機遇到來 / 我失去 / 垂手 | An occasion arises / and I lose / an entire world

In honoring ordinary people and gestures, Chang reminds us of things taken for granted, of cramped train rides and eavesdropped conversations, the sounds and smells of cityscapes and markets.

In the summer of 1990, 62,000 Hong Kong people chose to flee the city because of the violent crackdown on student protesters at Tiananmen Square the previous year. Now once again, people in Hong Kong were faced with the dilemma: to emigrate or to stay.

No one fasts just for the hell of it

“What’s the most serious problem? Home lor! Drugs lor! Everyday besides sleeping and playing games you do what? Yes, kill people lor! So the government commercialized the plan lor, scientists spent ten years to research how to store up sleep, so these Juveniles can be useful lor.”

“The ecology and economy of the region is under threat. This Transpacific Literary Project folio, Monsoon Notebook is for these essential, vanishing, and unruly waters.”

我忽然屏息 / 是風吹開妳襯衫 / 一顆煙彈正微微露餡 || as if with prophecy / wind peels back your shirt / a teargas gives away its shape

When the streets are stained sea blue, they are graven in time

不要以為 / 八八十月 過了還會回來 / 除非有十一月 || don’t assume that / October ‘88 will ever return / except in November

I could become / a better citizen, but then who would be left to / speak for me?

The Hong Kong poet talks the Umbrella movement, being an outsider and an insider in Hong Kong, and how she translates the world.

Funny how it ends up that you’re the leftovers.

One person’s ancestor is another person’s ghost—it’s all a matter of perspective.

The award-winning writer talks about her new acclaimed short story collection, the anxiety of exile, and figuring out which narrative you belong to.

With Canto-pop star Denise Ho and bookseller-turned-whistleblower Lam Wing-Kee, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement is putting the old tactic of boycotts to new use

“Every word becomes dangerous when words fall into a wave of social movements.”

“In the smoke, they forget their bare feet / as they see their faces more clearly than ever… No trial can strike down / their small and fragile umbrellas.”

An interview with writer and former editor-in-chief of Missbehave magazine Mary H.K. Choi

The veteran comedian, actor and director was the epitome of Hong Kong’s ’90s-era mo lei tau subculture.

“There’s nobody left in Chinatown, is there?”

A lonely spinster marries a ghost. A live-at-home son writes dispatches from his basement. A laid-off techie tries his hand at doctoring day laborers without a license. These are the tales of antiheroes, itinerant workers and gender refugees in Tania James, Rajesh Parameswaran, and Xu Xi’s newest short story collections.