As I See It

Last Tuesday I had dinner with a few friends at a restaurant in Kennedy Town. At precisely 9:30pm, the entire restaurant, patrons and staff alike, came to an abrupt standstill. Children were hushed, the clinking of bowls and plates stopped. Everyone turned their heads to the flat screen television hung high from the ceiling. One of the waiters clicked the remote control to ATV , an unpopular local channel that almost nobody watches. It was the live broadcast of the Mark Six draw, a three times a week event that almost everybody watches. The famous Mark Six drum By the time the plastic drum stopped turning and the seven golf balls lined up neatly on the bottom of the screen, the show was over. Patrons returned to their food and staff continued making beelines to and from the kitchen. Balled up tickets festooned the floor. But all was not lost... ___________________________ Read the rest of this essay in No City for Slow Men , available at major bookstores in Hong Kong and...

I always find business trips a great way to catch up on the movies I have missed. On my way to a meeting in Jakarta a few weeks ago, I was thrilled to find on the in-flight entertainment menu The King’s Speech , the low budget British history drama that came out of nowhere but went on to clinch four top awards at the Oscars.  The film tells the story of King George VI, a lifelong stutterer who struggled to overcome his crippling speech impediment with the help of an unorthodox Australian speech therapist. David Seidler, who wrote the screenplay for the film, was himself a stutterer as a child and used to listen to George VI’s wartime speeches on the radio as a source of inspiration. With the help of seasoned actors Colin Firth and Jeffrey Rush, Seidler turned an otherwise little known king into a courageous hero who was able to galvanize his nation in turbulent times and, in doing so, gave eloquent voice to the stuttering community around the world. The movie poster ...

The sakura season in Tokyo has barely began, but the city is already draped in dazzling shades of pink and white. The blossoms arrived just in time to welcome the all-important day of April 1, when, by tradition, the first day of school coincides with the first day of work for hundreds of thousands of university graduates entering the work force. Crisp white shirts, new black suits and brown leather attaché are as ubiquitous as the spring blossoms themselves. Sakura season in Tokyo This year, the triple threat of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis have cast a thick shadow on the season of hope and renewal. Each day citizens wake up to the new reality of a nation teetering on the brink of a Chernobyl-type disaster. Nearly a month after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, TEPCO, operator of the damaged Fukushima (福島) nuclear plants, remains utterly incapable of containing the radiation leaks.  To cool down the overheating reactors, sea water, fresh water and wate...

On the early spring day of 11 March 2011, as citizens were busily preparing for the upcoming cherry blossom season, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck northeastern Japan, the biggest seismic event ever recorded in the country’s history. The powerful quake unleashed a 3o-foot high tsunami that swept across the Pacific coast of Honshu (本州) Island and leveled everything in its path.  By the time the tremors ended and the water receded, entire cities and towns as far as the eye could see were reduced to a landfill of sludge and rubble. Sendai (仙台), the closest major city to the epicenter with a population of one million, was pummeled beyond recognition. Successive explosions at nuclear facilities near the quake zone spewed radioactive materials into the air. If this was Mother Nature’s way of proving her dominion over man, she had done so many times over. Fukushima in ruins Around 2:30pm Hong Kong time, 45 minutes after the big temblor hit, I received an email from someon...

To the 1.3 billion ethnic Chinese living around the globe – roughly a fifth of the world’s population – the Lunar New Year is the mother of all celebrations. Cantonese people take things up a few notches and, over the centuries, have developed a suite of regimented festivities that render the Twelve Days of Christmas dull by comparison. My cherry tree this year In Hong Kong, the sanctuary where Cantonese customs are preserved and refined, our new year tradition is a combination of Christmas (the customs of exchanging gifts and putting up a decorated tree in the living room), Thanksgiving (the all-important family dinner no matter how busy or far away we are), Halloween (the get-out-of-jail-free-card for children to gorge on unlimited candy) and, of course, the Gregorian calendar New Year (the sense of renewal that compels us to draw up a list of resolutions)... _______________________ Read the rest of this essay in No City for Slow Men , available at major bookstores in ...

The rumbling Greyhound bus slowed as it glided down Hirafu-zaka Street drowned in the streetlights’ amber.  The wiry bus driver announced my stop in sotto voce before the hydraulic door opened in front of a six-story industrial block. With a suitcase in one hand and a ski bag in the other, I stood before a dark cast-iron entrance hidden between concrete beams and steel planks.  Austere even for a villains’ hideout in a Bond film, the monochromatic edifice was a visual anomaly in bustling Niseko (二世古), Asia’s most popular ski resort. The hotel concierge in a charcoal-gray suit extended a placid welcome and handed me a key chain, thereon etched my room number: Loft 7. Suiboku Ski Lofts Completed 15 months ago just in time for the 2010 ski season, Suiboku (水墨) set out to challenge conventional wisdom in ski resort lodging. The name, which literally means water and ink in kanji , refers to the dark and light shading of the traditional Chinese brush painting tec...

Both my freelance work and my day job give me plenty of opportunities to live out a foodie’s dream.  As a restaurant reviewer I get to try out fancy new places and sample their best dishes for free. The price to pay, however, is having to keep detailed notes of everything I put in my mouth so that I can spit out a thousand words on a two-page magazine spread the next day.  Likewise, expensing client lunches sounds like a no-lose proposition until I find myself stuck with a table of stodgy bankers yapping about China’s next big IPO and why everyone should buy gold. It all bears out the old adage that there is no such thing as a free lunch. One of my restaurant reviews Hong Kong is a foodie’s paradise and we have the numbers to prove it. There are over 20,000 eating establishments listed on Open Rice, the city’s popular online restaurant guide. Based on that figure alone and excluding thousands of hole-in-the-wall noodle houses and neighborhood kitchens yet to ...

Dear Readers, My new book HONG KONG State of Mind   is available in Hong Kong at fine bookstores across the city. Readers outside Hong Kong can order it from  www.amazon.com  or  www.blacksmithbooks.com . Support a local writer and purchase a copy today! HONG KONG State of Mind PRESS RELEASE HONG KONG State of Mind is a collection of essays by Jason Y. Ng, a popular local blogger, who zeroes in on the city’s idiosyncrasies with deadpan precision. The 37 essays are organized into three thematic sections: people we see, things we do and places we go, each providing a window on Hong Kong’s city life. Ng’s topics range from the shark fins debate to our unique and unmistakably Cantonese coffee-drinking culture. While the book is meant to pay tribute to Hong Kong’s many quirks, it also puts her flaws on center stage. In “Rhapsody on Pedder,” the author juxtaposes his fellow citizens’ sense of alienation and vulnerability against their unbridle...

The Michelin Guide published its first Hong Kong/Macau edition in 2009. Since then, the little red book has sparked spirited debate and sometimes even nationalistic rumblings among citizens. Hong Kongers balk at the idea of a bunch of foreigners judging our food, when most of the undercover inspectors sent by the guide can’t tell a fish maw from a fish belly or know the first thing about dun (燉), mun (焖), zing (蒸), pou (泡) and zoek (灼) – to name but a few ways a Chinese chef may cook his ingredients with steam. For many of us, it seems far wiser to spend the HK$200 (that’s how much the guide costs) on a couple of hairy crabs currently in season than on a restaurant directory published by a tire manufacturer. The launch Food is a tricky business. It confounds even the most sophisticated of cultures and peoples. The English and the Germans, for instance, excel in everything else except for the one thing that matters most. Young nations like America, Australia and Canada.....

Not since the SARS outbreak in 2003 has a news event gripped the city with such intensity, as live coverage of the hostage crisis in Manila unfolded on prime time television and left us in shock and disbelief. On August 23rd, what started out as a media stunt staged by a frustrated ex-cop ended in a shooting gallery leaving nine dead and three seriously injured. In the days that followed, as details of the bungled rescue were exposed, dissected and analyzed, citizens of Hong Kong united in a kind of collective anger never seen before directed at another sovereign nation. A man-made tragedy A lot of ink has been spilled by the local press over the sheer incompetence of the Manila police force. We saw it with our own eyes: rescue units performing a slapstick comedy titled Amateurs’ Night at Rizal Park. Using props from sledgehammers that bounced right off unbreakable windows to ropes that broke after a few pulls and purple glow sticks that smacked of a Halloween toy, the comed...