Life Style

3/5 starsBy turns absorbing and unsatisfying, Malaysian drama Pavane for an Infant throws a spotlight on a thankless vocation in dire need of compassionate support, but does so at the expense of a propulsive narrative upon which to hang its pointed observations.Malaysian-born actress Fish Liew Chi-yu returns to her homeland after developing a robust career in the Hong Kong film industry to play a worker at a baby hatch centre in Kuala Lumpur.Amid this vibrant, multicultural society, the services of this facility – where babies can be anonymously left – are in constant demand, but they also draw ire and violent criticism from some sectors who condemn their work as amoral and in direct violation of religious traditions.Pavane for an Infant is written and directed by Chong Keat Aun, who made ...

This article contains mild spoilers.Lead cast: Park Bo-young, Park Jin-young, Ryu Kyung-sooLatest Nielsen rating: 7.4 per centTwins trading places and attempting to navigate their sibling’s lives is hardly a new concept, but the K-drama Our Unwritten Seoul – currently airing – feeds into a particular fear that pervades social rank and appearance-obsessed Korean society: “Can people see me for who I am?”

Hong Kong fast-food chain Café de Coral has submitted an application for baked pork chop rice – its signature dish – to be included on the city’s intangible cultural heritage list.In May, the restaurant group, which has more than 160 outlets in the city, rolled out limited-edition discount coupons to get the dish for HK$20 (US$2.60) – less than half what it usually costs – to mark its application.Baked pork chop rice is typically made by baking a mixture of cheese, tomato sauce, pork chop and vegetables atop a bed of fried rice.It is a quintessential dish of Hong Kong’s “soy sauce Western” – a hybrid cuisine fusing Cantonese and European ingredients that emerged in the city in the mid-20th century, during British colonial rule.

Ever since Lisa of K-pop girl group Blackpink posted her Labubu on Instagram in April 2024, there has been a global frenzy over the ugly-cute soft toys created by Hong Kong-born artist Lung Ka-sing a decade ago.Now, a new kind of Labubu is hitting the market.Tattoo artist Hunter Chao is adding his personal touch to these cuddly, sharp-toothed monsters and reselling them as “Tabubu” toys.Chao, 27, who was born in the US state of California to Taiwanese parents, also posts Labubu content online, making unboxing videos in collaboration with mainland Chinese toy retailer Pop Mart.A Tabubu by Hunter Chao. Photo: Hunter ChaoChao is no stranger to collectibles. In his teenage years, he would collect plush toys from claw machines. As an adult, he started collecting blind box figurines from Pop Mar...

As university graduation season comes around again, more students in mainland China and Hong Kong are tossing away traditional mortarboards and gowns for alternatives that are more colourful and fashionable.On the social media platform RedNote – also known as Xiaohongshu – white graduation dresses are a much-discussed topic, with views of related posts reaching over 2 million. Meanwhile, more than 174,000 posts on Instagram have the tag #graduationdress.Chinese-American freestyle skiing world champion Eileen Gu inspired many when she wore a white fitted dress beneath her graduation gown in 2020.Jessica Luo, a student who had her graduation ceremony at Hong Kong Baptist University in early June, opted for a similar look.“If I pick a dress with lots of sequins or very bright colours, it woul...

Visiting China used to be a costly, time-consuming process. Obtaining a Chinese visa often requires filling out pages of paperwork, paying more than US$100, and waiting for days for the documents to be processed.But things have changed rapidly over the past few years, as Beijing has introduced a slew of new visa-free entry policies in a bid to attract more foreign visitors and boost the country’s tourism sector.Most famously, the country now allows travellers from certain countries that are transiting through China to stay in the country without a visa for up to 10 days. The scheme currently covers passport holders from 55 nations, with Indonesia becoming the latest country to be included in June.There are also several other visa-free policies in effect, each of which has different rules a...

2/5 starsLong-delayed superhero fantasy Hi-Five finally sees the light of day, almost four years after wrapping principal photography. The film was put on hold indefinitely when one of its stars, Yoo Ah-in, became embroiled in a drug scandal, for which he subsequently served a one-year prison sentence.In Hi-Five, five strangers – played by Yoo, Lee Jae-in, Ahn Jae-hong, Ra Mi-ran and Kim Hee-won – who all received new organs from the same anonymous donor, unite upon discovering they have developed superpowers in the wake of their surgery.K-pop star Park Jin-young, currently also seen in the Netflix K-drama series Our Unwritten Seoul, plays their similarly enhanced adversary.Hi-Five’s main problem is that it struggles to harness any real power from its promising premise.

Lead cast: Namkoong Min, Jeon Yeo-beenLatest Nielsen rating: 3 per centFollowing Netflix’s Melo Movie earlier this year, a filmmaker once again hesitates to follow in their father’s footsteps in the quiet and introspective drama Our Movie, starring Namkoong Min as the director and Jeon Yeo-been as an actress with a terminal illness.Last seen in the sweeping period romance My Dearest two years ago, Namkoong plays Lee Je-ha, a filmmaker struggling to create a follow-up to his hugely successful debut.His first film was an acclaimed melodrama that launched the career of its actress, Chae Seo-young (Lee Seol, Between Him and Her), was screened at major international film festivals and sold 5 million tickets at home.

Rwanda made global headlines in 1994 for a genocide that saw Hutu extremists kill around 800,000 people, mostly from the minority Tutsi community, over a 100-day period during the country’s civil war.Today, the landlocked East African nation is not only politically stable but has established itself as a leader in high-end ecotourism, with some of the continent’s most luxurious safari lodges.Manzi Kayihura, who works for ecotourism companies Wilderness Rwanda and Thousand Hills Africa, has watched this transformation up close.He has worked in Rwanda’s tourism industry for almost 30 years, including as chief executive of Rwanda’s national airline and chairman of the Rwanda Tours and Travel Association.Manzi Kayihura has over 30 years of experience in Rwanda’s tourism sector. Photo: Manzi Kay...

You may know that there is a long history of collecting Chinese art in Hong Kong, but can you name the three most important collections of Chinese paintings and calligraphy in the city?The answer can be found at the Hong Kong Museum of Art’s (HKMoA) latest exhibition: “The Pride of Hong Kong: Three Preeminent Collections of Ancient Paintings and Calligraphies”.Low Chuck-tiew’s “Xubaizhai”, Ho Iu-kwong’s “Chih Lo Lou” and Lee Jung-sen’s “Bei Shan Tang” collectively make up the city’s “three big” ancient Chinese painting and calligraphy collections, says curator Nadia Lau Sheung-ying.Showing until October 7, the exhibition features 93 sets of masterpieces from the Tang dynasty (618-907) to the Qing (1644-1912).The Realm of Ghosts (1797), by Luo Pin, on show at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, is...