Long Reads

‘To travel was to read, to read was to travel’: here’s James Kidd’s list of books to take with you on holiday

An unspoken invitation to press themselves close to a stranger for a tanda, or set of dances, may stop there, but those that navigate the codes and the dance floor well enough may find further invitations

The F&B consultant on the cultural shocks of her peripatetic childhood, how Covid fired up a culinary career switch and why she is betting big on business-savvy Hong Kong

Yang runs the Floating Population Club, a community art space for some of Guangzhou’s rootless

Yarsagumba fungus has boasted incomes in the region and paid for Chinese motorbikes and other mod cons, but will authorities be wise enough to recognise looming potholes on the road to development?

A refugee from mainland China who swam to Hong Kong at the third attempt tells Jason Wordie about getting caught, his ‘shocking’ prison experience, and his barrister son who helps asylum seekers.

Jo Lusby recalls halcyon days in Beijing, early career success with Penguin that saw her handle books from Peter Rabbit to Michelle Obama’s memoir, and a move to Hong Kong. Now she’s dealing with another hit.

Wu Tingfang went from court translator to English barrister, helped negotiate an end to the Sino-Japanese war, then went to Washington, where his diplomatic skills earned him kudos. Until he overreached.

It’s tagged the ‘run philosophy’ on social media – single women in their thirties with nothing to hope for in China leaving to study in the West, with no intention of returning. Post Magazine talks to some.

Could that new weapon of war the submarine put an end to piracy along the South China coast? Britain’s Royal Navy thought so, and sent some state-of-the-art subs to Hong Kong in the 1920s, with mixed results.

Sex-positivity advocate, entrepreneur and educator Vera Liu tells Kate Whitehead how discovering self-pleasure set her on the road to enlightening Hong Kong about the magic of intimacy.

Instead of flying from Hong Kong to Chiang Mai, the Post sets out to test infrastructure in Southeast Asia built under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. All goes well until we slip up and resort to van and bus.

In his book America’s Lost Chinese: The Rise and Fall of a Migrant Family Dream, Hugo Wong recounts how his forebears and fellow Chinese migrants in Mexico became a force in small business there.

Lantau’s ‘buffalo whisperer’ Jean Leung tells Kate Whitehead about growing up in a haunted house in Cheung Chau, disrespecting a triad boss and the injured beast that changed her life.

Hedley Thomas, investigative journalist and author, tells Kate Whitehead about sleeping beside his police scanner, marrying in Hong Kong, and the power of podcasts such as his true-crime series.

Hong Kong-born actress and filmmaker Jo Chim tells Kate Whitehead about hiding her Chinese side from school friends, being mean in Mean Girls and why she got invited to Nasa.

The death of Alexandra Chan’s father, a Chinese-American engineer for Kodak, so devastated her she began writing a memoir of him, and learned that her grief ran far deeper than the death of a parent.