Girls Get Curves

St. Stephen’s Girls’ College is one of the many schools run under the auspices of the Anglican Church in Hong Kong. Starting as a tiny missionary school for upper-class Chinese girls and their younger

Promoting All-Round Education for Girls presents the history of Heep Yunn School, one of the oldest girls’ schools in Hong Kong. Amalgamated from two British mission schools founded in the 1880s for d

This book offers a glimpse into the wide-ranging 50-year career of the internationally renowned Hong Kong photographer/designer through his work in collages and photomontages. From his early album covers when he was an art director/designer for the music industry in New York, Los Angeles and London in the 1970’s, through his diverse international assignments and personal works, to his most recent exhibition in Hong Kong. The story encompasses the long journey from cut-and-paste collages to the computer-composited photomontages of dreamscapes in this Carnival of Dreams.In his introduction titled ‘The Man from Everywhere’, Pico Iyer writes: “For decades now, Basil Pao has been the global eye through which I’ve taken in almost every country, as clearly as the world within… I never know where to place Basil; I can’t get my head around him. Album-designer, loving father, covert Chan master—21st century Renaissance man—Basil is always bringing the many worlds inside him together to create so

Most histories of Hong Kong begin with the arrival of the British, and only incidentally mention the precolonial eras. In this book, Patrick Hase, one of the leaders in the field, provides an important addition to the history of Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta region, covering topics such as Chinese ethnicity, commerce, port-towns, and squatting. It is a truly excellent work that will interest historians, anthropologists, and social scientists.—James L. WatsonFairbank Professor of Chinese Society and Anthropology Emeritus,Harvard UniversityThis book, an historical and archaeological portrayal of Hong Kong market villages across the territory, depicts how Hong Kong evolved not through chronicles of emperors and governors but through the ups and downs of different centres of rural life over the centuries. It belongs beyond the bookshelves of historians and archaeologists—anyone wandering the streets of Hong Kong neighbourhoods today wondering “how did this place get to be here?” wil

This book offers a glimpse into the wide-ranging 50-year career of the internationally renowned Hong Kong photographer/designer through his work in collages and photomontages. From his early album covers when he was an art director/designer for the music industry in New York, Los Angeles and London in the 1970’s, through his diverse international assignments and personal works, to his most recent exhibition in Hong Kong. The story encompasses the long journey from cut-and-paste collages to the computer-composited photomontages of dreamscapes in this Carnival of Dreams.In his introduction titled ‘The Man from Everywhere’, Pico Iyer writes: “For decades now, Basil Pao has been the global eye through which I’ve taken in almost every country, as clearly as the world within… I never know where to place Basil; I can’t get my head around him. Album-designer, loving father, covert Chan master—21st century Renaissance man—Basil is always bringing the many worlds inside him together to create so

Initially based on a comparative study of Chinese and Euro-American art theory in the 18th and 19th centuries, this book examines how both cultures looked at their own past and their outside, i.e. what was construed as not belonging to their own cultural sphere, and how they devised new ways of adapting them into evolving cultural constructs.While the 17th century was still a time when the epistemological backgrounds of both civilizations were so profoundly different that nearly no dialogue was possible, the 18th century saw the emergence in both places of profound changes that would get them close enough to create the conditions for the beginning of a conversation. First quite superficial and taking shape mostly in the decorative arts, this process of rapprochement, while remaining chaotic and unpredictable, led to wider and more profound zones of contact throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries. Through the reinterpretations of each other’s cultural creations, these zones of conta

In On Saving Face, Michael Keevak traces the Western reception of the Chinese concept of “face” during the past two hundred years, arguing that it has always been linked to nineteenth-century colonialism. “Lose face” and “save face” have become so normalized in modern European languages that most users do not even realize that they are of Chinese origin. “Face” is an extremely complex and varied notion in all East Asian cultures. It involves proper behavior and the avoidance of conflict, encompassing every aspect of one’s place in society as well as one’s relationships with other people. One can “give face,” “get face,” “fight for face,” “tear up face,” and a host of other expressions. But when it began to become known to the Western trading community in China beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was distorted and reduced to two phrases only, “lose face” and “save face,” both of which were used to suggest distinctly Western ideas of humiliation, embarrassment, honor, a

INTRODUCTIONThe role of media in any society is vital and is closely related to brands and consumption especially in a vibrant 21st century Asian city. Hong Kong with its free-market economy and urban

In Daily Giving Service: A History of the Diocesan Girls’ School, Hong Kong, Moira M. W. Chan-Yeung and her fellow contributors present a comprehensive history of one of Hong Kong’s oldest girls’ schools. As an alumna of the school, Chan-Yeung traces the history of her alma mater from its establishment in 1860, to its development over the last 160 years until the recent decade. Having experienced stability and turbulences in Hong Kong in the twentieth century, the school has become one of the most prominent girls’ schools in the city. In several chapters written by other alumnae, various aspects of school life of different eras are reconstructed and remembered.The author and other contributors focused on the postwar era in which Hong Kong grew from a small city to a global metropolitan. The expansion of the Diocesan Girls’ School largely followed this trend. The history of the school has also long been connected with the socio-economic development of Hong Kong society, sharing its happ

Promoting All-Round Education for Girls presents the history of Heep Yunn School, one of the oldest girls’ schools in Hong Kong. Amalgamated from two British mission schools founded in the 1880s for d

"To collect the stories of first encounters with China was a brilliant idea. Not only do we get the benefit of many fascinating insights (and hindsights) from a range of foreigners and overseas Chines

As China has evolved into an industrial powerhouse over the past two decades, a new class of workers has developed: th dagongmei, or working girls. The dagongmei are women in their late teens and earl

In Redefining Heresy and Tolerance, Hung Tak Wai examines how the Qing empire governed Muslims and Christians under its rule with a non-interventionist policy. Manchu emperors adopted a tolerant attitude towards Islam and Christianity as long as political stability and loyalty remained unthreatened. However, Hung argues that such tolerance had its limitations. Since the mid-eighteenth century, the Qing court intentionally minimised the importance of the Islamic identity. Restrictions were imposed on the Muslims’ external connections with Western Asia. The Christian minority was kept distant from politics and the Han majority. At the same time, Confucian scholars began to acquire a new understanding of religion, but they were not encouraged to get in touch with the Muslims and Christians. This book demonstrates how, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, the Qing government prevented Confucian scholar-bureaucrats from interfering in the religious life of Christians an