Blog Band – Page 23 – Fridayeveryday

Soong sister artifacts to be shown in Hong Kong

AN EXHIBITION OF ARTIFACTS from the life of Madam Soong Ching-ling (宋慶齡), the wife of Dr Sun Yat-sen (孫中山), open in Hong Kong next week, with items put on display in the city for the first time. A qipao (Chinese dress) she wore, historical photos with leaders, news clippings and other items will be on…

September 7, 20230Comments ByH.C. Lu

Opinion

Life on a geopolitical fault line

Hong Kong can do nothing right, it seems. But it’s not the community’s fault: it lives on a fault line, trying to balance between two much larger, more powerful entities. Richard Cullen recalls a different occasion when two big powers, the US and the UK, had a difference of opinion. Often, much smaller communities end…

August 31, 20230Comments ByRichard Cullen

Chinese history Culture

The Chinese king who wrote 43,000 poems

ONE OF THE MOST charming things about historical Chinese officials is their reverence for poetry, and the incorporation of that fact into hiring practices. A love of literature was not seen as a dilletante interest, but a necessary qualification for high rank in the Chinese government. And perhaps the most extreme example is the famous…

August 31, 20230Comments ByH.C. Lu

Chinese history Culture

Misty Taoist mountains inspired so many books and movies

YOU MAY NEVER have been anywhere near the Wudang Mountains (武當山) in the northwestern part of Hubei, China, but it will probably still be very familiar to you. And that’s true, whether you are from the east or the west. That’s because it is the archetypal location of so many books and movies and television…

August 24, 20230Comments ByH.C. Lu

Culture

Two years to turn an epic novel into a blockbuster movie

MOVE OVER, The Lord of the Rings. There’s a new three-part big-budget fantasy movie in town, and it is making a big splash. Part one of the Fengshen Trilogy has a tight grip on the top of the box office chart in China, and is far ahead of Hollywood’s Barbie in popularity and earnings in…

August 24, 20230Comments ByEmily Zhou

Culture Opinion

This garden opened my mind to the music of elegance

CANTONESE OPERA (粵劇), one of the most representative cultural symbols of the Lingnan region (嶺南地區), the area south of the Nanling mountains (南嶺山脈), is the foundation and origin of modern Cantonese music. The first time I heard about Cantonese music was when I was learning the Guzheng (古箏). My teacher said that it would be…

August 24, 20230Comments ByEmily Zhou

Chinese history Features

Tensions raise grim reminders of Chinese Exclusion Act

As U.S. politicians call for laws against Chinese people buying property in the country, there are fears that the dark mentality behind the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act is still present, and may even be growing. Portia Chung reports. ISSUES INVOLVING PEOPLE with Asian roots are burning hot in the headlines in the United States right…

August 18, 20230Comments ByPortia Chung

Hong Kong News News

Muralists work to beautify the city, but also calm its soul

A TRIO OF HONG KONG friends thought about the best way to heal Hong Kong as a community after the traumas of recent times and came up with a simple but transformative idea. What if people just set aside politics and other concerns for a while and did something creative, which would be good for…

August 15, 20230Comments ByNury Vittachi

Chinese history Culture

Laozu’s Tao Te Ching: ancient philosophy for modern times

THREE DECADES AGO, Chinese archeologists found an ancient book written on 800 strips of bamboo. It was more than 23 centuries old. The text was identified as a partial copy of the Tao Te Ching (道德經), the book on which Taoism (or Daoism) is based—and which introduced the world to the classic Chinese sage Laozu…

August 15, 20230Comments ByH.C. Lu

Chinese history Culture

Silent but radiant history-tellers in ancient Chinese tombs

GOLD ISN’T JUST BEAUTIFUL AND RARE. It is also durable. No historian can document every detail of history, but burial objects in gold often tell a story better than other records. Thanks to the generous donation from the owners of Mengdiexuan (夢蝶軒), Betty Lo(盧茵茵) and Kenneth Chu (朱偉基), the public has the opportunity to remember…

August 10, 20230Comments ByEmily Zhou

Soong sister artifacts to be shown in Hong Kong

Life on a geopolitical fault line

The Chinese king who wrote 43,000 poems

Misty Taoist mountains inspired so many books and movies

Two years to turn an epic novel into a blockbuster movie

This garden opened my mind to the music of elegance

Tensions raise grim reminders of Chinese Exclusion Act

Muralists work to beautify the city, but also calm its soul

Laozu’s Tao Te Ching: ancient philosophy for modern times

Silent but radiant history-tellers in ancient Chinese tombs

Hong Kong quietly becomes major tennis hub for the world

3-parent baby case led to one of the oddest reviews in HK legal history

This child has three parents: so who is his mother?