems, one being the future of Scotland, which has little wish to leave the EU. There is speculation, not least from Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon herself, that this will lead to Scottish independence. There is even some discussion about how Scotland might Remain should Britain Leave. Scotland is determined to stay in EU, says First Minister Sturgeon, as she seeks post-Brexit talks with Brussels It seems a fanciful idea: Scotland would need to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1985157/post-brexit-could-britain-adopt-one-country-two-systems?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1985157/post-brexit-could-britain-adopt-one-country-two-systems?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 04 Jul 2016 07:12:06 +0000 A Billion Voices: China’s Search for a Common Language by David Moser Penguin China 4/5 stars “I never learned anything in the Saturday morning Chinese school I was forced to attend as a child,” Ted Chiang wrote in a recent piece in The New Yorker. “There were plenty of reasons for my poor performance in those classes … so I don’t blame Chinese characters for my failure. No, my objection is a practical one: I’m a fan of literacy, and Chinese characters have been an obstacle to literacy for... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/1967047/book-review-billion-voices-asks-there-such-thing-chinese-language?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/1967047/book-review-billion-voices-asks-there-such-thing-chinese-language?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 Jun 2016 04:03:22 +0000 The Face: Strangers on a Pier by Tash Aw Restless Books 4/5 stars Short books are, apparently, the next big thing. The bestselling novelist James Patterson has announced that he will be releasing a series of short works designed to be “read in a single sitting”. Columbia Global Reports, an imprint of Columbia University Press, has launched novella-length long-form journalism. Now Restless Books has launched The Face, a new series of short memoirs by such writers as Tash Aw and Ruth Ozeki. The... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1933717/book-review-tash-aws-lyrical-memoir-immigration-and-fitting?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1933717/book-review-tash-aws-lyrical-memoir-immigration-and-fitting?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 05 Apr 2016 22:01:25 +0000 Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens by László Krasznahorkai (translated by Ottilie Mulzet) Seagull Books 4.5/5 stars Of all the “China books” you may read this year, or next, or possibly the rest of the decade, none is likely to be as confounding, or enthralling, as László Krasznahorkai’s Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens. It is on the surface a work of travel literature of the sort one might expect from a writer such as Colin Thubron. Krasznahorkai travels to Shanghai, Beijing,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1931321/book-review-most-enthralling-china-book-youll-read-decade-possibly?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1931321/book-review-most-enthralling-china-book-youll-read-decade-possibly?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 28 Mar 2016 19:01:18 +0000 Many things about Hong Kong bemuse newcomers. When I first arrived, one was the Chinese subtitles on Chinese television. It was explained to me that many Chinese people here spoke something other than Cantonese. READ MORE: Character assassination? Hong Kong’s furore over simplified Chinese This practice, or rather TVB’s recent subtitling of Putonghua news in the mainland’s simplified characters, has become another storm in Hong Kong’s language wars, with symbolism as usual replacing logic. If... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1925124/lets-be-practical-when-it-comes-use-language-and-script-hong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1925124/lets-be-practical-when-it-comes-use-language-and-script-hong?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Mar 2016 04:08:14 +0000 The Great Wall in 50 Objects by William Lindesay Penguin William Lindesay’s The Great Wall in 50 Objects is a quirky yet illuminating alternative history of China and its relationship to the nomadic peoples and territories of the north. It bears an obvious debt in concept and title to A History of the World in 100 Objects, the British Museum’s joint project with the BBC, acknowledgment of which is strangely buried deep in the final notes. A formula it may be, but it is an adaptable and winning... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1894073/book-review-great-wall-50-objects-brilliant-achievement-alternative?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1894073/book-review-great-wall-50-objects-brilliant-achievement-alternative?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 29 Dec 2015 04:15:00 +0000 What's in a name?" a famous writer once asked. Rather a lot, it seems, for American poet Michael Derrick Hudson, whose poem The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve had been turned down by some 40 publications. Hudson decided to "be some other name", specifically Yi-Fen Chou, under whose name the poem was accepted by a journal and ultimately found its way into the 2015 edition of The Best American Poetry, at which time he came clean. Judging by the heated reaction,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1858321/ethnicity-should-play-no-part-judging-poem-or-person?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1858321/ethnicity-should-play-no-part-judging-poem-or-person?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Sep 2015 06:30:15 +0000 Murder with Bengali Characteristics starts unsurprisingly with a dead body in the first paragraph, but the double-take comes with the next line: "Inspector An Li frowned." Shovon Chowdhury's novel is set a couple of decades in the future. There has been a war of some sort, China rules much of Asia, New Delhi is now radioactive and Calcutta is the capital of the Bengal Protectorate under Chinese occupation. As a conceit for a novel, this is irresistible. Murder follows a familiar template. The... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1847388/book-review-murder-bengali-characteristics-whodunnit-china-ruled?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1847388/book-review-murder-bengali-characteristics-whodunnit-china-ruled?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Aug 2015 15:03:57 +0000 The ongoing breach between Russia and the West shows no sign of ameliorating. The recent elections in eastern Ukraine, which Russia has said it will "respect", are just the latest manifestation of two sides on different, and by all appearances irreconcilable, trajectories. The West seems bemused; Russia, or at least the current Russian administration, seems indifferent. This is not some ordinary spat; the resultant Western sanctions are the first time in decades that free trade with a major... https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1636444/china-will-lose-more-it-has-gain-russia-western-rift?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1636444/china-will-lose-more-it-has-gain-russia-western-rift?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 10 Nov 2014 06:45:45 +0000 While it is still not certain that a substantive discussion will take place between the government and students on Hong Kong's electoral future, the outlines of that discussion, should it take place, have just become clearer. The key term is the "broadly representative" modifier to "nomination committee". If it were generally believed the committee were to be "broadly representative" - in the dictionary sense at any rate - then the protests are unlikely to have taken place. Many in the community... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1622924/less-representative-nominating-committee-can-still-be-made?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1622924/less-representative-nominating-committee-can-still-be-made?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 23 Oct 2014 07:30:00 +0000 Public discourse in Hong Kong sometimes has an "Alice Through the Looking-Glass" feel about it. A recent example of topsy-turviness is the announcement that "the elite Malvern College" would, if awarded a school site, set aside 90 per cent of places for foreign passport holders. "The priority would be for international families … struggling to find the appropriate schools for their children," the headmaster was quoted as saying. Why, in that case, allow in any local kids? Perhaps it's so the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1506597/elite-college-should-not-exclude-based-national-origin?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1506597/elite-college-should-not-exclude-based-national-origin?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 07 May 2014 20:28:46 +0000 A group of some 450 local authors is seeking a HK$3-5 "royalty" every time a library lends out one of its writers' books. The argument has some prima facie logic: no matter how many people read a library book, the author only gets a single royalty. This sounds unfair, and perhaps it is. But be careful what you wish for. If this charge were pushed on to library users, the effect on borrowing would likely be catastrophic. So, the intention must be that the libraries, that is, the general public,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1495715/local-authors-push-royalties-library-books-could-backfire?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1495715/local-authors-push-royalties-library-books-could-backfire?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 24 Apr 2014 04:00:45 +0000 A recent article on the Education Bureau website read: "Although the Basic Law stipulates that Chinese and English are the two official languages in Hong Kong, nearly 97 per cent of the local population learn Cantonese (a Chinese dialect that is not an official language) as their commonly used daily language." The ruckus was so great that the piece was promptly taken down. The question as to whether Cantonese is "official" has been well discussed elsewhere, but the posting also labelled... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1427688/development-cantonese-language-story-worth-telling?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1427688/development-cantonese-language-story-worth-telling?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 14 Feb 2014 03:30:00 +0000 Eleanor Catton recently won the last Man Booker prize of its kind. The prize will now, after all these years, be open to Americans. Not just to Americans: to anyone writing in English and published in Britain. But it's the Americans that have caused all the excitement and consternation: "Well, that's the end of the Booker prize, then," said Philip Hensher in The Guardian. Rather than being either a brave expansion or a craven surrender to commercial forces, it may just be that the national... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1342715/man-booker-rule-change-reflects-borderless-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1342715/man-booker-rule-change-reflects-borderless-world?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 29 Oct 2013 11:00:00 +0000 A recent Post article noted that Hong Kong universities "rate poorly when it comes to sourcing funds for innovation from business" as if this were a bad thing. Data in the report argues otherwise: local academics receive on average US$20,000 per year from outside commercial sources, just US$6,000 less than in the US and US$6,000 more than in Britain. The top places, with three to five times Hong Kong's funding levels, include South Korea, Singapore and South Africa, places hardly known for the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1298365/simply-hong-kong-no-home-hi-tech-research?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1298365/simply-hong-kong-no-home-hi-tech-research?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:00:00 +0000 The recent report of a Hong Kong couple transferring US$2 million to a so-called educational consultant in an attempt to get their children into Harvard might inspire bemusement or schadenfreude but also perhaps some rueful understanding from Asian parents for whom an elite foreign university education is considered a highly desirable addition to their children's pedigree. Hong Kong has long sent students overseas, but the cachet now associated with a foreign - and increasingly, American -... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1064138/changing-face-higher-education?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1064138/changing-face-higher-education?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Russia's head lies in Europe while its feet paddle in the Pacific. It is the only European country that is also a Pacific nation, an attribute reflected in its former imperial, and now resurrected, emblem. "The Russian eagle has two heads, looking in two directions at once," the late Arkady Volsky, leading Soviet and post-Soviet industrialist, told me in the late 1990s. "It is just as important for Russia to look East to Asia, as West to Europe and the United States." If Asian Russia - Siberia -... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1029514/dont-just-wait-russia-look-east?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1029514/dont-just-wait-russia-look-east?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:00:00 +0000