Hong Kong had been dipping its toes into an emerging building method known as modular integrated construction (MiC) when the Covid-19 epidemic began, with several pilot projects under way. The health emergency pushed the city to dive right in.The urgent need for a temporary quarantine facility in the Sai Kung district meant that the touted time savings achie […]
Hong Kong appeared to many to be doomed. It could surely never recover from destruction, human casualties and economic loss on such a scale. Wave after wave of disaster had hit the city in late summer and autumn.First came an unnamed typhoon, gusting in on September 1, 1937, with winds so strong that the Hong Kong Observatory was incapable of registering the […]
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LG’s newest smartphone, the mid-range LG Velvet, comes loaded with stylish hardware and sleek fingerprint-reading technology, and comes as the Korean tech giant adopts a new design language and device naming scheme.Could the new flagship phone convert an Apple addict?I’ve been #TeamiPhone for 10 years, trapped in the iOS ecosystem and pretty satisfied with e […]
It started as a long-distance romance. Dutch couple Sven van der Veen and Krista van Steekelenburg first laid eyes on their beloved 2,500 sq ft, ground-floor apartment in Repulse Bay from the window of a flat they were viewing high up in a nearby tower block.“That flat was OK, but then we looked out of the window and saw this place, and said ‘that’s what we […]
Convicted of cyber libel on June 18, Filipino activist Maria Ressa faces the possibility of decades in prison. A Thousand Cuts, a new documentary from PBS Distribution, follows Ressa as the events that led to her arrest and trial unfolds. The film opens virtually in the United States on August 7, with international screenings to follow. Its director, Ramona […]
Australia has closed the national park that is home to the revered indigenous site of Uluru after some in the community blocked an access route for fear that visitors could carry in coronavirus infections.The country is battling a new wave of the deadly virus, with southeastern Victoria state reeling from hundreds of infections, while Indigenous Australians […]
Rhino horn being touted as curative is nothing new. For more than 2,000 years, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has enlisted the substance as a cure-all, recommended for everything from gout to fever and even cancer. And Africa has long been the place to procure it.But buckling under global pressure, in 1993, the Chinese government banned the domestic tr […]
Hong Kong-based journalist Liz Thomas says it didn’t take long for her colleagues to adjust to the idea of her pumping breast milk at her desk.“I work in an open-plan newsroom without a dedicated pumping room, so my desk was the best option,” says Thomas, who works for a global news organisation. “I live on Lantau and work in Wan Chai, so I couldn’t just das […]
“Since early September traffic congestion along King’s Road has been terrible,” the South China Morning Post reported on October 10, 1979. “Residents of Taikoo Shing have to leave home before 6.45am to queue for the No 21 bus in order to reach Central at around 9 […] The Transport Commissioner does not seem to realise the plight of people living in these are […]
Ho Wan-yee is an IT executive who was used to working from home long before the coronavirus. I would like to be a foodie but I don’t eat out enough to be a foodie. Lately, I have not been going out much. My comfort food is just simple chicken congee which I get from Tasty Congee & Noodle Wantun Shop (21 King Kwong Street, Happy Valley, tel: 2838 3922). I […]
I didn’t like being called “freckle face” when I was a kid. So when my mum took me to the paediatrician for a routine check-up, I asked him if he could make my freckles go away.He kindly told me he could, “but you will never be able to go out in the sun again or your freckles will come back”. So I got used to being “freckle face”.Freckles may be the least of […]
Hong Kong director Ann Hui and British actress Tilda Swinton will be given lifetime achievement awards at this year’s Venice Film Festival, organisers said on Monday.Hui, 73, is “one of the best female directors in Asia” and “one of the key figures in the Hong Kong New Wave film movement” from the late 1970s and 1980s, the festival said in a statement.A […]
In the dim light of a half-moon, we peer down onto a forest-fringed bay from an overlook at the Con Dao National Park ranger station on Bay Canh islet. Surf is pounding the shore and the setting is framed by clouds in a starry sky and glowing squid trawlers on the horizon. Bay Canh is ground zero for sea turtle nesting and overnight tours in the 16-island Co […]
Frosty beginnings: In the late 1950s and early 60s a great famine swept across China and my paternal grandfather starved to death. Fearing hunger, my grandmother fled from Shandong province to northeast China with her three children in tow, including my mother. She would go on to meet my father in a small village in Jilin province. The village was situated i […]
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