https://www.scmp.com/rss/513265/feed Samuel Porteous is an award-winning Shanghai-based Canadian artist and author. His work focuses on the special place China holds in the Western imagination. This spring Chinese versions of his biography, “Ching Ling Foo: America’s First Chinese Superstar”, will be published in Hong Kong and mainland China. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Samuel Porteous Samuel Porteous Regardless of the outcome of the challenge to US President Donald Trump’s powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act now before the Supreme Court, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has made clear the administration will continue to use national security rationales to enact its disruptive trade measures. It was not always thus. Nations have always had national security interests. Major powers have always engaged in espionage targeting adversaries – even allies. But since the... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3332888/weaponising-national-security-trade-against-china-us-breeds-chaos?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3332888/weaponising-national-security-trade-against-china-us-breeds-chaos?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 18 Nov 2025 08:30:10 +0000 Samuel Porteous Samuel Porteous Forty kilometres out of Shanghai, not far from the historic village of Liuhe, where the Yangtze spills out into the sea, stands a three-storey bronze statue of a woman who conducted the most important physics experiment of the 20th century. Born in Liuhe in 1912, Wu Chien-shiung’s career would span seven decades, during which time she would confront Chiang Kai-shek as a student activist, cross the Pacific to become the belle of Berkeley, and play a top-secret role in the United States’... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/passions/article/3310415/wu-chien-shiung-chinese-scientist-who-helped-make-americas-atomic-bomb?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/passions/article/3310415/wu-chien-shiung-chinese-scientist-who-helped-make-americas-atomic-bomb?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 16 May 2025 15:30:07 +0000 Delicious fusions of Belgian and Cantonese cuisine, genre-blending musical events and the occasional Smurf are all on the menu for this year’s Belgian Days. The eclectic celebration runs from November 9 to 17, with events in both Hong Kong and Macau. Hong Kong’s Belgian consul general, David Lomastro, says the festival is aimed at providing “Belgian artists and local creatives in Hong Kong an exceptional platform to showcase their artistic and culinary heritages in a manner that reflects the... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3285091/belgian-days-brings-intercultural-cuisine-and-art-hong-kong-and-macau?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3285091/belgian-days-brings-intercultural-cuisine-and-art-hong-kong-and-macau?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 04 Nov 2024 09:45:09 +0000 When Wu Tingfang, the first English-speaking Chinese minister to the United States (serving 1897-1902), arrived in Washington, the stakes could not have been higher. China’s existence as a state was in play, and Wu’s diplomacy and careful cultivation of a bilateral relationship with the US would play a key role in ensuring his country’s survival. A key element of Wu’s background that enabled him to play such a pivotal role in US-China relations was the unconventional diplomat’s combination of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3268112/how-former-hong-kong-court-translator-became-chinas-man-washington-crucial-time?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3268112/how-former-hong-kong-court-translator-became-chinas-man-washington-crucial-time?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 28 Jun 2024 23:15:08 +0000 Samuel Porteous Samuel Porteous Child star of the American stage. Teenage ragtime singing sensation. Young adult opera diva-in-waiting. Middle-aged backup act to a bump-and-grind burlesque legend. From the late 1890s through to the 1930s, more than a decade before legendary Asian-American film icon Anna May Wong arrived on the scene, Gee Tai, stage name Chee Toy, “daughter” of the celebrated Chinese conjuror Ching Ling Foo, challenged stereotypes, and helped establish others, all while carving out a career unique in... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3238594/chinese-child-star-who-wowed-us-late-19th-century-returning-even-more-impressive-young-woman?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3238594/chinese-child-star-who-wowed-us-late-19th-century-returning-even-more-impressive-young-woman?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Oct 2023 23:45:20 +0000 Samuel Porteous Samuel Porteous Born in 1907 and raised in a Jesuit orphanage in Old Shanghai, artist Zhang Chongren would become one of the greatest sculptors of his era, being called the “the Rodin of the East”. In the mid-1980s, French cultural authorities even made a cast of his hands, an honour previously bestowed only on Auguste Rodin – considered the founder of modern sculpture – himself, and painter Pablo Picasso. But what really made Zhang the most famous Chinese person in Europe for much of the 20th century was his... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3223479/tintins-real-life-chinese-friend-how-herges-art-and-life-was-influenced-artist-zhang-chongren?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3223479/tintins-real-life-chinese-friend-how-herges-art-and-life-was-influenced-artist-zhang-chongren?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 10 Jun 2023 03:15:10 +0000 “We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor!” is not a recent quote from an American politician seeking bipartisan applause, but a line from the most popular poem in the English-speaking world in 1870. The Heathen Chinee was embraced by millions, made its author one of the most famous men of his era and had an unprecedented effect on how the Chinese were perceived in the United States. The work, by Bret Harte – actual title Plain Language from Truthful James – was of the spoken-poem genre designed to... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3209022/how-one-poem-dealt-chinese-america-unprecedented-body-blow-becoming-hallmark-china-exclusion?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3209022/how-one-poem-dealt-chinese-america-unprecedented-body-blow-becoming-hallmark-china-exclusion?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Feb 2023 23:45:07 +0000 Samuel Porteous Samuel Porteous Golden Dragon, Golden Rat, Golden Bat. All cigarette brands popular in 1930s mainland China. All targeted different markets. One facilitated war crimes. With the slogan “High class people smoke high class cigarettes”, Golden Dragon’s billboard and print advertisements portrayed the sophisticated old-money market and those who aspired to be accepted into its ranks. This Chinese brand’s ad art was seen throughout Shanghai’s cosmopolitan period between the world wars. A partially obscured Golden... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3202348/japanese-cigarette-brand-was-weaponised-against-chinese-smokers-wartime?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3202348/japanese-cigarette-brand-was-weaponised-against-chinese-smokers-wartime?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 Dec 2022 23:45:12 +0000 Hailed by Harry Houdini as a “super magician” in his 1920 book, Miracle Mongers and Their Methods, as well as a personal friend, travelling conjuror Ching Ling Foo arguably performed his greatest trick offstage. Just over 120 years ago in peak “yellow peril” America, Foo subverted the stereotypes that gave birth to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and became one of the most popular and highest paid performers in the United States – twice. Once was during his first US tour, from 1898 to 1900,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3187792/houdini-called-him-super-magician-and-englishman?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3187792/houdini-called-him-super-magician-and-englishman?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Aug 2022 22:15:11 +0000