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Although modernization in Korea started more than a century later than in the West, it has been a prominent ideology throughout the past century—bringing radical changes to Korean architecture and cit

In the 1970s, as Hong Kong’s economy began to soar, the public started to place greater emphasis on cultural and artistic pursuits. The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HK Phil) became a professional ensemble in 1974, providing high-quality musical entertainment for the public while also promoting classical music and nurturing the next generation of young musicians.Upon obtaining his master’s degree in the late 1980s, author Jimmy Shiu joined the orchestra as audience development manager from 1988 to 1994, working alongside the ensemble to cultivate Hong Kong’s musical landscape. On the orchestra’s golden jubilee, Shiu offers a warm narrative that reflects on 50 significant moments both on and off stage.The HK Phil is celebrated as one of Asia’s premier classical orchestras. During its 44-week season, the orchestra performs over 150 concerts in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and other international cities, reaching more than 200,000 audience members. In 2019, the HK Phil became the

ONE OF THE MOST SPOKEN DIALECTS in China, Southeast Asia, and globally, Cantonese was nevertheless deemed a local dialect enjoying little prestige among the intellectuals. Not much was recorded in official documents or gazetteers about the early history of Hong Kong. The Cantonese language and its origin remained much of a mystery until the mid-20th century when scholars started to accord it with increasing attention. Thanks to dedicated efforts of early missionaries, pedagogues, and linguists, we can now trace back the evolution of modern Cantonese since the 19th century— how differences in sounds, words, and grammar distinguish the old from contemporary speech today. In this book, Hung-nin Samuel Cheung, an acclaimed scholar on the study of Cantonese, offers profound insights to various firsthand century-old materials including language manuals, Bible translations, and maps of Hong Kong, with findings that will be useful for ongoing efforts to study the development of