TOM PLATE WRITES — How should citizens react when Big Government does a bad thing that screams out for correction? One approach is to slip into denial and imagine nothing at all happened, because leaders are apt to err, so the best thing for your mental health is to look…
Full Article HONG KONG: WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN BIG GOVERNMENT MAKES A BIG MISTAKE?
YI NING WONG WRITES — The month of May marks Asian Pacific Heritage Month. Last week, I had the opportunity to chat with team members from a recent animation about street foods, culture, and family in Hong Kong: Front of the House. Director Sum Yi “Ashley” Ma and Sound Director…
Full Article Film: An Ode to Hong Kong Street Food and Family
TOM PLATE WRITES – In coming months look for broad gripes and bright anti-red stars over the land of the free, not to mention the home of the brave. The “Committee on the Present Danger: China” – cliché bombs bursting in the media air – begins its anti-communist show in the…
Full Article HONG KONG: SO WHEN WILL CHINA’S ‘WORLD DOMINATION TOUR’ COMMENCE?
NICOLE ALAVERDIAN WRITES– As the world scrambles to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, there is one overlooked culprit of climate change: animal agriculture. Despite a recent wave of vegetarian, vegan and plant-based food offerings in the Asian-Pacific, a study by the Food Service Consultants Society predicts that in Asia “the…
Full Article ENVIRONMENT: Is it possible for the Asian Pacific to mend its carnivorous appetite?
“To have another language is to possess a second soul.” – Charlemagne ANAS ALZAHRANI WRITES — When non-native English speakers decide to learn English in a different country, the first locations that come to mind are the U.S and England, where English is the first language. Command over the English…
Full Article You Might Want to Head to Asia to Learn English
YI NING WONG writes – Hong Kong’s infamous city Lan Kwai Fong is well known for manifesting the city’s bustling spirit into a unique nightlife culture. Popular bars and clubs are only a few feet away from each other, attracting endless crowds and earning the city a reputation as Hong…
Full Article HONG KONG: EXPLORING THE EMERGING DRAG SCENE IN HONG KONG
KATELYNN BARKLEY WRITES — To protest or not to protest? In Hong Kong, this has become a loaded question. On August 17, Hong Kong’s high court sentenced the pro-democratic, Umbrella Movement leaders, Alex Chow, Nathan Law and Joshua Wong, to several months in jail. The Chinese media has branded the…
Full Article HONG KONG: THE SHAKY ROAD TO PRESERVING DEMOCRACY
YI NING WONG WRITES – Netflix Original, Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower, tells the story of young Hong Kong activist, Joshua Wong, as he leads the infamous Umbrella Revolution against China in 2014. Directed by Joe Piscatella, the docufiction keeps its viewers interested, featuring the inception of a student organized pro-democracy…
Full Article CHINA: NETFLIX FALLS SHORT WITH ITS UMBRELLA REVOLUTION ORIGINAL FILM
TOM PLATE WRITES – The rude acidity of the Trump administration’s slap-down of the largely symbolic Paris Climate Accord has stung eyes and optimisms around the world. We move from having a U.S. president known for “leading from behind,” as the Obama hyper-caution was termed, to a successor who proposes…
Full Article LOS ANGELES: COLUMNIST PARSES GROWING CHINA AND HONG KONG TENSIONS
Excerpted courtesy of the South China Morning Post — Visiting state leader , from Beijing, warned everyone would have to pay the price if Hong Kong became chaotic, in a 20-minute speech to more than 220 representatives from various sectors at the government headquarters this morning. “We are all in the…
Full Article CHINA: HONG KONG GETS SOME BLUNT ADVICE
MIRANDA PAK WRITES – Imagine a Hong Kong taxi driver’s income shrinking significantly because he cannot speak Mandarin. This scenario is one of five short films in the Hong Kong indie movie Ten Years. The local, low budget film visualizes Hong Kong in 2025, “[depicting a radicalized] future in which…
Full Article HONG KONG: What Will Hong Kong Look Like in ‘Ten Years’
MIRANDA PAK WRITES – The U.S. this week (Feb. 2) joined calls for Chinese authorities to release five Hong Kong booksellers whose main crime appears to have been embarrassing Communist Party officials. What’s proving the bigger embarrassment is that no one doubts it is Beijing behind the kidnapping/detentions. Since October,…
Full Article HONG KONG: Missing Book Sellers — When will China Fess Up? (UPDATED)
MIRANDA PAK WRITES – Today, it’s not uncommon for people to rely on cloud or file-sharing services, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, to store documents. A ‘cloud’ is basically a service where people make an account and upload documents and, once uploaded, they can be accessed anywhere on any device with Internet connection.…
Full Article HONG KONG: “Cloud” or Not, No Media Outlet is SafeMIRANDA PAK WRITES – China’s biggest e-commerce company, Alibaba is rumored to be in talks about investing in SCMP Group Ltd, which publishes Hong Kong’s leading English newspaper the South China Morning Post. According to China Daily, Alibaba is trying to expand into the media and entertainment industries. More specifically, the e-commerce entity…
Full Article HONG KONG: Alibaba Investing in SCMP Group?
MIRANDA PAK WRITES – A year ago, as he perceived local media outlets to be bowing to editorial pressure from the mainland, British expat Tom Grundy thought Hong Kong could use an independent English-language news source. Spurred by events surrounding the Umbrella Movement, the Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) became…
Full Article HONG KONG: Shining an Independent Light on ‘Dark Places’(This article appears in the South China Morning Post print editions as Dealing with China) TOM PLATE WRITES – Let us recall that almost two decades ago, a cocky William Jefferson Clinton, then president of a country but two-centuries-plus old, bluntly informed Jiang Zemin that his country, of many millennia,…
Full Article LONDON: Putting a Bit of English Spin on China Policy