https://www.scmp.com/rss/15939/feed Alison Singh Gee is a Los Angeles-based journalist and author. Her Hong Kong-India memoir, Where the Peacocks Sing: A Palace, a Prince and the Search for Home (2013), about her comic and complex relationship with her husband's 19th-century Indian palace, was a National Geographic Traveler book of the month. She was a features writer for People magazine, and has written for Vanity Fair, InStyle, Marie Claire, the International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal. In the 1990s, she was a... en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com My father grew up just a few steps from where I am now on this shop-lined section of Chung King Road in Los Angeles, two flights of worn wooden stairs above his father’s general store. The family flat was a heavenly slice of the homeland, the living room lined with silk-tasselled lanterns, Chinese landscapes on the walls and a custom red rug holding the room together. The cool, dark hallways smelled of camphor wood and soy sauce. A sizeable turtle roamed the kitchen like a king (until one day he... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3143145/chinatown-los-angeles-memories-my-father-loved?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3143145/chinatown-los-angeles-memories-my-father-loved?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 01 Aug 2021 00:15:11 +0000 Marybelle is a Filipino domestic helper who lives with Lincoln Chow, a Chinese-American professor, and Jing, a Hong Kong-born homemaker who yearns for a child she is not able to have. Marybelle earns money not only from the Chows, but also from weekends spent cleaning the rooms of local students. Her hard-earned dollars transform into large remittances home to her mother and daughter in Manila. In turn, her mother mails Marybelle photos of the sprawling family’s newborn babies and of relatives... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3131581/author-grace-talusan-gives-voice-filipino?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3131581/author-grace-talusan-gives-voice-filipino?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 May 2021 23:45:06 +0000 Imagine sitting in a splendid 15-acre Chinese garden such as might be found in the ancient city of Suzhou, sipping jasmine tea in a shaded pavilion and listening to a young woman plucking the strings of a guzheng. Then imagine you’re also in the heart of Southern California and can see on the horizon the purple-hued ridges of the San Gabriel Mountains, towering palms and the terracotta-tiled rooftops of Spanish-style houses. Liu Fang Yuan (Garden of Flowing Fragrance), located at The Huntington... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3119083/chinese-garden-masterpiece-traditional-architecture-zen?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3119083/chinese-garden-masterpiece-traditional-architecture-zen?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 25 Jan 2021 18:30:13 +0000 Kevin Kwan first realised how radically his life had changed during a visit home to Houston, Texas, in the United States. Walking with his mother through the car park of a suburban supermarket, and navigating swarms of traffic, Kwan got into his car and tried to back out. “There was this SUV full of guys honking, and frantically waving their arms,” recalls Kwan. “I thought, ‘Oh, no, did I hit something?’ I rolled down my window, and said, ‘What’s the matter?’ They all smiled and said, ‘Kevin,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3093385/crazy-rich-asians-kevin-kwan-says-life-has?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3093385/crazy-rich-asians-kevin-kwan-says-life-has?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 19 Jul 2020 01:15:16 +0000 Living out of a suitcase I was born in 1972, in Kyoto, Japan, where my dad was studying and my mom was teaching English. Both are from St Louis (in the United States). When I was a baby, my parents lived in a one-room teahouse; my 16-month-old brother slept in a drawer and I slept in a suitcase. I went back to Japan two years ago with my husband (American playwright Zayd Dohrn) and our daughters, then eight and 11. The day we found the house where I was born I rang the bell and a woman opened... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3010612/foreign-babes-beijing-how-chinese-soap-opera?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3010612/foreign-babes-beijing-how-chinese-soap-opera?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 May 2019 15:30:14 +0000 In this year of glossy Asian-American stories on the big screen, MDMA, the debut effort of director Angie Wang, stands out for shedding light on the dark side of the model minority myth. Born into a chaotic Chinese-American family with an absentee mother and a loving but hard-drinking restaurant-cook father, Wang, played by Annie Q, is left alone most nights, raising herself on takeout and television. By 17, her innate intelligence and excellent test scores land her a place at a prestigious... https://www.scmp.com/identity/real-life-story-high-achieving-drug-dealer/article/3000233?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/identity/real-life-story-high-achieving-drug-dealer/article/3000233?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 Nov 2018 16:05:09 +0000 In the opening scene of MDMA, Angie Wang’s semi-autobiographical film about her gritty 1980s youth, we find Wang in a cage. Dressed in a tiny, tight and tacky outfit, she’s writhing on a platform for throngs of gaping men below, as a failed college student turned exotic dancer trying to make ends meet and reality disappear. The swigs of tequila and lines of cocaine help – momentarily. But while the cage in the scene may be real, it is also metaphor for the young Wang’s plight in life. Born into... https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2171432/crazy-poor-asian-story-sex-drugs-and-cage-dancing-angie-wangs-mdma?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2171432/crazy-poor-asian-story-sex-drugs-and-cage-dancing-angie-wangs-mdma?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 05 Nov 2018 14:34:39 +0000 In 2011, journalist and writer Vanessa Hua was living in Claremont, California, pregnant with twins, when she heard about a local phenomenon. Throughout southern California, dozens of pregnant Chinese women, bellies heavy with imminent babies, were living together in shared homes. The women were both boarders and patients in what were called “maternity hotels”– American houses where women from Taiwan and the mainland resided, typically from their sixth month of pregnancy until giving birth. The... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2161706/chinese-birth-tourism-pregnant-women-californias?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2161706/chinese-birth-tourism-pregnant-women-californias?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 30 Aug 2018 20:30:30 +0000 The smash success of the Crazy Rich Asians film has guaranteed that a sequel is inevitable and the Warner Bros studio is reportedly already in the early stages of developing part two. The Hollywood Reporter said the next instalment would be based on author Kevin Kwan’s second book in his trilogy, China Rich Girlfriend, and the main cast is expected to return. Crazy Rich sequel is on the way, director Jon Chu confirms In China Rich Girlfriend (published in 2015), Kwan shrewdly shifts the focus... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2161519/what-expect-crazy-rich-asians-film-sequel-action-moves-china-and-hong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2161519/what-expect-crazy-rich-asians-film-sequel-action-moves-china-and-hong?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 28 Aug 2018 00:49:06 +0000 Amy Tan first set foot in Hong Kong in 1987, but that trip is seared into her memory. This was before the Oakland, California-born author had published – or even written – The Joy Luck Club. Tan’s mother, Daisy, who would become the muse for many of her novels, had arranged for her to stay with Auntie Elsie, a child­hood friend from Shanghai, in a flat near the Ambassador Hotel, in Kowloon. “It was my first introduction to sleeping on a bed that was woven rattan and you would lie on it, instead... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2118160/why-amy-tan-will-never-forget-her-first-visit?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2118160/why-amy-tan-will-never-forget-her-first-visit?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Nov 2017 03:00:30 +0000 Celeste Ng stunned international audiences with her 2014 debut novel, Everything I Never Told You. The story is about a Chinese-American teenage girl who is found dead in a lake, plunging her aspirational immigrant family into despair and chaos. It soared up The New York Times bestseller list and won an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Ng now returns with her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, about a white family based in Cleveland, USA, that attempts to adopt a Chinese-American... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2115916/novelist-celeste-ng-her-new-book-rules-be-broken-and-why-she-isnt-set?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2115916/novelist-celeste-ng-her-new-book-rules-be-broken-and-why-she-isnt-set?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 20 Oct 2017 12:03:16 +0000 Little Soldiers by Lenora Chu Harper “There is a little man who resides inside the head of every Chinese man and woman, whether they know it or not,” Lenora Chu writes in her new book, Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve. “He governs how they find their mates, what they look for in jobs, how they treat their parents, and how they educate their children.” That little man is, of course, Confucius. Perhaps it was the resounding influence of the ancient... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2113945/chinas-draconian-education-system-under-spotlight?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2113945/chinas-draconian-education-system-under-spotlight?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 04 Oct 2017 10:00:30 +0000 Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig Grove Press There is a scene in Miss Burma, the second novel by actress-turned-bestselling author Charmaine Craig, that is both dis­turbing and meaningful. One of the main characters, Benny, a Jew born in Burma and educated in India, is tortured by Japanese soldiers, occupiers of the small South Asian country during the second world war. Benny’s crime is being of Caucasian descent in conflict-torn Burma. “Using their swords to nick his scalp again and again so that... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2102145/miss-burma-tells-troubled-history-little-known-country?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2102145/miss-burma-tells-troubled-history-little-known-country?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 12 Jul 2017 03:00:15 +0000 The FortunesBy Peter Ho Davies Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Ask an avid reader to name the Great Chinese-American Novel and they might suggest The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, Donald Duk, by Frank Chin, or The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. And that list may soon include The Fortunes, the latest novel by Welsh-Chinese author Peter Ho Davies. In his inventive and transporting book, Davies rewrites history through the lives of Chinese Americans, following characters from different periods of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2022969/book-review-new-contender-great-chinese-american-novel?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2022969/book-review-new-contender-great-chinese-american-novel?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 28 Sep 2016 02:00:15 +0000 Like thousands, if not millions, of other aspiring novelists, Jade Chang toiled over her first manuscript (make that manuscripts) for years and years. And then more years. The Los Angeles-based journalist spent her days editing a magazine and her nights hunched over her laptop, as she tap­ped away in cafés and even the lobby of a hip hotel. “Often I was there working so late that the lobby turned into a nightclub,” she says. “Sometimes I would keep work­ing – it was like, ‘Who’s that girl on her... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2010555/interview-jade-changs-wangs-vs-world-tells-different?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2010555/interview-jade-changs-wangs-vs-world-tells-different?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 31 Aug 2016 01:00:15 +0000 When author and journalist Cheryl Lu-lien Tan looks out of her window in New York, she gazes at the stately Lincoln Centre, with its modern concrete archways, walls of glass and massive sparkling chandelier. It’s a view that, for many people, would signify one thing: you’ve made it, babe. And yet, for Tan, who has lived in the Big Apple for 13 years and enjoyed an enviable career writing about fashion, travel and food for the likes of The New York Times, InStyle, The Paris Review and The Wall... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/1986779/cheryl-lu-lien-tans-comic-novel-barhops-through?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/1986779/cheryl-lu-lien-tans-comic-novel-barhops-through?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 08 Jul 2016 03:00:30 +0000 It seems as though every year a novel – and its author – appears out of nowhere and gets readers everywhere talking. This year that book is Shelter, by Korean American writer Jung Yun. Her debut work, Shelter is set during the American housing crisis and financial crisis of 2008, and explores the American psyche, which has taken a beating from the Great Recession. Shelter opens with a harrowing scene – Kyung Cho, a Korean-American biology professor, sees an older woman, naked and limping through... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/1944603/korean-american-novelist-jung-yun-what-inspired-shelter-her-stunning?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/1944603/korean-american-novelist-jung-yun-what-inspired-shelter-her-stunning?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 16 May 2016 00:02:24 +0000 Love , Loss and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi Ecco At the beginning of her memoir Love, Loss & What We Ate, it’s 2007 and Padma Lakshmi has left the gracious brownstone she shared with husband Salman Rushdie and shuttered herself in New York’s Surrey Hotel – which she dubs the Sorry Hotel. And with good reason. She’s just separated from her Pulitzer Prize-winning much, much older mate, who she began dating during his infamous fatwa period, and then married. In her depressing makeshift home, she... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1935121/book-review-love-loss-and-what-we-ate-padma-lakshmi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1935121/book-review-love-loss-and-what-we-ate-padma-lakshmi?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 11 Apr 2016 04:00:45 +0000 [Janice Lee, Class of 1989] In her second novel, The Expatriates, Hong Kong-born author Janice Lee captures a range of anxieties that plague well-off families living abroad. There’s the everyday: learning a new way to communicate with the hired help – indirect, so as to not bruise feelings and seem too hierarchical. Then there’s raising children – privileged and overindulged, whose values are not in sync with those of their hard-working parents. But Lee doesn’t spare readers the more devastating... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/families/article/1927048/hong-kong-born-american-novelist-janice-lee-dissects-expat-life?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/families/article/1927048/hong-kong-born-american-novelist-janice-lee-dissects-expat-life?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Mar 2016 18:00:45 +0000 It is not hyperbole to say that Janice Y.K. Lee is quite likely the finest non-Chinese novelist to emerge from Hong Kong in the past few decades. Her 2009 first novel, The Piano Teacher, set in Hong Kong during the second world war and the 1950s, tells the haunting story of a British man and his two very different love affairs a decade apart against the backdrop of the city. The book earned international literary praise and climbed The New York Times’ bestsellers list. With her second novel, The... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1902868/3-expat-women-lost-and-desperate-hong-kong-janice-lee-her-second?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1902868/3-expat-women-lost-and-desperate-hong-kong-janice-lee-her-second?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 19 Jan 2016 22:00:45 +0000 Jojo Moyes didn't quite believe she'd hit the literary stratosphere until she received an unusual Facebook message. In it was a photograph of a young woman's wrist with the tattooed words, "Just Live". Moyes raised a hand to cover her mouth in surprise: it was a line from one of the last chapters of her 2012 international bestseller Me Before You. "I just wanted to respond, 'Oh, my God, is that permanent?'," says the author, who has written 14 books. Moyes has since received many more snaps of... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1869426/former-hong-kong-reporter-jojo-moyes-her-big-break-hit-novelist?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1869426/former-hong-kong-reporter-jojo-moyes-her-big-break-hit-novelist?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 19 Oct 2015 10:15:36 +0000 The first time Kevin Kwan realised something was slightly unusual about his Singapore childhood came when, as a tween, he and his family moved to Houston, Texas. "We settled into a perfectly nice, all-American suburb," says Kwan, "but the first thing that struck me was that these houses were far smaller than the one I had lived in, and none had fences or gates around them. They were just out in the open, with nothing but lawns and driveways separating each other." He found it disconcerting:... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1845149/crazy-rich-asians-author-kevin-kwan-privilege-excess-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1845149/crazy-rich-asians-author-kevin-kwan-privilege-excess-and?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 30 Jul 2015 16:45:45 +0000 There is no better season for a Kevin Kwan novel than summer. When the Singaporean-born author's debut book, Crazy Rich Asians, debuted in June 2013, it wasn't long before its sparkly gold cover could be seen on beaches from St Barths to Nice to Malibu, and maybe even Hainan, held aloft by fashionable women in Gucci shades and Missoni bikinis. And with good reason: Crazy Rich Asians gave readers access to a world that not only a few entered, but also few truly knew about - the world of old Asian... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1834512/book-review-china-rich-girlfriend-sequel-crazy-rich-asians?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1834512/book-review-china-rich-girlfriend-sequel-crazy-rich-asians?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 08 Jul 2015 08:30:30 +0000 For Hong Kong-born Mimi Thorisson, global fame began simply, and sweetly - with a vanilla-cream iced cake. One spring evening, the mother of five walked out of her centuries-old farmhouse in France's Médoc region to find a surprise. Shaking off a long winter, dozens of miniature white daisies were blooming in the garden. Inspired, she hurried into the kitchen and whipped up a meringue cake, artfully decorating it with flowers, leaves and berries. "I wanted this cake to be a celebration of... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1674156/most-envied-food-blogger-mimi-thorisson-her-childhood?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1674156/most-envied-food-blogger-mimi-thorisson-her-childhood?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 05 Jan 2015 09:15:30 +0000 Lisa See has long been fascinated by the world of Chinese-American nightclubs. Over the years, her fans sent her photos of their mothers, aunts, fathers and uncles who had performed in the once-vibrant industry of the 1930s and 40s. See, who is part Chinese, heard so many captivating stories about these characters who "broke the mould and pursued their dreams", as she puts it, that she set out to honour them in her latest novel, China Dolls, which is set in San Francisco. See interviewed some of... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1581715/window-club-life-asian-american-past?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1581715/window-club-life-asian-american-past?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Aug 2014 14:13:26 +0000 Jean Kwok emigrated with her family from Hong Kong to New York City when she was five years old. Her latest novel, Mambo in Chinatown , revolves around a clumsy young woman named Charlie Wong. A dishwasher in a restaurant in New York's Chinatown, Wong ultimately finds her own talents in a ballroom dance studio - just as Kwok did in real life: she was a professional ballroom dancer during her college years at Harvard and Columbia. Kwok spoke with Alison Singh Gee about her new book. Your debut... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1559028/author-qa-mambo-chinatown-jean-kwok?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1559028/author-qa-mambo-chinatown-jean-kwok?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 Jul 2014 04:31:04 +0000 Ava Chin is known to New Yorkers as the Urban Forager, a blog she writes for The New York Times about scouring city parks and backyards for delectable edibles served up wild by nature. But while hunting and gathering around the mean streets of America's largest city has become all the rage for back-to-the-source hipsters, Chin, a fifth-generation Chinese-American, learned the art of harvesting morels and mulberries in nature from a less-than-trendy source: her Toisanese grandparents, who raised... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1536905/forager-gives-dining-out-wild-new-meaning?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1536905/forager-gives-dining-out-wild-new-meaning?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Jun 2014 04:17:59 +0000 Few cities in the world can compete with Shanghai for its sheer impact on public consciousness as a cultural, commercial, financial - and political - powerhouse. But the most exciting time in Shanghai's modern history arguably isn't now, but during the years leading up to the second world war. This was a period when "jazz, love, war - and the Holocaust" collided in China's largest city, says author Nicole Mones. Her latest novel, Night in Shanghai , is the story of an African-American jazz... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1513478/night-shanghai-recreates-city-1930s-tale-music-race-love-and-war?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1513478/night-shanghai-recreates-city-1930s-tale-music-race-love-and-war?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 May 2014 07:45:54 +0000 THE FIRST THING YOU need to know about Colin Farrell is that his signature libation is not what it used to be. Maybe you'd expect the 37-year-old Irish actor - known for his starring turns in S.W.A.T. and Miami Vice, and his title role in Oliver Stone's epic Alexander - to be swilling a pint of Guinness, even at 10 in the morning. After all, this is the man with a "carpe diem" (seize the day) tattoo snaking across his left forearm, who famously took his partying to extreme levels. But at the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1422969/colin-farrell-hollywoods-bad-boy-comes-age?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1422969/colin-farrell-hollywoods-bad-boy-comes-age?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 12 Feb 2014 15:30:15 +0000 Your story follows two Korean-American sisters, one ever dutiful, the other a sensitive maverick, as they take different paths in America. Is this an allegory of the North and South Korean divide? In some ways I was trying to talk about the division between North and South Korea, and I did want the estrangement within the family in Forgotten Country to echo the larger break between the two countries. But I also wanted to talk about the aftermath: how ruptures within families come about and are... https://www.scmp.com/article/997656/korean-divide-both-personal-and-national?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/997656/korean-divide-both-personal-and-national?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0000 What is it about Graham Greene that interests you? I could give lots of reasons, but I wouldn't believe them myself. I could say we share the same upbringing to some degree, having grown up in middle-class Britain and having gone to the same boarding school, and that because of those years at boarding school, we never settled down into households. I could say it's because I also found my way to Saigon, Paraguay and Tahiti - places which he made famous in his writing. I could say it's because... https://www.scmp.com/article/993696/how-eton-rootlessness-and-graham-greene-helped-forge-giant-travel-writing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/993696/how-eton-rootlessness-and-graham-greene-helped-forge-giant-travel-writing?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Krys Lee's literary debut, Drifting House, is a collection of short stories filled with Korean and Korean-American characters struggling with war, religion, and the secrets and complexities of damaged families. Lee speaks to Alison Singh Gee Your characters are idiosyncratic and authentic. What do they say about the Korean diaspora? My characters arise from a lifelong interest in people. Lorrie Moore has a story based in Ireland where her narrator observes that nature and its landscapes are... https://www.scmp.com/article/992392/tales-korean-diaspora-reflect-fascination-survivors?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/992392/tales-korean-diaspora-reflect-fascination-survivors?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Several years ago, Korean-born author Jid Lee was watching The Oprah Winfrey Show when she had an epiphany. On air was an interview with African-American Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who remarked that she began to write because she feared that if she didn't she would die. Lee realised that the same cathartic process had compelled her to write a multi-generational memoir that weaves her family's tortured history with that of modern-day Korea. Lee's book, To Kill a Tiger: A Memoir of Korea,... https://www.scmp.com/article/715663/memoir-mirrors-koreas-torment?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/715663/memoir-mirrors-koreas-torment?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 May 2010 16:00:00 +0000 On Jean Kwok's website, visitors are invited to explore five 'fun facts' about the author and her debut novel, Girl in Translation, an account of her Hong Kong family's struggle to realise the American dream in New York's Chinatown. Fact No1 states that Kwok's novel has 'two REAL characters', and that clicking on links will reveal who they are. Disappointingly, the two characters include neither the author nor her parents, nor any of her six siblings, who all triumphed over poverty,... https://www.scmp.com/article/714453/chinatown-initiation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/714453/chinatown-initiation?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 May 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Imagine a house of glass and steel perched on a hill. Stone steps lead to the front door, in front of which an ivory mist perpetually swirls. Inside, it's dusky and freezing cold, even in summer. A spiral staircase shortens and lengthens at random. Strange apparitions appear in mirrors. This is the haunted house in which Meridia, the central character of Erick Setiawan's enchanting debut novel, Of Bees and Mist, was born and raised. Her parents are so bitter - towards each other and the... https://www.scmp.com/article/708513/childhood-ghosts?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/708513/childhood-ghosts?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000 When Mei-Ling Hopgood's Taiwanese parents gave her up for adoption as an eight-month-old baby, it wasn't because they didn't love her. She was a beautiful, healthy, good-natured little girl. But five sisters preceded her, and her parents, who were poor farmers, felt they couldn't raise her. Besides, Mei-Ling's father wanted a son and, to make room for a boy, he believed he'd have to let go of her. A Taipei-based American nun, Sister Maureen Sinnott, arranged Mei-Ling's adoption by a... https://www.scmp.com/article/703870/fortunate-one?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/703870/fortunate-one?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Westerners often fall in love with India through its sights, but Katherine Russell Rich's love affair with the country was inspired by the sounds she heard while learning Hindi - not in India itself but at home in New York. Rich, a journalist, began taking Hindi lessons to rekindle memories of a trip to India, where she had gone to interview the Dalai Lama's doctor for The New York Times. Although she had only mastered a few words, she was so thrilled by the lessons that someone suggested... https://www.scmp.com/article/696984/words-live?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/696984/words-live?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Lisa See was strolling down Hollywood Road 15 years ago when she came across a poster of two girls from Shanghai. Their hair styled into wavy bobs, the young women were perched on a bed in a room with art deco flourishes. To See, they looked sophisticated and surprisingly liberated, given their setting was the mainland in the 1930s. But Shanghai, celebrated as the Paris of the East, was then a place where women could dress in the latest European fashions, choose whom they wanted to marry and... https://www.scmp.com/article/690961/ins-and-outs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/690961/ins-and-outs?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Growing up in Realty Gardens in Mid-Levels in the 1970s and 80s, Coralie Langston-Jones and her brother, Harvey, had the opportunity to enjoy the finer things in life. First of all, there was the view. The verandah of their family's flat boasted a stunning panorama of Victoria Harbour. At the time, Realty Gardens flats, with their luxurious pools and gardens, and 1,200 sq ft of living space, epitomised fashionable living. 'As a child, I thought the rest of the world lived the same way,'... https://www.scmp.com/article/673855/open-house?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/673855/open-house?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0000 It may be depressing to look at stock values these days, but it doesn't mean your flat has to show the strain too. Even if money's tight you can revamp your pad with a few carefully chosen additions or subtractions. By simply changing accessories such as pillows, lamps and artwork, or creating colour zones in your rooms, you can introduce a new flamboyance into your life. Hong Kong, with its globetrotting denizens and antiques stores lined with fascinating pan-Asian pieces, is an ideal place... https://www.scmp.com/article/666337/recession-chic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/666337/recession-chic?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000