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Bread and soup fit for an emperor

ZHAO KUANGYIN (趙匡胤) was not having a good day. He was a high ranking soldier who felt he was destined to one day become leader of the country. But he had many battles ahead of him. On this particular day, he was a tired and hungry man, wandering through the city of Chang’an. This incident…

October 27, 20220Comments ByEmily Zhou

Opinion

Hong Kong’s OTHER housing: cheap or free apartments

Housing in Hong Kong is inexpensive or rent-free! Seriously? Well, a lot of it is - the homes for almost a third of the population. The city has a huge government housing program, and an ambitious new administration is going to make it grow faster than ever. Andrew Lam reports. HONG KONG’S NEW GOVERNMENT is…

October 25, 20220Comments ByAndrew Lam

Chinese history Culture

Amazed sailor finds his ballast was the real treasure

CHINESE EXPLORER ZHENG HE would sail from China with his boats laden with gifts. He took treasures from his country to give as presents or to use in trade with people he met around the world. He once came home with a giraffe. On the way back to China, the ships would be too light…

October 25, 20220Comments ByH.C. Lu

Chinese food Culture

Would you snack on a snake?

I HAVE TO START BY saying that not every Chinese person has eaten snake-related dishes. In fact, I had never thought that snakes could be eaten until I read about it in a novel while I was in middle school. I was so astonished that I even re-checked the Chinese character “蛇” (“snake” in Chinese)…

October 11, 20220Comments ByEmily Zhou

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

Culture

Imagine a land run by. . . poets

It sounds hard to believe, but civil service applicants in China had to write actual literature to win top jobs, becoming "jinshi" - a class of writer-administrators who advised the emperor. (Business people were ranked low on the ladder.) For centuries, it worked well - but at other times, the bureaucratic need for order and…

September 16, 20220Comments ByEmily Zhou

Opinion

Australia’s ‘yellow peril’ fear is rooted in history

An early Australian leader said: “the doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman”. Inter-group violence and “yellow peril” fears were a key factor motivating the setting up of Australia's political map. Fear of China is still so entrenched that it’s no surprise…

August 23, 20220Comments ByLaurie Pearcey

Culture

The world’s first restaurant and earliest celebrity chef

Shopkeepers in China 900 years ago accidentally created restaurant food culture, and their achievement is listed among Life magazine's 100 greatest achievements of the past millennium. Emily Zhou reports IN OR ABOUT THE YEAR 1120 AD, a shopkeeper in the old Chinese city of Kaifeng had an idea. There were lots of merchants arriving from…

August 11, 20220Comments ByEmily Zhou

Culture

Historians find toothbrush, eleven centuries old

SMILE PLEASE! Archeologists have found toothbrushes more than a thousand years old – and they are remarkably similar to modern ones. They had the same shape, although were made of bone, not plastic. And instead of the nylon brushes of today’s equivalents, the ancient ones had hog bristles. There were different varieties, just like today.…

May 4, 20220Comments ByEmily Zhou

Features News

Everything you think you know about Hong Kong is wrong, pt. 1

As Hong Kong gets ready for a new leader on May 8, with all eyes on former police officer John Lee Ka-chiu, there's much discussion about the presence/ absence of our ability to choose our head of state. Yet too much of conventional wisdom on that huge subject is not just factually incorrect, but the…

April 19, 20220Comments ByNury Vittachi

Bread and soup fit for an emperor

Hong Kong’s OTHER housing: cheap or free apartments

Amazed sailor finds his ballast was the real treasure

Would you snack on a snake?

The banana trader who saw the future of shopping

Imagine a land run by. . . poets

Australia’s ‘yellow peril’ fear is rooted in history

The world’s first restaurant and earliest celebrity chef

Historians find toothbrush, eleven centuries old

Everything you think you know about Hong Kong is wrong, pt. 1

Can Europe dare to do the smart thing, and partner with China in Africa?

Australia’s government lives in a Pentagon-penned fiction of US primacy

How the HK Bar Association lost its way – and was guided back on track