https://www.scmp.com/rss/322922/feed This is the page on which to find the most-read recent Post Magazine feature stories. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com For two hours a day in the past fortnight, Edward Chan hung around after work at the Prince Edward metro station in Kowloon. Teenagers continued to gather at the station, and Chan, who works in logistics, found himself acting as their counsellor, dispensing advice to the youth. Hong Kong “is rotten to the core, with many issues affecting our livelihood, even if the city has a great international image on the surface”, according to Chan, who lives in a 350 sq ft flat with his wife and their... https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3029820/hongkongers-pay-price-their-low-taxes-through-worlds-most-expensive-homes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3029820/hongkongers-pay-price-their-low-taxes-through-worlds-most-expensive-homes?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Sep 2019 22:30:14 +0000 Two faces press against a glass case, mobile phones raised. The object of their interest looks like a single succulent piece of braised pork purloined from the museum cafe downstairs. Closer inspection reveals it to be a delicately carved lump of stone. Nearby resides an almost perfect stalk of bok choy (complete with a pair of insect stowaways) made of jadeite. These two objects are among the most sought-out artefacts on display at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. While perhaps not as... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2185155/chinas-competing-legacies-show-national-palace?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2185155/chinas-competing-legacies-show-national-palace?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 07 Feb 2019 23:30:15 +0000 Sarah Brennan is a Hong-Kong-based publisher with a peculiarly persistent passion for alliteration. Every year since 2007 she has written and produced a children’s tale to match the Chinese zodiac’s appropriate animal. These have included Oswald Ox, Sybil Snake, Rhonda Rabbit, Desmond Dog. The 12th and final one has just been launched in time for Lunar New Year: it features Ping Pong Pig. Her blog, Funny & Fabulous, has sub-sections titled Amazing Authors, Brilliant Books, Wicked Words and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2184305/hong-kong-publisher-releases-last-chinese-zodiac?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2184305/hong-kong-publisher-releases-last-chinese-zodiac?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 05 Feb 2019 01:00:00 +0000 A semi-busy coffee shop in Newbury, a small market town about 80km west of London, is not the most obvious place in which to examine an unsolved murder that occurred decades ago in Beijing (then Peking). But Newbury is where I head, on a chilly winter day, battling the cold and Britain’s unreliable trains. Luckily, patience is a virtue possessed by Graeme Sheppard, who has waited calmly for my arrival, though the word he uses to describe himself is “dogged”. A Death in Peking: ex-police officer... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2184452/murder-peking-two-hot-takes-grisly-1937-cold-case?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2184452/murder-peking-two-hot-takes-grisly-1937-cold-case?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 03 Feb 2019 08:30:30 +0000 The guidebook is on the verge of joining spats and the rotary dial telephone as an object whose purpose needs explaining to children. But back in the 1980s, long before online travel forums were a twinkle in Daddy’s iPhone, young travellers sitting down to meals at shared tables in Beijing backstreet guest houses brought out neither smartphones nor tablets, but copies of a certain book. In those pre-TripAdvisor days, when China had opened to independent travel without bothering to tell anyone,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2183617/how-tourism-changed-china-lonely-planets-first?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2183617/how-tourism-changed-china-lonely-planets-first?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 Jan 2019 07:00:30 +0000 In the chilly waters of Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park, in Sai Kung West Country Park, can be found a conservation success story that has the potential to transform the seas of southern China. “Hong Kong is the apocalyptic environment for corals,” says Yu-De Pei, a coral researcher from Taiwan who works with Vriko Yu Pik-fan on a pioneering project run by the University of Hong Kong’s Swire Institute of Marine Science (Swims). Yet, Hong Kong still has corals; against all the odds, they have survived a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2183633/could-hong-kongs-hardy-corals-be-key-saving?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2183633/could-hong-kongs-hardy-corals-be-key-saving?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 Jan 2019 08:00:30 +0000 Sometime around 1am on a warm night in June 2017, Fei-Fei Li was sitting in her pyjamas in a Washington, DC hotel room, practising a speech she would give in a few hours. Before going to bed, Li cut a full paragraph from her notes to be sure she could reach her most important points in the short time allotted. When she woke up, the five-foot three-inch expert in artificial intelligence put on boots and a black and navy knit dress, a departure from her frequent uniform of a T-shirt and jeans.... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2183463/bias-bias-out-stanford-scientist-out-make-ai-less?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2183463/bias-bias-out-stanford-scientist-out-make-ai-less?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 24 Jan 2019 22:00:00 +0000 In a picture-postcard village in eastern England, Alice Simpson plays happily with young relatives, her infectious laughter ringing out across the rolling countryside that surrounds her grandparents’ 400-year-old thatched cottage. Chasing the family’s dogs as they bound alongside frosty ploughed fields and giggling uproariously in a game of hide-and-seek beside a red phone box on the village green, Alice looks entirely at home in this quintessentially English winter scene. But this is no... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2182650/children-british-man-killed-chinese-wife?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2182650/children-british-man-killed-chinese-wife?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Jan 2019 08:30:00 +0000 It is not often one meets an elite mountaineer in the steamy heat of a tropical summer, but Carina Dayondon is not a typical mountain climber. The fourth eldest in a poor family of 14 children, raised in the sleepy town of Don Carlos, in central Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, she was expected to help bring up her brothers and sisters, not scale the world’s highest peaks. Dayondon was selected for the first Philippine team to ascend Mount Everest (which succeeded, in May 2006), she had... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2174268/filipino-mountaineer-her-journey-scale-seven?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2174268/filipino-mountaineer-her-journey-scale-seven?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 25 Nov 2018 00:45:15 +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 On her way to school, Aigerim Asker looks like the Kazakh girl next door. Dressed in jeans and a matching blue jacket, with her hair in two neat braids fashioned by her mother, she rides 12km through the mountains on horseback or motorbike to reach Altai, a town in western Mongolia’s Bayan-Ölgii province. At 13, she often replies to questions with a shy smile. When she speaks, she does so in an almost inaudible whisper, frequently looking for an approving nod from her father. But Aigerim is no... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2174492/how-eagle-huntresses-are-challenging-mongolian?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2174492/how-eagle-huntresses-are-challenging-mongolian?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Nov 2018 02:45:30 +0000 In August 7, 2018, a film premiere was held at the TCL Chinese Theatre – known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre until it did a naming deal with a Chinese electronics manufacturer – in Hollywood. The film was called Crazy Rich Asians . It may have pinged on your radar. The film’s stars are Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng, who began her acting career in the 1980s, and Constance Tianmin Wu, who has been acting since high school. The male lead is Henry Golding, who had never previously done a day’s acting,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2173374/crazy-rich-asians-henry-golding-insanity-fame-not?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2173374/crazy-rich-asians-henry-golding-insanity-fame-not?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 Nov 2018 05:00:15 +0000 Baoding is a sizeable city in central Hebei province, in north China, and synonymous with heavy industry and its attendant ills. Its hardy people – mostly of the country’s Han majority – wear no-nonsense expressions and display a hard­headed­ness born of stoicism. A showcase city Baoding is not. Yet neither is it poor. As I walk the streets, the trappings of 21st-century capitalism protrude between the Mao-era tenements and identikit high-rise apartment blocks. There are fast-food joints, a few... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2173319/trail-deng-xiaoping-french-town-where-he-embraced?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2173319/trail-deng-xiaoping-french-town-where-he-embraced?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Nov 2018 12:00:00 +0000 Thanksgiving is an American tradition that is unknown in most of the world. Fifty years ago, however, it landed in Laos, the small, impoverished Southeast Asian nation that was to become perhaps the longest-suffering casualty of the United States’ war in Vietnam. Thanksgiving is held on the fourth Thursday in November. In 1968, that fell on November 28, and on that day, at the height of the war and on the orders of president Lyndon B. Johnson, turkey dinners were helicoptered in to American... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2173220/200-years-go-laos-cleared-unexploded-us-bombs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2173220/200-years-go-laos-cleared-unexploded-us-bombs?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 15 Nov 2018 19:00:00 +0000 An imposing memorial, carved from white Hunan marble, is poised to make the same long journey to Europe as the men that it com­memorates. The monument, a 9.6-metre-high huabiao – a traditional ceremonial column – is in the final stage of production at a stone­masons in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. When finished, it will honour the tens of thousands of Chinese who, a century ago, served on the first world war’s Western Front. Once erected in London, the huabiao will serve as a permanent reminder... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2172435/chinese-labour-corps-first-world-wars-forgotten?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2172435/chinese-labour-corps-first-world-wars-forgotten?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Nov 2018 09:00:45 +0000 As the sun sank over the sea off Langkawi on October 17, Britons John and Samantha Jones sat drinking with friends at a bar on Cenang Beach, laughing and joking as they basked in the evening warmth on the tropical Malaysian island that had been their home for 11 years. It was the last sunset John would ever see. Hours later, the burly 63-year-old was lying dead, a kitchen knife having been thrust into his chest in the bedroom of his retirement villa, less than 5km from Cenang Beach, while... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2172088/killing-british-expat-malaysian-island-langkawi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2172088/killing-british-expat-malaysian-island-langkawi?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 08 Nov 2018 20:00:15 +0000 The summer of 2017 marked six months of almost constant turmoil in the presidency of Donald Trump. On July 1, an editorial head­line in The New York Times read, “President Trump, Melting Under Criticism. Unlike his predecessors, this president can’t seem to take the heat.” Two days later, Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, focusing on the United States’ trade dispute with China wrote a scathing piece headlined, “Oh! What a Lovely Trade War. Let’s do something stupid to please... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2171369/trumps-real-trade-war-target-chinas-outrageous?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2171369/trumps-real-trade-war-target-chinas-outrageous?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Nov 2018 14:30:00 +0000 David Byrne is not tired. Maybe David Byrne is never tired. Months into his “American Utopia” tour, with months left to go (during which there will be a Hong Kong visit), Byrne, dressed in a pressed, white, tropical shirt with an iced tea in hand to ward off the central Texas heat, is fresh-faced and eager to talk when we meet in a conference room at the InterContinental Stephen F Austin Hotel, in Austin. A much younger man could be forgiven for wanting to sleep in, on this, a rare day off,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2171244/talking-head-david-byrne-creating-his-american?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2171244/talking-head-david-byrne-creating-his-american?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Nov 2018 09:00:30 +0000 A home of our own I was born in Pennsylvania, in the USA, in 1968, in a town called Spangler. I have a younger brother and an older sister. When I was about five, my family moved to Minnesota and we lived in a town outside Minneapolis until I was 13. We were working class and poor. My stepfather was a carpenter and he had an accident that laid him up for about a year. In the settlement he got a modest sum of US$12,000, which was equal to about a year’s pay. My mom said this was our first and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2171164/wild-author-cheryl-strayed-who-played-reese?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2171164/wild-author-cheryl-strayed-who-played-reese?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 01 Nov 2018 18:00:45 +0000 Imbi Plaza, a 1970s-era shopping mall on the fringe of the Bukit Bintang area of Kuala Lumpur, is a good place in which to start understanding how the United States and China came to be in a trade war in 2018. In its heyday, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Imbi was the Malaysian capital’s thriving bazaar of high-technology – a collection of shops selling computer hardware and accessories, and the software needed to run them. The hardware was mostly real, though rumours hovered in the complex’s... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2170132/how-chinas-rampant-intellectual-property-theft?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2170132/how-chinas-rampant-intellectual-property-theft?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 Oct 2018 13:00:15 +0000 Visitors detect Maotai, nestled on the slopes of a tiny valley in the north of Guizhou province, long before they see the small town. The stench from its fermentation tanks is carried on the wind, and is so pervasive that locals do not even notice it. “What smell?” they ask, with surprise. Maotai gives its name to China’s most famous liquor, as well as its part publicly traded and part state-owned produ­cer, Kweichow Moutai, which was founded in 1951 with the merger of three distilleries. Maotai... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2170165/inside-fortress-maotai-secrets-china-hard-liquor?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2170165/inside-fortress-maotai-secrets-china-hard-liquor?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Oct 2018 05:00:30 +0000 At 4pm on August 26 last year, 22-year-old Catherine Su Pohler, whom every­one calls Kati, met her Chinese birth parents and older sister for the first time. Kati’s biological mother, Qian Fenxiang, began to sob when the college student, from the American state of Michigan, arrived at the rendezvous: the Broken Bridge, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Qian ran up to the young woman, whose face so closely resembles her own, flung her arms around the child she had not seen since giving her up at... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2169346/one-year-adopted-girl-reunited-birth-parents?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2169346/one-year-adopted-girl-reunited-birth-parents?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 21 Oct 2018 13:00:30 +0000 David R. Chan is the very embodiment of the word “unassuming” – he seems to shrink behind the restaurant table, peering out over plates of pork buns, fried tofu and steamed vegetables. Retiring he may be, but this is 70-year-old Chan in his natural environ­ment. There is likely no American alive with more experi­ence dining in Chinese restaurants. At last count, he had eaten at 7,392 of them in the United States alone. Chan is, in almost every way, an unlikely Chinese culi­nary celebrity. He... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2169154/man-who-has-eaten-more-7300-chinese-restaurants?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2169154/man-who-has-eaten-more-7300-chinese-restaurants?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Oct 2018 14:00:15 +0000 On a humid morning in June 2017, in a suburb outside Cincinnati in the United States, Fred and Cindy Warmbier waited in agony. They had not spoken to their son Otto for a year and a half, since he had been arrested during a budget tour of North Korea. One of their last glimpses of him had been in a televised news conference from Pyongyang, during which their boy – a sweet, intelligent 21-year-old scholarship student at the University of Virginia – confessed to undermining the regime at the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2169308/otto-warmbier-what-happened-north-korean-jail-led?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2169308/otto-warmbier-what-happened-north-korean-jail-led?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 19 Oct 2018 13:15:30 +0000 Years ago in Yonsa, a small North Korean town close to the border with China, residents gathered to watch a man die. Executioners tied him by his neck, chest and waist to a log in the town square, then shot 90 bullets into him. When it was over, all that remained were two legs. The man, an executive at a trading company, had been ratted out for illegally cutting down and selling trees into China. When the police came to his property, they found his getaway boat filled with wads of cash. Or so... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2168750/when-dream-dies-female-north-korean-defectors?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2168750/when-dream-dies-female-north-korean-defectors?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 16 Oct 2018 11:15:45 +0000 The next time you’re in the departures lounge of the Hong Kong Inter­national Airport, keep an eye out for a woman peering at your feet. Lucy Choi has made her name in Britain with her brand of oh-so-desirable stilettos and pumps, but it is to Hong Kong that she returns every year to design her latest collections, and Chek Lap Kok is where she derives her most potent inspiration. How boy from Penang became shoemaker of choice for British royals “I tend to get into the airport really early before... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2168121/shoe-designer-lucy-choi-follows-uncle-jimmy-choos?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2168121/shoe-designer-lucy-choi-follows-uncle-jimmy-choos?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 14 Oct 2018 06:00:15 +0000 He is more popular on social media than Madonna or Oprah Winfrey, but you might never have heard of him. Kai-Fu Lee has become the face of Chinese tech, his name synonymous with a country itching to take on the world. Lee spent his formative years helping charter a path of innovation for companies such as Microsoft and Apple, but it was when he spearheaded a failed attempt to bring Google to China that everything changed for him. Lee left Google in 2009, to set up his own venture capital fund,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166979/jobless-future-coming-says-china-tech-guru-kai-fu?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166979/jobless-future-coming-says-china-tech-guru-kai-fu?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 08 Oct 2018 17:00:00 +0000 When Sha Tin Racecourse opened on October 7, 1978 – 40 years ago today and, aptly, in the Year of the Horse – it was praised for its sweeping track, its mountain scenery and the long stretch of the Shing Mun River which borders the back straight. For the city-dwelling punter, it offered rare space to breathe. “Most people think Hong Kong is all skyscrapers, but out here we’re looking at mountains, and there’s fresh air. It’s home and I’m at ease,” says Hong Kong’s reigning champion jockey,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166971/hong-kongs-sha-tin-racecourse-celebrates-40-years?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166971/hong-kongs-sha-tin-racecourse-celebrates-40-years?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 07 Oct 2018 03:00:15 +0000 In the 1950s and 60s, when the artisans of Beijing’s last seven bow-making workshops were reassigned to state collectives, a craft that had been practised for more than 3,000 years came to a sudden halt. By the mid-90s, all remaining bowyers had passed away, with the exception of Yang Wentong. Come his death, it was believed, all knowledge of traditional Han Chinese ox-horn bow making would be lost forever. “My father was the youngest in that generation. None of their children had made the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166994/traditional-chinese-archery-bow-makers-target?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166994/traditional-chinese-archery-bow-makers-target?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Oct 2018 07:00:15 +0000 Clickbait The travelling goes all the way back to four or five years of age. My father was an avid fisherman. At weekends, he’d wake me up early in the morning, put me in the back of the car, drive to some lake in Oklahoma, drag the boat onto the water – and we’d fish, from early morning until lunch­time. Then we’d go home. For us, a big international trip was driving up to Canada for a fishing tournament. As Americans, we didn’t need a passport for that. We did do a cruise in the Caribbean but... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166941/tripadvisors-most-prolific-reviewer-american?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166941/tripadvisors-most-prolific-reviewer-american?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 04 Oct 2018 14:00:15 +0000 Departing passengers at Incheon International Airport, on the outskirts of the South Korean capital, Seoul, wave goodbye to friends and loved ones, and say hello to the future. “Please touch my face,” a GuideBot says to one traveller, in English. The robot, which also speaks Korean, Mandarin and Japanese, can recognise boarding passes that are scanned onto its broad touch-screen visage. “Please follow me.” The robot connects to the airport’s central server to find out boarding times and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166674/robots-are-coming-south-korea-do-benefits-ai?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166674/robots-are-coming-south-korea-do-benefits-ai?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 04 Oct 2018 13:00:45 +0000 On the rare occasion that schoolchildren in Hong Kong receive any education whatsoever on the subject of “the birds and the bees”, they can expect prehistoric videos of blurry limbs, scary medical diagrams, or demonstrations of latex rolled down a banana. With the focus on reproduction and disease prevention, the notion that sexual contact ought to feel good – whether alone or with a partner – never factors. Hong Kong-based couple Alison Tan Ka-kei and Sotiris Tsouris are set to launch a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166106/hong-kong-couple-behind-cunni-smart-sex-toy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2166106/hong-kong-couple-behind-cunni-smart-sex-toy?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 30 Sep 2018 12:00:00 +0000 Within the grounds of a former tea plantation, concealed in a corner of the Ngong Ping plateau, in sight of the Big Buddha, Sarah Driver is retracing her childhood. In the 1960s, she and her brothers, Robert and Ian, were the only European children living on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. Dressed in a simple blue cotton shirt and shorts, the elegant 55-year-old mother of four grown-up children inspects the rain-drenched bushes that still grow on the gently sloping grounds. “You only pick the bud and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2165822/memories-old-hong-kong-british-winemaker-recalls?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2165822/memories-old-hong-kong-british-winemaker-recalls?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Sep 2018 09:00:00 +0000 A naughty boy I was a naughty boy. My stepbrother and I ran away from home in Portsmouth (England) after I fell out with my stepmother and broke into a factory and stole some money. The police caught us easily enough and the magistrate suggested the best place for me was sea cadet training school. He sent me to the National Nautical School at Portishead, near Bristol, in 1946, at the age of 13. Most of the lads there had been in trouble of one sort or another. It was tough there, being locked in... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2165151/seven-times-married-ex-hong-kong-hangman-acting?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2165151/seven-times-married-ex-hong-kong-hangman-acting?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Sep 2018 11:00:45 +0000 “Photography isn’t complicated,” Wang Fuchun says, when we meet in Xidan, a swarming shopping district in central Beijing. “Basically, you look for what inspires you and take a picture. It’s all about the act. Nothing technical, nothing complicated.” I follow the tall, long-haired septuagenarian through the crowds of Saturday shoppers. He picks his targets quickly, snapping a courting couple, a vagrant asleep on a bench, a child holding a balloon and crying. Capturing the wry: Shenzhen... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2165002/chinese-trains-photographer-wang-fuchun-captures?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2165002/chinese-trains-photographer-wang-fuchun-captures?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 21 Sep 2018 03:00:00 +0000 In contrast to many of Thailand’s most popular islands, Koh Ha’s charms lie exclusively beneath the water. The frenzy of boats that surrounds the rocky archipelago begins each day at about 10am, as divers and snorkellers arrive and make ready to marvel at what coral still remains in the area, some 35km (22 miles) to the southeast of the Phi Phi islands. Amid the hustle and bustle of tourists, however, some are here with a different purpose. They are intent not only on admiring the corals, but on... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2164177/coral-reefs-divers-volunteer-gardeners-restore?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2164177/coral-reefs-divers-volunteer-gardeners-restore?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 Sep 2018 08:00:30 +0000 Song Peilun is the archetypal Chinese artist: he is slim, has long, loose hair, always dresses in a traditional changshan tunic and scatters old proverbs throughout his sometimes-hard-to-decipher discourse. But his great masterpiece was inspired by a European. Song’s Yelang Valley has some­thing in common with both Park Güell and the still-unfinished Sagrada Família cathedral – two of legendary Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí’s most prominent creations – in Barcelona, Spain. Like the first,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2163906/chinese-artist-who-his-inspiration-gaudi-will-not?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2163906/chinese-artist-who-his-inspiration-gaudi-will-not?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Sep 2018 06:00:30 +0000 Candyfloss and sandcastles I was born in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, in England’s North Yorkshire, in 1943. My child­hood with my older sister, Margaret, was candyfloss and building sandcastles. My mother was one of the first women to go to university in Britain, in the early 1920s, and to vote, in 1928, but she suffered from deafness, so she was a home­maker and never worked for economic gain. My father, Ralph Patterson Longstaff, was commodore of the Ellerman Lines shipping company. I went to the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2164088/she-took-tobacco-industry-and-taught-city-about?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2164088/she-took-tobacco-industry-and-taught-city-about?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 14 Sep 2018 03:00:45 +0000 Li Hong woke up in a sweat one night this summer, breathing heavily and with his inflatable mattress – essential for preventing bedsores – slowly deflating beneath him. His breathing apparatus, which keeps air pumping through his lungs when he sleeps, had stopped working. Li pressed the emergency alarm, but it too failed. The power had been cut. Li’s wife, Hu Ying, frantically called property man­age­­ment, but no one answered. She went outside in her wheelchair, hoping to find an electrician,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2164005/disabled-china-why-life-still-struggle-society?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2164005/disabled-china-why-life-still-struggle-society?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 14 Sep 2018 00:15:45 +0000 Last December, Patrick Freeling, a game warden with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), was in his office in Mendocino County when his phone rang. No one back then, not the anonymous caller and certainly not Freeling, could have imagined the events that phone call would set in motion: not the arrests, the court cases, the undercover agents pressed into service prowling California’s coastline. In less than six months, international poaching rings stretching to South Korea and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2163157/californias-succulent-smugglers-plant-poachers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2163157/californias-succulent-smugglers-plant-poachers?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Sep 2018 18:00:00 +0000 In The Honourable Schoolboy, by John le Carré, published in 1977 and still one of the best novels set in Hong Kong, Old Craw needs somewhere discreet to spend a night. Old Craw is an Australian journalist working for British intelligence. David Cornwell – Le Carré’s real name – based him on Richard Hughes, Australian journalist, possible spy, stalwart of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club and author of another Hong Kong classic, Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time – Hong Kong and its Many Faces,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2162050/home-hong-kong-heritage-pink-house-peak-steeped?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2162050/home-hong-kong-heritage-pink-house-peak-steeped?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 02 Sep 2018 06:00:30 +0000 Deep within the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, Zigong is home to monsters. A juvenile tyranno­saurus threatens passengers in the city’s long-distance bus station; sauropods snake along slip roads of the main highway; a stout stego­saurus and a truculent triceratops lurk at Gaoxin Industrial Park; and, upon reaching the unit that houses the workshops of Gengu Longteng Science & Technology, visitors are greeted by a dignified diplodocus at the front gate. Beside the warehouse rests a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2162125/chinas-dinosaur-factory-behind-scenes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2162125/chinas-dinosaur-factory-behind-scenes?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Sep 2018 07:30:30 +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 It was billed as the biggest poaching bust in history, a huge win for conservationists. An Ecuadorean navy patrol vessel, guided by advanced radar and a small plane, bore down on a ship the length of a football field making a beeline across the Galapagos Marine Reserve – probably the most fiercely protected waters in the world. Filling the freighter’s freezers were 150 tonnes of dead sharks, most of them endangered and illegal to sell. Only small pieces of those 6,000 carcasses were actually of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2161134/war-sharks-chinese-demand-fins-driving-rogue?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2161134/war-sharks-chinese-demand-fins-driving-rogue?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Aug 2018 20:00:15 +0000 Slumped dejectedly in her wheelchair and wearing a neck brace, former civil servant Au Wai-chun dissolves into tears and com­plains bitterly about the domestic helpers she says have turned her retirement into a nightmare. “Now I must bear the identity of a criminal until I die,” she says. “If I am unlucky enough to be convicted again, or if I die before the result comes, please promise to write an article that says a greedy maid can kill their ma’am.” The 65-year-old says she believes her plight... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2158988/domestic-helper-accuses-former-employer-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2158988/domestic-helper-accuses-former-employer-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Aug 2018 09:00:30 +0000 It’s easy to cross the border between Nepal and India. Too easy. Most of its 1,600km is marked by simple, 30cm-high concrete piles. There is no wall, no fence, no barbed wire. In fact, some farmers have fields that are part in Nepal and part in India. There is no surveillance infrastructure to make sure people don’t stray across the border and Nepali and Indian passport holders don’t need visas to visit each others’ countries. They don’t even have to carry their passports; an official... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2154963/fighting-human-trafficking-nepal-patrol-activists?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2154963/fighting-human-trafficking-nepal-patrol-activists?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Jul 2018 09:30:30 +0000 On the shabby outskirts of a seaside resort in Thailand, a Chinese couple in beachwear lean across the back of an adult tiger. The big cat yawns with weary insouciance as two handlers cajole it around its pen and prod it with bamboo sticks. In a smaller enclosure, another couple giggle as they dangle their infant son over a juvenile tiger. Nearby, a tourist in his 20s poses as if in mid roar over two dozing young tigers before – prompted by the handlers – grabbing their tails and putting them up... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2149910/tiger-selfies-chinese-indian-tourists-lead-cruel?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2149910/tiger-selfies-chinese-indian-tourists-lead-cruel?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Jun 2018 09:15:30 +0000 It’s 8am and the temperature is already above 30 degree Celsius in Qingyuan, a prefecture-level city in the north of Guangdong province and home to the Evergrande Football School. Most of the 48 pitches at the world’s largest soccer academy are already in use. Children and teenagers in red and yellow kits stretch, run and kick balls. For the next 90 minutes, before regular school classes begin, they will sweat buckets. “He shui,” Ibon Labaien reminds his charges, in broken Mandarin, every few... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2149708/has-legacy-chinas-one-child-policy-destroyed-xi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2149708/has-legacy-chinas-one-child-policy-destroyed-xi?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 08 Jun 2018 08:30:45 +0000 “ It’s strange to be something that no one else has heard of, and you don’t see anyone else from that community around you. You might as well be saying, ‘I am from Mars.’ When I was a little child, that’s what it felt like: ‘I am ‘The Other.’” When bestselling novelist Charmaine Craig tells me this, speaking from her home in Los Angeles, in the United States, my initial response is to raise an eyebrow. Craig’s outsider credentials are not immediately obvious. An actor by training, she possesses... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2149669/american-author-her-burma-rebel-leader-mother-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2149669/american-author-her-burma-rebel-leader-mother-and?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 07 Jun 2018 11:30:30 +0000 It’s a little after 6am when the sun rises over Changping, a nondescript district in the northwest of the expansive Chinese capital. Flanked by the Mangshan hills, which form a natural limit to Beijing’s urban sprawl, Changping North railway station is small and devoid of distrac­tions. With no cafeteria or convenience store in which to kill time, I settle myself in the spartan wait­ing room and stare at the clock. Most of my fellow travellers are asleep or fiddling with their smartphones. Full... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2147567/first-chinese-built-railway-enthusiast-trying?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2147567/first-chinese-built-railway-enthusiast-trying?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 May 2018 02:45:45 +0000