Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer

Friday Writers

74 articles published

The mystery Hong Kong tea trader who helped win a war

THE TEA TRADER had no tea leaves to buy or sell. But he didn’t mind. Young merchant Liao had far more serious matters on his mind. In January of 1938, he'd opened a tea import-export business called the Yuehua Company (粵華公司) at 18, Queen’s Road in Victoria, the main city and central business district of…

October 6, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

The strange tale of the King of Lantau Island

The last Emperor of the Southern Song was a fleeing young royal family member who lived in the Hong Kong town of Mui Wo on Lantau island. He’s been long forgotten now, but the opening of a new metro station named after a monument to him and his brother has revived interest in his astounding…

October 4, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

Features

The banana trader who saw the future of shopping

A BANANA SALESMAN stepped into a department store called David Jones & Co and saw the future. This was 1890s Sydney, and the man, Ma Ying-piu (馬應彪), had never seen anything like it. In front of him was a huge space in which people bought an unimaginably wide variety of goods, and above were multiple…

September 29, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

Features

Memories of Hu Fa-kuang shared at mega bookfair

SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE. Large areas of crumbling old buildings in Kowloon needed to be knocked down and replaced, everyone agreed. This was in the late 1980s, and the Hong Kong government, run by the British, said they would inject HK$100 million into a group called the Land Development Corporation. Problem solved? No, not…

August 1, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

Features

Lee Hysan: a tale of poetry, murder and the moving of mountains

Today, Hong Kong's small but crowded Causeway Bay district is famous as being among the most expensive retail spaces in the world to rent. But few people remember the extraordinary story of the family behind the miracle. Nury Vittachi and Emily Zhou report. IMAGINE HONG KONG'S Victoria Park underwater. In the 1920s, there was…

July 12, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

Features

Ni Kuang: A king of Hong Kong genre fiction

A troubled escapee from the People’s Liberation Army was smuggled to Hong Kong and eventually became a celebrated author WRITER NI KUANG is being mourned in Hong Kong and across much of the Chinese-speaking world. To readers of Chinese, he was the bestselling author of huge numbers of genre books with sci-fi, martial arts and…

July 7, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

Life

Humor spot: Solomon Islands

June 7, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

Life

Thought-provoker: If you went back to 1955 Asia…

June 6, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

Graphics

Humor spot: Tell me what country you’re from in two words

June 6, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

Features

Shenzhen races to set up pandemic pet care facilities

SHENZHEN HEALTH OFFICIALS are going out of their way to give a first class service to pets of people in quarantine, avoiding the negative stories that have been seen in some other parts of China on this subject. Many Chinese people, some of them being the post-'90s generation, have embraced parenthood – but of pets,…

May 17, 20220Comments ByFriday Writers

Friday Writers

The mystery Hong Kong tea trader who helped win a war

The strange tale of the King of Lantau Island

The banana trader who saw the future of shopping

Memories of Hu Fa-kuang shared at mega bookfair

Lee Hysan: a tale of poetry, murder and the moving of mountains

Ni Kuang: A king of Hong Kong genre fiction

Humor spot: Solomon Islands

Thought-provoker: If you went back to 1955 Asia…

Humor spot: Tell me what country you’re from in two words

Shenzhen races to set up pandemic pet care facilities

Harm caused by the ‘western lens’ interpretation of China

Hong Kong stays top of financial world

Tucker Carlson has become the conscience of the western media: or has he?