在最近的立法會，林鄭月娥在DQ周庭一事上面對著楊岳橋的連連質問，以她不在港為理由再三強調她沒參與踢周庭出局的決定後，插了一句：“有一些事情的決定權不在特首手中，我亦不會介入這些決定。” 林鄭這麽一說，我立馬就想到幾個月前，記者追問她逼學生看李飛直播是否等於給學生洗腦，她也同樣聲稱此事由教育局來操辦，她完全不知道有關安排，然後又多加了一句：“冇嘢可以強制，你瞇埋眼咪睇唔到囉。”

Harvey Cushing Even though it was an undertaking that would have placed him a hair’s breath away from accidentally killing his favorite daughter, Harvey Cushing decided to rise to the challenge anyway: his fifteen year-old had a lump on her neck that was dangerously close to a crucial set of veins, and Cushing - by … Continue reading Inside a Writer’s Struggle with Fear →

1950s Taiwanese ladies photographed by Long Chin-San Chen Zuoer (陳佐洱）, a mainland official who has overseen Hong Kong affairs for over two decades, said it broke his heart to see the city’s people waving colonial flags at street protests, for it showed they still clung to their identities as colonial subjects. Had Chen known about … Continue reading Deconstructing “Decolonialization”： a Hong Kong native reflects on what it means to be Chinese 20 years after the Handover →

It was the usual case of the forbidden fruit being the sweetest. The offending material in question - the folk opera “Farewell at the Inn” (小辭店) - featured as its female lead an adulteress trapped in an unhappy marriage lamenting over the impending departure of her lover and reminiscing the bliss he has given her, … Continue reading OK I’ll fess up: I self-censor →

As a teenager, I had as my idol the iconoclastic, child-of-the-sixties American academic Camille Paglia; I re-read her so many times that after two-decade hiatus I can still recall a paragraph here and there word for word. But back then, there was this comic in one of her essay collections that I never understood: a … Continue reading She Took the Bait – why I feel sorry for Carrie Lam →

In 188 BC, when the Han Emperor Han Huidi (漢惠帝) passed away prematurely at the age 23, his mother the formidable Empress Dowager Lv Hou’s (吕后）reaction confounded the court: she made a display of wailing loudly over the death of her only son, but literally did not shed a tear. A court official who knew … Continue reading Why Hong Kong people should study the Han Dynasty →

An impromptu remark John Tsang made during Tuesday’s debate with other candidates made me realize why - as a number of pro-Beijing figures have claimed - the central government finds him untrustworthy. When Carrie Lam attributed Tsang’s popularity on social media to the savvy of his assistant Julian Law Wing-chung and half-jokingly added she would … Continue reading John Tsang the Untrustworthy →

Natalia MarkarovaMaria Callas The Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova once commented to Maria Callas that very few dancers in the west “can use their hands expressively and make them speak.” With most of them, “the whole arm moves from the shoulder without the palm opening, which it should, at the end of the movement” - it … Continue reading The Written Word and my Chinese Selfhood →

When I was working for multinationals, I was used to bosses who were all too eager to settle disputes between subordinates, so that all could work together to reach the year’s goals as efficiently as possible. It was therefore quite eye-opening when I started working for a mainlander: he would deliberately pit employees against each … Continue reading A Lamp to my Feet and a Light to my Path – giving the study of Chinese history its proper due →

WilliamShawn When the The New Yorker editor William Shawn was an adolescent, he nearly became the victim of a gruesome crime: a schoolmate of his was kidnapped and bludgeoned to death; when the murderers were brought to court, it emerged they had once considered killing Shawn instead. Shawn reacted to the horror of having dodged … Continue reading How I came not to despise rude mainlanders →