Kylie Knott

Of all the places to sit out the Covid-19 pandemic, few sound more appealing than a beachside villa on a tropical island.  For one family at least, that is the reality after they became stuck in Fiji on what was supposed to be a round-the-world trip of a lifetime. “We never imagined the coronavirus would spread so far and wide – or so quickly,” says Lau Hsu-yung from Hong Kong. “We soon learned it was impossible to outrun it.” In the first week of February, the family waved goodbye to their 2,000 sq ft home in Hong Kong, leaving their possessions in a 100 sq ft storeroom. Downsizing and simplifying their life was also part of the plan. “We were excited about new discoveries, new opportunitie

As the new coronavirus has proved capable of spreading between people and across borders, scientists have worked to crack the secrets of its ability to infect and kill. Scholars from China and other parts of the world have put the virus under the microscope – it looks like an orb studded with spikes – and sequenced its DNA, hoping to find better treatment for those who contracted it and make vaccines to prevent infection. But in their efforts to stop the epidemic’s global transmission, public health researchers have so far been unable to answer one question: Who did the virus first infect? The hunt for this person – also known as “patient zero” – could provide clues that help us contain the

One Sunday afternoon in February 2017, Chinese film director Yuchao Feng was in his flat in the US state of New Jersey when he received a phone call from his mother that would shock and inspire him. Feng knew something was wrong – not just because it was 3am in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, where his mother, Wang Jingjing, was calling from, but because they rarely spoke. “My parents were not around much when I was growing up in Ningde,” says Feng, recalling the city of three million in Fujian province, in the country’s southeast, known for its tea cultivation. “And we talked even less after I moved to the US to study film in 2011.” Feng’s mother was having a nightmare similar to thos

You know the look of a Bauhaus building — clean lines, symmetrical patterns and no pretension. Bauhaus, the German art school that introduced modern design to everyday buildings and objects, celebrates its centenary this year. Bauhaus’s approach to design has shaped metropolitan skylines around the world, including that of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, Bauhaus found expression in many early public housing projects, like the pastel-colored Choi Hung Estate in Kowloon. The estate was among some of Hong Kong’s first public housing estates built quickly and cheaply in the 1950s and 1960s to accommodate refugees who fled communist China. “They sprang up like mushrooms,” said Lee Ho-yin, associate prof

As the Titanic slowly sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of April 15, 107 years ago, lifeboat number 14 is sailing in the freezing waters to search for survivors. The crew scans the water’s dark surface with torches for signs of life, the boat passing debris and floating corpses. Fifth Officer Lowe, while rowing the boat, yells out: “Is there anyone alive out there? Can anyone hear me?” A Chinese man is spotted on a piece of wood and then, in Cantonese, yells for help before he is hauled onto the boat. This is a scene filmed during the production of the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, which depicts the real-life rescue of Fang Lang, one of eight Chinese passengers aboard the Tita

Like many Hongkongers, photographer Birdy Chu has fond memories of Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport. Anyone who landed there has a story about the hair-raising descents, which seemed to brush the buildings on the approach to the runway. “I loved that iconic landing,” says Chu, a Hongkonger, who landed there six times. And he loved the airport. “There are so many unforgettable memories surrounding Kai Tak. It has almost legend-like status, like a myth,” says Chu, a former photojournalist who now lectures in media and communications at the City University of Hong Kong. In July 1998, the airport, which had started in 1925 as a humble airfield, closed for good, moving operations overnight to the gli

Fan Ho was a legendary photographer, best known for capturing the beauty and spirit of old Hong Kong in his black and white photos. Born in Shanghai in 1931, Ho started taking photos at the age of 14. A sufferer of chronic headaches, Ho found it hard to spend extended periods reading or writing. And so he picked up his father’s Kodak Brownie camera and took up photography. Dubbed the “Cartier-Bresson of the East,” like his western namesake Ho preferred shooting in black and white. “Black and white offers me a sense of distance: a distance from real life,” Ho said in a video interview with Hong Kong visual culture museum M+. Photography was never his occupation. He applied his talents to the

Keith Macgregor has been photographing a changing Hong Kong since the early 1970s. Of the many things he saw through his lens, the city’s neon-lit streets stood out as his obsession. “I was mad for neon when I was living in Hong Kong,” says 72-year-old Macgregor on the phone from London, where he now lives. But Hong Kong’s neon is fast dimming, thanks in no small part to the emergence of cheaper and more efficient LEDs. This, combined with the closure of many old businesses and a government crackdown on outdoor structures, means that the city’s golden age of neon is behind us. Check out his photos in our gallery, above, for digitally-collaged scenes in the former British colony that are at o

Inspiration can be found in the strangest of places. For photographer Chan Dick, it was out the window of his 14th-floor workshop’s toilet. His series “Chai Wan Fire Station” presents a bird’s-eye view of the everyday comings and goings of fire station in eastern Hong Kong. The series has netted him multiple awards. In Hong Kong? Chai Wan Fire Station is on show at Novalis, 5 Sau Wa Fong, Wan Chai, from May 10 to May 31, 2018.

Are bodies of Chinese prisoners really on show at an exhibition in Sydney? That’s what protesters claim is the case with Real Bodies, a show in the Australian city’s Byron Kennedy Hall. The show features bodies and anatomical specimens that “have been respectfully preserved to explore the complex inner workings of the human form in a refreshing and thought-provoking style,” according to the exhibition’s website. The protesters – a group of academics and human rights campaigners – are urging the boycott and closure of the exhibition, which is billed as featuring the largest collection of bodies and human specimens ever put on show in Australia. Tom Zaller, chief executive of Imagine Exhibiti