Life Style

Hong Kong’s Chinese Culture Festival returns next month after last year’s successful debut which attracted nearly 900,000 visitors during the four-month event.This year’s line-up of activities, which will also continue until September, promises much more ambitious plans in celebration of the inheritance, exchange and innovation of Chinese culture and history.It will feature more than 280 programmes, including world-class performances, film screenings, exhibitions, as well as a rich array of specially curated events and community and school activities. About 3,000 leading artists from 13 Chinese provinces, alongside overseas artists and local talent, will showcase their work at a range of different venues across the city.Ivy Ngai, chief manager of the Cultural Presentations Section at the L...

Shunde is a wonderful place to go if you like to eat.Often hailed as the birthplace of Cantonese cuisine, the Unesco-designated City of Gastronomy in southern China’s Pearl River Delta is a culinary paradise and a training ground for many top Chinese chefs.Shunde – spelled Shun Tak in Cantonese – is officially a district of Foshan city but is administered independently and widely considered by locals as a separate city.It is relatively lush and green for such a thriving area in the delta, having mostly resisted the urge to give up its agricultural plains for factories. Add to this its world-class culinary reputation and it is puzzling why it is not a bigger tourist draw, often overshadowed by larger nearby cities such as Zhongshan, Foshan and Dongguan.Hua Gai Li Street in Shunde is a popul...

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a country long open to American cultural influence, US chains fill the malls and US pickup trucks clog the streets.

Chinatowns are often portrayed as gritty underworlds riddled with prostitution, gambling and drug trafficking. Some of this is rooted in truth, but that unfair depiction is largely the result of rampant xenophobia and cultural ignorance, especially in the West.In a series of articles, the Post explores the historical and social significance of major Chinatowns around the world and the communities that shape them.In 1997, Hong Kong martial arts legend Jackie Chan starred in the action comedy Mr Nice Guy as a celebrity chef who unwittingly gets embroiled in a war between criminal gangs.Directed by Hong Kong’s Sammo Hung Kam-bo, the English-language film was set in Melbourne and is packed with scenes of Chan showing off his typically acrobatic fighting style across the Australian city.Some sc...

The Tom Cruise action movie Mission: Impossible was such a global success in the late 1990s that some Hong Kong producers decided to strip the local characteristics out of their action films to make them more palatable to mainstream audiences in the West.Cue generic plots involving the CIA, international criminals, drug smugglers and terrorists, and of course, really loud action scenes featuring massive explosions.The results did not make a dent in the box office in the West, and the idea of internationalisation soon faded away.These three films, all directed by Teddy Chen Tak-sum, are the best examples of this mini-genre.1. Downtown Torpedoes (1997)In 1997 Mission: Impossible was the most talked about film on international screens, and Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest did not bother to dis...

For over two decades, Suquamish tribal member Joshua George has dived into the emerald waters of the Salish Sea looking for an unusually phallic clam that is coveted thousands of kilometres away.George is a geoduck diver. Pronounced “gooey-duck,” the world’s largest burrowing clam has been harvested by George’s indigenous ancestors in tidelands in the United States’ Pacific northwest since before Europeans arrived.It has lately become a delicacy in China, with Washington state sending 90 per cent of its geoducks there, creating a niche yet lucrative American seafood export market.But the escalating trade war between the US and China is now crippling an entire industry that hand-harvests geoducks, leaving divers in Washington state without work, exporters in Seattle, the state’s biggest cit...

Dan Schlosberg remembers the day 11 years ago when his upstart opera company put on its first performance – in a yoga studio before an audience of 30 people.“We did Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins accompanied by an upright piano that we got for free on Craigslist and a violin,” said Schlosberg, Heartbeat Opera’s musical director and one of its founders.Its name came “from the idea that singers would be feet away from you”, Schlosberg said. “And so you would be experiencing their voices at arm’s length and that would make a resonance in your heart.”Today, when many opera companies are struggling financially, Heartbeat appears to be thriving, with an annual budget that just passed US$1 million.But true to its initial vision, the company still performs in small venues, most with a seating ...

Raffles Hotel Singapore has named Taiwanese chef André Chiang, best known for his genre-defying modern French cuisine at the now-closed Restaurant André, as its newest writer-in-residence.The hotel has long been associated with literary greats such as Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad, who were among its earliest guests.The programme, launched in 2019 and now in its fourth edition, was designed to nurture creative writing talent.Chiang follows in the footsteps of Oxford-born travel writer Pico Iyer, Singaporean poet Madeleine Lee, and New Zealand author and journalist Vicki Virtue. Notably, he will be the first chef to take part in the programme.Chiang’s new book Fragments of Time will be sold at Raffles Singapore and online. Photo: Raffles Hotel SingaporeAs part of the project, Chiang has...

Stephanie Wong believes it is destiny that explains why she ended up in Vancouver, Canada, opening a bakery cafe.The Hong Kong-born chef, who used to have a restaurant called Roots, in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island, is now selling sourdough and viennoiserie such as crispy croissants, salted caramel canelés and matcha strawberry madeleines to eat with coffees and matcha lattes.Named after Wong’s four-year-old Jack Russell terrier, Jack’s Spot in East Vancouver is a space with plenty of natural light.“He very much enjoys my bread,” she explains.Wong moved from Hong Kong to the western Canadian city in 2023, taking with her Jack and her sourdough starter. He adapted very quickly to the change in scenery. She saw how much he enjoyed his time, and was inspired to see the world through his eyes....

On April 16, the Sony World Photography Awards announced the winners of its 18th edition at a ceremony in London, in the United Kingdom.The top prize in the architecture and design category went to Hong Kong-based Canadian photographer Ulana Switucha, who won with her series “The Tokyo Toilet Project”.Commissioned by the Shibuya municipal government and the Nippon Foundation, they were created by 16 architects and designers, including Tadao Ando and Kengo Kuma.“I think the actual subject matter [is] the beauty and the art. It was a really good story to pull together in a series, and I was very privileged and honoured to have won the award with that set,” she says.“I went to all of these toilets. Each has a story behind it. There’s one that’s totally transparent and, when you lock the door,...