Hedley Thomas, investigative journalist and author, talks about corrupt cops, marrying in Hong Kong and making a difference through podcasts My mum could tell a great story by adding things that may or may not have happened. Dad was a stickler for details and precision, as you’d probably expect from a military pilot. That combination…
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Max Johnson, 21 years younger than his half-brother, the former British prime minister, speaks Russian, lived in Beijing and Hong Kong, and married a Brazilian I was born in 1985 in Brussels, where my father was working for the European Commission. My sister, Julia, is three years older than me and I have four half-siblings…
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It’s never too late to start exercising, says Andrei Iwanowitsch, who was in his 80s before becoming physically active – he feels better now than 15 years ago Andrei Iwanowitsch is a 98-year-old with a spring in his step and a twinkle in his eye. On holiday from his home in Belarus, he’s spent the…
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Research has shown that looking at art that we consider beautiful triggers the same pleasurable response we get when we fall in love There may still be a gloomy post-pandemic cloud hanging over Hong Kong, but when it comes to art, the city is singing. Hong Kong has emerged as the third-largest art market in…
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A pet dying can be as traumatic as losing a family member, especially when not everyone understands your pain In July 2023, Candice Powell, the chief executive of Hong Kong mental health charity Mind HK, received devastating news: her beloved dog Guinness had cancer. “The anxiety and all the feelings were similar to when a…
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Yeewan Koon revived Chinese art history courses at the University of Hong Kong, advises top art institutions, and wrote a book on Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara Yeewan Koon, associate professor and chair of the art history department at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), is not only super smart but sassy as well. It’s a…
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Cammie Wolf Rice shares her struggle to make sense of losing her son to opioids in her new book, and how she helps parents take steps to prevent similar deaths Cammie Wolf Rice is a woman with a fire in her belly. Every opportunity she has to speak her truth, she does not hesitate to…
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From feeling anxious and frustrated to irritable and even aggressive, extreme heat can affect our mental health in many ways July was Hong Kong’s hottest month on record, with 21 “very hot days” when the daily maximum temperature reached 33 degrees Celsius (91 degrees Fahrenheit) or above. While the physical discomfort of such heat is…
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Raymond Yang co-founded NGO Just Feel to train schools and families in compassionate communication. He recounts how his violent upbringing inspired him My father moved to Hong Kong from Fujian [in southeast China] in 1976 at the end of the Cultural Revolution, when he was 18. He worked super hard, as a street cleaner, a…
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Elderly-care homes in Hong Kong lost 20 to 50 per cent of their residents to Covid-19 during the fifth wave of the pandemic in 2022 The trauma of the pandemic is still being felt among the owners and staff of Hong Kong’s private elderly-care homes, which bore the brunt of the crisis and saw thousands…
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Jami Gong, founder of the first full-time comedy club in Asia, TakeOut Comedy, talks about growing up in New York and the thrill of watching an audience laugh My mum was born and raised in Hong Kong and lived through World War II (1939-1945) there, and my dad is from Toisan (in Guangdong province). They…
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The number of Yanbian license plates in the carpark of the Emperor Resort & Casino in North Korea’s remote Rason district leave little doubt as to the hotel’s main clientele.
Everyone who’s worked in a large organisation will have their own story of a senior individual whose academic prowess was outdone only by their inability to communicate with their peers. We might write off such an employee as simply not being a ‘people person’. But, according to its adherents, what they’re really suffering from is…
Planning a trip to North Korea’s seldom visited north-east? Kate Whitehead provides a guide to the best hotels
At incubator company Nest, budding entrepreneurs get 15 minutes to wow investors into funding their dreams
After a lifetime of being asked, ‘Where are you from?’, Alison Choy Flannigan decided to find out; after many false leads, she traced her roots to a New Territories clan, and learned she belongs to its 26th generation
The American director talks to Kate Whitehead about the Sundance Institute, how he ended up making films, and why his son’s dyslexia was the trigger for ‘probably the most important film I’ve ever made’