A letter from the heart, written by a father to his profoundly handicapped daughter You think you’ve got life sorted and then a child like Stevie comes along. But don’t think of Stevie as a tragedy. Don’t think of Stevie as a problem. Stevie was just a little girl. A gift to the world. A lot of bad things happened [...]
That was Caroline Chan's question to author Liza Chu and I on her Connect2 programme on Radio 3. And what personality issues are involved in the development of a book? Find out by listening in at the RTHK website.
From Liza Chu's new Dim Sum: A Survival Guide! Not all the dishes in the book can be called true dim sum, but you'll find them on the menu in dim sum restaurants nevertheless, and this little book shows you what's in them and how to order them. Click the pictures to enlarge.
If you haven't done so already, take a look at RTHK Radio 3's great book club website Bookmarks -- it features audio interviews with all the authors who have recently visited the Naked Lunch studio, including Graham Earnshaw (right); plus readings, recommendations of Chinese literature and book news.
Mike Rowse's No Minister & No, Minister: The True Story of HarbourFest, which came out last November, has been adapted into Chinese and will be published next week under the title 問責 不 問責 - 巨星滙的真相. More details by the weekend.
Why limit yourself to the English menu when ordering dim sum? Cantonese teacher Liza Chu has a part-time career as a Hong Kong dim sum guide, and she has distilled her knowledge of Chinese cuisine and dining etiquette into a practical guidebook to eating out. Each photographed dish is identified with Chinese characters and pronunciation, and icons alert those with [...]
As someone who makes a living partly from writing guidebooks, I was a natural choice to show a friend of a friend around on their brief stopover in Hong Kong recently. She was only in town for a few hours, so I met her at her hotel on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront and planned to take her on a [...]
There’s an interesting article in today’s Sunday Morning Post about Wang Jingwei, the wartime Chinese leader who collaborated with the Japanese to set up a puppet government in Nanjing, and who has been reviled by Chinese ever since as a traitor. Indeed, his very name carries the same derogatory associations as ‘Quisling’ in the West. It seems that Wang’s calligraphy [...]
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As part of the "Ten Slow Days" exhibition at Hong Kong's Fringe Club, a group of writers, publishers, designers and editors will be discussing what books mean to them, and how they go about creating them. Saturday 13th March, 2:30pm, Fringe Studio. Free admission. Enquiries: 3106 4010.
In related developments, Hong Kong residents are taking to the hills in record numbers -- at least, if sales of this guidebook are anything to go by. Other Asian cities don't have such spectacular mountains and beaches so close at hand, so we're lucky to have such a wonderful natural resource. Check out some of the photos in this book [...]
High ridges, sparkling waterfalls, lush feng shui woods and ancient fishing communities nestled in rocky harbours. Your mind refreshed, your limbs exercised, and your senses intoxicated, you wonder at the fact that only a few miles separate all this from one of the world’s most crowded cities. The Serious Hiker's Guide to Hong Kong -- the bestselling guidebook to the [...]
Feng Chi-shun's Kowloon memoir Diamond Hill has been in the shops for a few weeks and has gained good reviews in the South China Morning Post, Time Out Hong Kong, Cairns Media Magazine and now The Correspondent, whose reviewer writes "The book finishes only to leave the reader wanting more -- it's a good read." Click on the following link [...]
You may enjoy a few helpings of siu mai, char siu bau and har gau at your local dim sum restaurant. But did you know some places have up to 60 dim sum dishes on the menu? If you don't read or speak Chinese, you're sometimes stuck with ordering from the tourist menu, and this is far more [...]
If you were unable to attend the FCC launch of Mike Rowse's tell-all book No Minister, have no fear -- the former civil servant will be signing copies at two Hong Kong bookstores in early December. Mike will first be at Dymocks in Prince's Building, Central, at 1:00 pm on Thursday 3rd; and he follows this up with an appearance [...]
Judge for yourself via my six-feet-of-seaview-cam. Beautiful, yes. Good for our health, probably not.
A new book out next week lifts the lid on a still-simmering political hot potato: In the depths of the 2003 SARS crisis, Mike Rowse (盧維思), a career Hong Kong civil servant, was handed the poisoned chalice of HarbourFest – intended to be (and which in many ways was) a psychological and commercial shot in the arm. Politics, as it [...]
Katie Lau of the SCMP interviewed Feng Chi-shun last week about his new book, Diamond Hill: Memories of growing up in a Hong Kong squatter village. Click on the image below to open the story in full size.