Whilst walking down Hollywood Road yesterday I noticed that the old decommissioned Central Police Station compound was playing host to a free art exhibition providing a unique opportunity to take a look inside one of Hong Kong’s oldest colonial relics.
Every year in late April or early May, Hong Kong celebrates the birthday of Tin Hau (媽祖), also known as the Queen of Heaven and Goddess of the Sea. Legend has it that over 100 years ago Tin Hau stood on the shore guiding fishing boats home, unperturbed by typhoons and storms.
Last weekend I finally moved out of the airport hotel and into a serviced apartment on Hong Kong Island where I’ll be for the next month until I find something more permanent. Having surveyed the options available there were clearly some tradeoffs to be made on the location vs price front but in the end I found somewhere pretty good.
Away from the glitz of Hong Kong’s many skyscrapers the city is much like any other with a mix of people from all walks of life. Having been segregated from mainland China for much of the last century it’s developed it own unique culture and ways of dealing with the inherent lack of space.
On a warm Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago I paid a visit to the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery (萬佛寺) in Shatin, Hong Kong. As you might have imagined there are a lot of Buddhas but the name is somewhat misleading since it’s actually managed by laypeople and there are no resident monks.
Tate Modern has posted this message of support for the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who was detained on Sunday at Beijing Airport, on its façade. The British arts organisation is also encouraging people to sign this petition calling for the artist’s release [via CR] who is accused of “economic crimes”.
Concluding my four-part photographic walk around the historic center of Macau (see Parts 1, 2, & 3) today we take a jaunt around some of the old shops which line the labyrinth of streets surrounding Rua dos Mercadores in the south to Rua Nossa Senhora do Amparo in the north.
Recently both Virgin Atlantic and Cathay Pacific airways have been running some cool ads on TV trying to differentiate their brands and introduce new products. Interestingly, although not referred to directly, both feature a blatant James Bond 007 theme with suave business men being served by attractive air stewardesses…
Below is a wonderful film providing a tour of colonial Hong Kong in 1938 when the city was still under British colonial rule. It was shot by the filmmaker André de la Varre, and ran in movie theaters after the newsreels and before the main features. He used a small Leica camera, and was completely self-taught, crafting his technique through trial and error as he traveled the world.
I’ve noticed an interesting trend in recent years; when old media (tv, publishers) try to translate their wares into new media formats (smartphones, tablets) they often fail miserably because they translate the formats too literally. That is they try to make a digital newspaper look and behave like a paper newspaper, and so on, without considering the fundamental differences between the way you interact with both mediums.