Learn some Cantonese words for the Mid Autumn Festival, thanks to Hong Kong Unveiled! Will you be enjoying a yewt beng tonight? Mid Autumn Festival, Juung Chow Jeet, 中秋節 15th day of 8th lunar month, September An important day for family reunions. People finish work early to have dinner with the whole family. Married couples must either separate and go [...]
Come and help us celebrate the launch of Fishing in Hong Kong, meet the authors and get a signed copy! This coming Saturday, June 18, 7pm at Cava Restaurant & Bar: 54 Po Tung Road, Sai Kung, Hong Kong.
Watch this short film by Andrew Guthrie which tells the story of Paul Au: how he was smuggled into Hong Kong from wartime Vietnam in the 1970s and how he set up a second-hand vinyl record shop in Sham Shui Po, a low-rent district in north Kowloon, which is still popular today. The full story -- with lots of photos [...]
Join us at Bert's Bar in the Foreign Correspondents' Club, 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong, for the launch of Kitchen Tiles by Feng Chi-shun. When: 6-9pm, Monday, December 21, 2015. Besides Kitchen Tiles, Feng's other books Diamond Hill and Hong Kong Noir will be on sale if you are looking for autographed stocking fillers. Hope to see you [...]
A book launch party for Paul's Records: How a refugee from the Vietnam War found success selling vinyl on the streets of Hong Kong! Who: Both Paul Au and author Andrew Guthrie will be present, records from Paul’s vinyl store will be played, and the book will be explained/read from. There will be guest appearances by a few dedicated customers [...]
We have three new books out this month. Read on! Share If you cannot view this email, please Click Here to view an online version. Unsubscribe/Update Profile | Share With Friends | Subscribe Blacksmith Books, Hong Kong Newsletter October 2015 Hong Kong war memoir: It Won't Be Long Now It Won’t Be Long Now: The Diary of a Hong Kong [...]
I met up with Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong-based historian (left), and Shun Chi Ming, director of the Hong Kong Observatory (centre), to talk about the wartime diary of Graham Heywood. Over tea at the Observatory, a beautiful Victorian building hidden away on a forested hill in the middle of Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Geoff and CM explained how Heywood's diary [...]
This internship began with a long email to an unknown (to me) English publisher in Hong Kong (whom I found by googling “English publisher Hong Kong”), and a desperate hope that said unknown publisher would respond and give me some work experience in the summer. But as the days wore on, and the weeks, which then turned into two months, [...]
Hong Kong is a complex city, and one that is full of contradictions. Nowhere else can a person stay for years, decades even, and still not fully understand the place. Which other city can be ranked ‘the world’s freest economy’ for 21 years in a row and yet still leave its’ residents feeling like the prisoners of greedy businessmen? Jason [...]
Scaffolders. Tram drivers. Recyclers. Sign holders. Hawkers. Shoe shiners. We see these workers every day in Hong Kong, and yet hardly ever realize it. They are mostly invisible — labourers who we are so used to seeing out on the streets that our minds often blur them out when we walk past them. Yet these workers often toil the hardest [...]
We're pleased to announce that Paper Tigress, Rachel Cartland's memoir of her years in the Hong Kong government, sold out. And it's now reprinted and is back in the shops. To mark the occasion, we print below the text of a speech Rachel gave to a Hong Kong business group late last year. A Difficult Passage I was a Hong [...]
Our author Shannon Young has been interviewed on RTHK Radio 3 twice this month. Click the links below to listen online! 1. Shannon Young is a young American writer currently living in Hong Kong who writes under two names. Her travel memoir about the year she followed a man she met at a fencing club to Hong Kong, only for [...]
Even four decades after the passing of Asian martial-arts superstar Bruce Lee, his achievements still attract adoration from millions of movie fans. The biggest fan of all may be Jon Benn, who befriended the high-kicking hero while playing “the Big Boss”, a villain in Lee’s acclaimed 1972 movie The Way of the Dragon. In Remembering Bruce Lee, a tell-tale autobiography, [...]
Fred Schneiter moved to Hong Kong in the 1960s and wasted no time in getting to know the food. Here’s a story and a recipe for Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce from his new book, The Taste of Old Hong Kong. If unaccustomed to chopsticks you’ll find the going easier—in initial encounters—simply by maintaining an affirmative attitude. Dismiss any thought [...]
Author Shannon Young visited the studios of RTHK Radio 3 to tell Noreen Mir about the making of her latest book, Year of Fire Dragons. Her new memoir is a wide-eyed newcomer’s account of Hong Kong wrapped up in an international long distance love story. Click here to listen online to the 10-minute interview. When she's not writing books, Shannon [...]
Fred Schneiter moved to Hong Kong in the 1960s and wasted no time in getting to know the food. Here's a recipe (and a reminiscence) from the old Causeway Bay typhoon shelter. It appears in his new book, The Taste of Old Hong Kong. Living in one of the world’s major tourist destinations, the culinary epicenter of the China Seas [...]
An American Woman’s Story of Coming of Age in Hong Kong n 2010, bookish 22-year-old Shannon follows her Eurasian boyfriend to Hong Kong, eager to forge a new love story in his hometown. But when work sends him to London a month later, Shannon embarks on a wide-eyed newcomer's journey through Hong Kong – alone. She teaches in a local [...]
Many expats live in Hong Kong long-term, but language barriers make it hard to get to know the everyday local population. So we're delighted to receive a wonderful review in the South China Morning Post for our new book, Street Life Hong Kong: Here, we get a first-hand look at how life is for so many in our city. We [...]