https://www.scmp.com/rss/323363/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Sometimes it takes a winding path to reach an uncommon destination. Today, Asher Leiss, 33, calls Taiwan his home. It is where the North Carolinian makes a living, exploring the mountainous nation’s back country, seeking out hard-to-find waterfalls and swimming holes. He shares his findings on his website Follow Xiaofei (tw.followxiaofei.com), which helps hikers reach Taiwan's lesser-known points of spectacular beauty by providing exact coordinates. But it took Leiss many a crooked mile to get... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3007259/hiking-taiwans-waterfalls-hot-springs-lakes-and-swimming?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3007259/hiking-taiwans-waterfalls-hot-springs-lakes-and-swimming?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 23 Apr 2019 11:00:13 +0000 It is late morning and much of the Nimmanhaemin neighbourhood in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, is still waking up. Many of the clothing shops and handicraft stores are still closed. One, however, is open, and I’m standing in its air-conditioned interior. Happy Lazy Man is a hippie-chic vintage clothing shop off Nimman Road, in the heart of Chiang Mai’s “new city” area – quite the contrast to the ancient temples and boundless heritage of the nearby Old City. The funky storefront is a mishmash of... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3003174/guide-chiang-mais-trendy-new-city-full-cafes-bars-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3003174/guide-chiang-mais-trendy-new-city-full-cafes-bars-and?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 26 Mar 2019 00:15:05 +0000 A perfect day trip from Taipei City, Wuliaojian Mountain, in Taiwan’s Sanxia District, has been billed as the region’s best day hike. “One of my ancestors was beheaded around here by the indigenous people about a hundred years ago, before the Japanese occupation,” says Cheng Wen-chiu, my friend and unofficial guide. He says this as we get ready to tackle the first set of fixed ropes hikers use to pull themselves up five jutting plumes to the 645-metre (2,110-feet) summit of Wuliaojian (or “Five... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3001297/hikes-near-taipei-challenge-yourself-one-regions-most?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3001297/hikes-near-taipei-challenge-yourself-one-regions-most?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 12 Mar 2019 23:15:09 +0000 Kung fu family I was born in Hong Kong in 1933, though for the past several decades I have lived in Taiwan, where I teach Wing Chun kung fu. In early 1950, when I was not quite 18, I started studying Wing Chun in Hong Kong under my uncle on my mother’s side, Ip Man. Ip Man came from a big family; he was the second son and my mother was the first daughter, a little older. Ip Man started studying kung fu when he was seven years old. At the end of 1949, he travelled from Canton to Macau and then on... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2186246/me-and-my-uncle-ip-man-taught-bruce-lee-wing-chun?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2186246/me-and-my-uncle-ip-man-taught-bruce-lee-wing-chun?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 Feb 2019 23:00:45 +0000 In the Lechao Bar in Kangding, capital of the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province, western China, the bar's owner is educating me about the city’s diverse demographics. “There are so many ethnicities here. Han, Tibetan, Hui, Yi,” says 28-year-old Tibetan Luo Song Dengren, policeman by day, bar proprietor and performer by night. With the city’s urban centre situated at around 2,500 metres altitude in a deep gorge in the Hengduan Mountains, Kangding has the feel of a gateway to... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2184635/kangding-mountain-gateway-where-chinese-and-tibetan?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2184635/kangding-mountain-gateway-where-chinese-and-tibetan?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 Feb 2019 02:15:00 +0000 They come to the big, bustling, modern city chasing dreams. From towns and villages in Kham and Amdo—vast swathes of historical Tibet that now overlap the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan—they pour into Chengdu, often with little more than the name of a nightclub where they might seek an audition, or of a cousin, a distant relative or a friend of a friend. Many come from nomadic families for whom borders have traditionally meant little. Speaking different dialects and with... https://www.scmp.com/culture/tibetan-singers-city-dream-grasslands-home/article/2152576?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/tibetan-singers-city-dream-grasslands-home/article/2152576?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 27 Jun 2018 07:45:30 +0000 Twenty years ago punks would get beaten up on the streets of Yangon by their fellow citizens “simply for dressing up weird”, says a veteran of the scene, and police would harass them even when they had done nothing. Today the only violence punk rockers face is from rappers, says Thet Khaing, better known in the Yangon punk scene as Skum, and even mortal musical enemies come together to put on gigs. It’s a measure of how far Myanmar (Burma) has come since free elections in 2015 ended decades of... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2148271/underground-yangon-punk-metal-rap-and-hip-hop-music?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2148271/underground-yangon-punk-metal-rap-and-hip-hop-music?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 29 May 2018 23:45:15 +0000 They come to the big, bustling, modern city chasing dreams. From towns and villages in Kham and Amdo – vast swathes of historical Tibet that now overlap the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan – they pour into Chengdu, often with little more than the name of a nightclub where they might seek an audition, or of a cousin, a distant relative or a friend of a friend.  Underground Chengdu: the live-music scene and best bars for jam sessions, dance, reggae and some fun in the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2143229/why-tibetan-singers-trek-chinese-city-chengdu?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/2143229/why-tibetan-singers-trek-chinese-city-chengdu?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 27 Apr 2018 00:30:00 +0000 It is a late winter’s night in Taipei, a light drizzle affecting a slick sheen on the clean-swept streets of the city’s affluent Daan District. In a small alley off Si Wei Road, near a traditional wet market hanging on amid a growing crop of glitzy new apartment buildings, another place holds true to ways honoured for decades. The Thierry Cuvillier International Wing Chun Academy has the air of a secret society to it. To get in, visitors must buzz the basement floor of a nondescript residential... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/2138647/how-french-wing-chun-master-taiwan-trained-ip-mans-nephew?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/2138647/how-french-wing-chun-master-taiwan-trained-ip-mans-nephew?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 26 Mar 2018 00:16:30 +0000 In China, Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu is considered a second-tier city – a “small” central metropolis of around 14 million that can hardly hold a candle to Beijing and Shanghai, the country's artistic, musical, cultural, and political capitals. For the Chengdu musicians I meet on a recent visit, that’s just fine. Not everyone aspires to the flippant cool, and competitive classicism, of China’s eastern cities. The best things to do on a Chengdu visit: it’s not all pandas and spicy hotpot On a... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2137803/underground-chengdu-live-music-scene-and-best-bars-jam?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2137803/underground-chengdu-live-music-scene-and-best-bars-jam?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 19 Mar 2018 12:00:45 +0000 The combatants circle each other. Hands up around their temples, they repeatedly raise their knees, readying themselves to throw a leg strike or a knee, or to block one. Spurred on by the baying crowd and the rising tempo of a cacophony issued from flutes, bronze gongs and warlekkoke – bamboo clappers – the fighters come together in the centre of the ring, throwing fists and following with flurries of knees and elbows in the clinch. WATCH: Mixed martial arts - what happens in the cage Digging to... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2130593/burmese-bare-knuckle-kick-boxing-goes-mainstream?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2130593/burmese-bare-knuckle-kick-boxing-goes-mainstream?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 Jan 2018 02:16:41 +0000 Myanmar, Tunisia, Lebanon, Libya – these aren’t the first places most people would expect to attend a music festival aimed at helping marginalised people make their voices heard. However, wherever freedom of expression is threatened or an uprising is underway, that is where Turning Tables goes. Turning Tables is a global non-profit group that establishes music and film production studios, and stages concerts in areas where young people lack the means to express themselves creatively. Black Eyed... https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2129692/myanmar-music-festivals-help-unite-youth-heal-old-wounds-and-work?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2129692/myanmar-music-festivals-help-unite-youth-heal-old-wounds-and-work?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 21 Jan 2018 04:33:03 +0000 It’s a midweek afternoon, and a few local men are having a barbecue on the long Taimali Beach in Taiwan’s Taitung County. My friend and I have stumbled across them on our third and final stretch of our trip exploring the country’s less trodden east coast – following a stop in Doulan and Green Island. Taimali Township, a collection of rural villages, sits along an expanse of high-cliff coastline, by the winding Number 9 highway, with a huge expanse of soft black sand below. Word has it swimming... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2127330/taiwans-uncrowded-east-coast-indigenous-villages-mountains?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2127330/taiwans-uncrowded-east-coast-indigenous-villages-mountains?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 08 Jan 2018 10:15:34 +0000 Perhaps in summer, the hour-long ride from Taitung to Nanliao Harbour on Green Island is a tamer one, though Lonely Planet author Joshua Samuel Brown did not call the passenger vessel the “Green Island Vomit Comet” for nothing. If your ride happens to coincide with bad weather (as was the case on this writer’s recent visit), expect to experience a one-hour journey from hell. The swell sees one hundred-odd passengers dip forward and back, and side to side, from the apex of relentless seven-metre... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2124102/taiwans-paradise-isle-green-island-worth-braving-ferry-ride?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2124102/taiwans-paradise-isle-green-island-worth-braving-ferry-ride?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 13 Dec 2017 23:15:23 +0000 The town of Dulan, a quiet hamlet in the Dulan Forest, has long been on the lips of Taipei residents looking to escape the concrete crush. The seaside town on Taiwan’s east coast is little more than a short main drag and a paved ring running up the mountainside named Yuanshan Industry Road, after the region’s blue- collar past. It is now lined with private homes turned B&Bs, farms, and a few modest archaeological sites. Taiwan’s northern tip: weird nature, wonderful street food People describe... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2121866/taiwans-secret-surfing-paradise-and-artists-haven-getting?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2121866/taiwans-secret-surfing-paradise-and-artists-haven-getting?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 28 Nov 2017 04:49:37 +0000 It’s an early July evening in Metro Manila, the temperature finally dipping from sweltering to almost tolerable, and Susan Aguirre is visiting Pasay City Public Cemetery, 40 days after her mother, Virginia, succumbed to a heart attack, at the age of 76. Aguirre has come to offer atang, food or drink for the dead. Amid the hubbub (children playing, distant stereos blaring, dogs yapping) and smells (burn­ing rubbish, sweat-soaked bodies, human and animal waste), she places a container of sticky... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2108198/manilas-apartment-tombs-where-poor-bury-their?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2108198/manilas-apartment-tombs-where-poor-bury-their?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 Aug 2017 00:45:30 +0000 “I hope Duterte can see what happened to my cousin,” says Maryanne da Silva, 43, surrounded by children. “We thought the [anti-drug] operations were good, when they kill the addicts. But when they killed their father, they also killed the children.” Long concrete steps lead up to the smooth, clean-swept cement floor of an open single-storey public building in Tugatog, in Metro Manila’s Malabon City. A tin roof fends off the sun’s harsh rays. The children laugh and play just feet away from a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2046511/dutertes-war-drugs-leaving-children-orphaned?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2046511/dutertes-war-drugs-leaving-children-orphaned?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 16 Nov 2016 05:15:15 +0000 The Fu Tzu Chun set out from Yilan County, Taiwan, late last summer, bound for international waters. Aboard the fishing vessel with the captain and a Taiwanese subordinate were nine Indonesian crew members, only seven of whom would return to port alive. Despite having lost two crew­men in suspicious circumstances, the ship and its captain are still going to sea and the man­power agency and Taiwanese broker that placed the men on the boat are still recruiting workers from Indonesia. For migrant... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2025340/death-abuse-exploitation-taiwans-migrant-worker?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2025340/death-abuse-exploitation-taiwans-migrant-worker?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 06 Oct 2016 03:15:45 +0000