Following the runaway success of the South Korean series Squid Game, the Netflix show has inspired countless spin-off experiences and retail shops around the world. In the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, the Korean Cultural Centre joined the Squid Game wave by organising a contest themed around the show that’s centred on contestants taking part in a life-and-death competition through several rounds of traditional Korean games. In a recent tweet, Netflix said that the drama series to date has garnered over 111 million views worldwide.
 

Hundreds of people danced and paraded with snakes wrapped around their necks in the eastern Indian state of Bihar on July 28, 2021. The thrilling display of fearlessness was part of celebrations for the Hindu festival of snakes, known as Nag Panchami. 
 

Mascots representing the Tokyo Olympics are only the latest in a cast of cute characters that have long made their mark in Japan. The cartoonish creatures have found a marketing role, in part because they connect with many fans in a nation where there are underlying cultural factors such as animist religious beliefs. Mascots have become so popular that schools have formed to train performers for jobs as costumed mascots. 
 

In this digital age, nearly everyone has a smartphone or two that has a great camera capable of instantly snapping a collection of photos anywhere, any time. But not long ago, images capturing the highlights of a person’s daily life were not so easy to come by. Few people understand that as well as 48-year-old Ke Mingfeng, a photo restoration artist in Hong Kong. Tucked away in a tiny shop on the eighth floor of the Dragon Centre shopping complex in the city’s Sham Shui Po district, he works away restoring faded memories. He estimates that over the past decade, he has digitally given new life to nearly 10,000 old photos. 

The lowrider bike is a highly customised bicycle inspired by classic lowrider car culture which first began in the US state of California in the 1940s. Lowrider bikes, which often feature long bodies with high handlebars and curved banana seats, appeared in Los Angeles and other cities in the 1960s, alongside the cars seen as a reflection of Chicano or Mexican-American culture.  In 2017, a group of lowrider bike lovers in Hong Kong founded a fan club called lowbikerhk. They now have more than 20 members who have their own bikes and often ride together around the city to promote lowrider culture and lifestyle.

Murals featuring the most-trafficked animals in Hong Kong are being splashed across the city. The augmented reality (AR) art is part of a campaign to raise awareness for a proposed law that seeks to prosecute suspected illegal wildlife traffickers under the city’s Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance. Advocates say passage of the law would deter criminal syndicates from using Hong Kong as a hub for the illegal wildlife trade. 

Nowruz is the Persian and Iranian New Year. Also known as Navroz, the holiday is a traditional day of celebration in Indian-administered Kashmir to mark the beginning of spring. Among the practices followed on the auspicious day is undergoing leech therapy. Locals in the city of Srinagar waited their turn on March 21, 2021, for the treatment many  believe can improve their health in the year ahead. 
 

A group of Buddhist devotees in Japan subjected themselves to a freezing tradition known as waterfall meditation or Takigyo on February 28, 2021. The annual ritual that has been carried out for centuries at a temple in Nakano city is seen as a way to purify the body and mind. This year it has even served as a way for participants to relieve the stress of the Covid-19 pandemic.  
 

The Louvre Museum has been closed for months during two coronavirus lockdowns in France. As the pandemic keeps visitors away, curators have had a golden opportunity to restore artworks, spruce up the galleries and renovate the building. 
 

Yuncheng city’s Yangzhao village, in northern China’s Shanxi province, has a long history of making traditional red lanterns dating back hundreds of years. Workers at a lantern factory have been ramping up efforts to keep up with orders during peak sales season ahead of Lunar New Year, which falls on February 12 this year. The final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations ends with the Lantern Festival on February 26.
 

Traditional dragon and lion dances are most commonly performed by men in many societies, but a group of young female dancers in Vietnam is challenging the gender norms. The Tu Anh Duong troupe in the Mekong Delta city of Cần Thơ has been training hard to prepare for the 2021 Lunar New Year, and the annual celebrations where dancers are in great demand. Dragon and lion dances differ in terms of the number of performers required, with lion dances involving only two performers and dragon dances usually needing more troupe members. In addition, audiences can clearly see dragon dancers in a performance while lion dancers tend to be more concealed by their costumes.
 

A Nepalese entrepreneur is giving elderly artisans a platform to share their crafts and through that, a renewed sense of purpose. Lorina Sthapit, inspired by her grandmother’s hand knitted socks, founded an online platform called Aji’s to showcase, sell and inform customers about traditional Nepalese crafts.

A two-year-old girl was lifted about 9 metres (30ft) into the air while tied to a pole during a shocking performance at Thailand’s Phuket Vegetarian Festival on October 23, 2020. During the show, the toddler was dangled upside down from on a line attached to the pole before being returned to the ground. The shocking performance was part of a Taoist religious ritual, which is held each year during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar. 

An English construction worker has found a valuable Chinese artefact initially thought to be a “teapot” while clearing out family belongings from a garage during lockdowns to fight the spread of Covid-19. The 51-year-old from Derbyshire in the UK said he was about to send the item to a charity shop before discovering it was an 18th century imperial wine ewer. It is now expected to fetch as much as a half million pounds when it goes on sale at auction on September 24, 2020.

Female conductors from Indonesia and China have won prizes in the Paris Mozart Orchestra’s first International Competition for Women Conductors, La Maestra. Held in the French capital Paris from September 15 to 18, 2020, the contest was organised to support and increase the visibility of women conductors in a sector long dominated by men.
 

The coronavirus pandemic has closed theatres across Japan, including venues for a type of performance which had already struggled with dwindling audiences and performers before Covid-19 started spreading. People involved in traditional Japanese Noh dance and drama say the coronavirus could be the final straw for a performance art considered to be one of the oldest extant theatre forms in the world. 
 

Tai Kwun on Hong Kong's Hollywood Road is a popular arts and shopping hub that attracts tourists and locals alike. But the complex was once a place no one wanted to visit. It was the first prison in colonial Hong Kong, a complex that started with a few cells before it was expanded into a law and justice centre for the city over the years from 1841 until 2006. Tai Kwun was more recently redeveloped into the cultural hub that still preserves details of its rich history and culture dating back nearly 180 years.

A Phnom Penh theatre that has hosted shadow puppet performances for 26 years is being forced to close because of problems related to the coronavirus pandemic. The Cambodian capital’s Sovanna Phum Theatre will be taken over by the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, in hopes the troupe can eventually continue performing under the same name. The traditional Cambodian performance art dates back to the 7th century, and has been on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list since 2005.

Hong Kong’s annual bun festival opened with toned down celebrations on April 30, 2020, as social-distancing measures to control the spread of the coronavirus remained in place across the city. But with hundreds of people flocking to the island of Cheung Chau, marquee events including a traditional religious parade and bun-scramble competition were cancelled. As of April 30, Hong Kong had recorded zero infections for five consecutive days.

Kathy Mak, an actress and dancer from Hong Kong, has used her experiences during the coronavirus outbreak to come up with a parody of the Natalie Imbruglia song Torn. Mak’s version with a twist about hygiene fears has amused crowds in entertainment venues across the city and an online hit with viewers around the world. “I thought that if I’m feeling this way, many other people would be too,” she said, explaining that she hopes the song will offer some relief amid a stressful situation. “In a way, it’s been kind of a coping mechanism.”

Hong Kong singer Kathy Mak’s coronavirus-themed parody of Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn has become an online sensation, hitting a note with people all over the world affected by the outbreak. Kathy spoke with the South China Morning Post about what inspired her to rewrite the song’s lyrics to create a viral hit she hopes will help raise spirits during tough times.

You Wenfeng is one of only a few people who know how to create clothing from fish skin, a skill of her ethnic Hezhen minority people – who were once so skilled plying the waters of the nearby Heilong River that they are said to be “descended from mermaids”. The 68-year-old woman from Tongjiang, a city in China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province near the border with Russia, fears the loss of the ancient tradition from her people. But that might change she started teaching others her craft, and because the exotic, aquatic leather  caught the eyes of international fashion designers working for the likes of Dior and Prada.

The Japanese comedy film Little Miss Period and its male director Shunsuke Shinada hope to break taboos related to talking about menstruation in the country and beyond. The film was released across Japan in November 2019 and was set to hit cinemas in Hong Kong and on the Chinese mainland in 2020.

Take a tour of Hong Kong’s most beautiful and dazzling Christmas displays for the 2019 holiday season.

Disney's award-winning musical The Lion King is coming to Hong Kong more than two decades after it premiered on Broadway. It is one of the most successful stage productions of all time, having been performed to more than 95 million people in 20 countries worldwide.

The South Korean company that composed the popular children’s song Baby Shark believes a mix of folk music and K-pop was the “secret formula” that hooked fans of their global hit.