https://www.scmp.com/rss/519480/feed Karen Cheung is a writer based in Hong Kong. She is the author of The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir (2022) and has written for The New York Times, New York Magazine, Foreign Policy, New Statesman and The Oxonian Review. She was formerly a senior reporter at Hong Kong Free Press and associate editor at Asia Art Archive. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Karen Cheung Karen Cheung What happens when the author of a bestselling memoir about working as a courier in mainland China, and a Hong Kong videographer who moonlights as a food delivery rider, meet? They do not immediately launch into a philosophical discussion about art and labour. Instead, they compare different vehicles’ battery lifespans, the daily distances they travel, and the risk of traffic accidents on the job. “It’s very common in [mainland] China,” Hu Anyan says. “And especially so with food delivery,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts/article/3346516/one-wrote-bestselling-book-about-being-courier-other-made-film?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts/article/3346516/one-wrote-bestselling-book-about-being-courier-other-made-film?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Mar 2026 23:15:12 +0000 Karen Cheung Karen Cheung Clockenflap is around the corner, and I’m ready to scream “sweet love illumination” as Franz Ferdinand take the festival stage again. The surprise addition of My Bloody Valentine to the line-up finally gave some on-the-fence indie fans the push they needed. And while Singaporean hyperpop star Yeule dropped out for health reasons, I’m looking forward to finding out if Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst is still capable of making me cry. Below are acts to check out at the annual music gathering, plus a... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3334513/clockenflap-2025-franz-ferdinand-my-bloody-valentine-beth-gibbons-and-more?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3334513/clockenflap-2025-franz-ferdinand-my-bloody-valentine-beth-gibbons-and-more?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Nov 2025 22:00:30 +0000 Karen Cheung Karen Cheung I WAS BORN in 1974, and grew up in Kwun Tong. I attended Sam Yuk Middle School (now Hong Kong Adventist College), a coed boarding school in Clear Water Bay. My father is an alumnus. It’s a Christian school in a red brick building, and the meals were vegetarian. Sometimes, after lights out at 10pm, my classmates and I would leave our beds and snack on cans of twice-cooked pork. WHEN I WAS 12, I was listening to The Checkers, so I would wear checked shirts I had bought from the Ladies’ Market. I... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/passions/article/3331128/experimental-hong-kong-musician-nerve-his-fearless-approach-sound?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/passions/article/3331128/experimental-hong-kong-musician-nerve-his-fearless-approach-sound?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 07 Nov 2025 02:00:11 +0000 Karen Cheung Karen Cheung Every year, no matter the climate, there are books of the season. There are beach reads – pulpy, unserious and intended to be finished in a few sittings, typically summer romances, crime novels or celebrity memoirs – and then there are autumn reads, books to complement falling temperatures, back-to-school blues and Halloween. The Hong Kong summer is finally winding down, and it’s time for books that unsettle and disturb, books with a touch of melancholy, and books to wash down with a warm drink... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3325264/10-autumn-reads-hong-kong-and-overseas-asian-authors?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3325264/10-autumn-reads-hong-kong-and-overseas-asian-authors?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Sep 2025 05:00:46 +0000 Karen Cheung Karen Cheung Just months after releasing an experimental album titled Perverts, Ethel Cain is back with new music. Her cult-favourite debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, earned her a dedicated fan base and made several best-of-the-year lists in 2022. This week, she’s putting out a prequel to the album, titled Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You. The lyrics to song Preacher’s Daughter touch on intense themes including sexual violence and cannibalism, and the narrative ultimately culminates in Ethel... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/people/icons-influencers/article/3319822/meet-ethel-cain-trans-singer-and-model-dubbed-american-gothic-lana-del-rey?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/people/icons-influencers/article/3319822/meet-ethel-cain-trans-singer-and-model-dubbed-american-gothic-lana-del-rey?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 05 Aug 2025 10:00:08 +0000 Karen Cheung Karen Cheung I recently had a mild existential crisis over artificial intelligence. It wasn’t brought on by the headlines about how a freelancer was so lazy he used AI to produce a summer reading list containing books that don’t exist – a list subsequently published in two American newspapers. It wasn’t about reports on the carbon cost of being polite to your AI friend, or deepfake porn. And though the stories had unsettled me, my crisis didn’t have to do with The New York Times report about how generative... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3318091/writer-vs-deepseek-can-ai-really-replace-human-touch?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3318091/writer-vs-deepseek-can-ai-really-replace-human-touch?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 17 Jul 2025 05:00:09 +0000 Karen Cheung Karen Cheung “I already knew they were at the door when the doorbell rang. It was an afternoon in plum rain season, lush mold blooming all around. May had always been punctual; I just hadn’t thought the person she’d joined her body with would be the same.” So goes the beguiling passage that opens Hong Kong writer Hon Lai-chu’s Mending Bodies, a 2010 novel that follows an unnamed narrator trying to decide whether she wishes for her body to be sewn to another – the shadowy city in which she lives encourages... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3314779/new-generation-translators-bringing-hong-kong-literature-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3314779/new-generation-translators-bringing-hong-kong-literature-world?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Jun 2025 09:20:27 +0000 Artist Chow Chun-fai first became aware of journalist Sharon Cheung Po-wah from her 2000 interaction with the then Chinese president Jiang Zemin. During a press conference in Beijing, when Cheung quizzed Jiang over the endorsement of Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa for a second term, the Chinese leader famously berated her, calling her questioning, as a journalist, “too simple, sometimes naive”. It is a moment that has since achieved meme status with the Hong Kong public, both in... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3303145/how-culture-politics-and-people-inspire-hong-kong-artist?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3303145/how-culture-politics-and-people-inspire-hong-kong-artist?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 26 Mar 2025 10:15:08 +0000 Karen Cheung Karen Cheung Maybe this is just me, but spas are stressful. Like everything else in my adult life, I blame childhood trauma – my mother used to drag me from one beauty salon to another on her sporadic trips from Singapore, where she lived, to visit me in Hong Kong. She was concerned that I lacked a strong feminine presence, one palatable for a male gaze during my crucial teenage years (I was raised by a grandmother who had an arranged marriage and worked in a factory). What I remember most about my mother’s... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/wellness/article/3293718/do-beauty-and-spa-routines-secretly-control-our-lives-south-korean-artist-asks-question?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/wellness/article/3293718/do-beauty-and-spa-routines-secretly-control-our-lives-south-korean-artist-asks-question?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 Jan 2025 10:15:08 +0000 Karen Cheung Karen Cheung “In some ways, I think I’m an artist who has to be seen live to be understood,” Annie Clark, aka St Vincent, says during our interview. It is impossible to be bored at a St Vincent performance – Clark is dead serious about putting on a memorable show. She’s often moving through a series of choreographed sequences in whimsical, big-production looks, but she is also mesmerising when she reverts to the form of heart-on-sleeve singer-songwriter at more intimate gigs. Here are five of the artist’s... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3288113/time-st-vincent-played-nirvana-and-4-other-stand-out-performances?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3288113/time-st-vincent-played-nirvana-and-4-other-stand-out-performances?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 28 Nov 2024 23:15:07 +0000 Hong Kong has always loved Suede – perhaps a bit too much. During the band’s third visit to the city in 1999, thousands of fans had packed the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, and were in such a fevered state that 100 people fainted and four were injured whilst forcing their way into the venue. At least, that is, if you believe local tabloid The Sun’s report about the event, which has since been fondly reposted on the Suede Hong Kong Fans Community on Facebook. In one... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3288126/alt-rock-veterans-suede-still-love-hong-kong-and-hate-britpop?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3288126/alt-rock-veterans-suede-still-love-hong-kong-and-hate-britpop?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 26 Nov 2024 22:00:11 +0000 Karen Cheung Karen Cheung The avenues to becoming a St Vincent fan are endless and varied. A Talking Heads follower may have been introduced to the American musician through her 2012 collaboration with David Byrne, Love This Giant. A lover of soft indie folk perhaps caught her early-career performance with Sufjan Stevens as part of his touring band back in the 2000s – a role she later reprised at the 2018 Academy Awards on the song “Mystery of Love” from the modern queer classic Call Me by Your Name. A pop-oriented... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3287752/st-vincent-has-always-crafted-her-own-identity-she-reveals-how-her-new-album-continues-process?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/culture/article/3287752/st-vincent-has-always-crafted-her-own-identity-she-reveals-how-her-new-album-continues-process?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Nov 2024 23:15:09 +0000 When Jean-René Olivier Yat Tin Cong Shoe answers the door to his studio, he is wearing a shirt with an Albert Camus quote from The Plague (1947), and his head is heavy from the remnants of a nightmare. The airy space in the heart of Ngau Tau Kok is an exercise in maximalism – everywhere, musical instruments, stacks of books and visual references such as a picture of Maggie Cheung Man-yuk in Irma Vep (1996), and a small image of soft trees under the afternoon sun. The latter is a still from... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3274399/musician-olivier-congs-latest-album-tropical-church-ode-hong-kong-experimental-sounds?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/arts-music/article/3274399/musician-olivier-congs-latest-album-tropical-church-ode-hong-kong-experimental-sounds?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 14 Aug 2024 06:33:34 +0000