The 16.5-meter inflatable duck in Hong Kong's Victoria Bay remains entertaining. Look at the above. Just look at it. It was due to air leakage, says Sina. It lasted 12 days, as of yesterday. Pity the duck. Pity us all. ...

I don't really have anything to add to Hong Wrong's piece about the 16.5-meter duck in Victoria Harbor, "In Pictures: HK Goes Completely Insane For Big Yellow Duck’s Arrival," or Shanghaiist's guide to SCMP's articles about these rubber ducks (with rolling updates), except to say this is awesome: ...

All white people look the same -- paunchy with yellow hair -- so the news that a pair of Asian television networks committed two separate Thatcher-related mix-ups during their coverage of the former British Prime Minister’s death on Monday at the age of 87 should come as little surprise. The first, Taiwan’s CTi Cable, broadcast footage of Queen Elizabeth II greeting well-wishers instead of Thatcher. Like La ...

Margaret Thatcher, the outspoken former Prime Minister who transformed Great Britain during her stewardship of the country from 1979 to 1990 and inspired the global conservative moment during her decade in power, died Monday from a stroke. Great Britain’s only woman prime minister, the so-called Iron Lady led the Conservative Party to three electoral victories in a streak that was the longest continuous per ...

Saturday was International Pillow Fight Day, and if thought Hong Kong wasn't going to pull out all the feathers for this occasion, you don't know our friends to the south. BBC, SCMP, etc., covered the event. Hong Wrong has a collection of clippings, with photos upcoming, and also the above video, which is about as ridiculous of an eight-minute summary as you'll find (created by Dennis Mong). But look at how ...

Enoch Lam, a very high-profile pastor-comedian in Hong Kong, recently asked his fans on Facebook, “How should (Christians) respond to the recent controversial comments made by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz regarding the company’s support of gay marriage?” This is the same Pastor Lam who once equated homosexuality with drug abuse and theft. Lam also said that “even though homosexuality is inborn, it doesn’t m ...

How did you spend your International Women's Day? A pair of women stood at the Luohu Checkpoint in Shenzhen on the border of Hong Kong on March 8 to protest against milk powder while advocating breastfeeding. As The Nanfang reports: The slogans on the signs read: “Limits on what you can buy don’t limit how much you can love;” ...

The largest television station in Hong Kong, TVB, has been catching flak for the reduced quality of its entertainment programs, from soap operas to games shows. Recently, the station introduced a new travel show, “Nat Around The World” (叻哥遊世界), in which host Natalis Chan travels luxuriously with his friends to places such as Dubai, Milan, London, Tanzania, and, of course, mainland China. The episode aired o ...

The idea of "national education" as school curriculum was nixed after widespread protests last year, but the National Education Parents' Concern Group recently discovered that some commonly used primary school textbooks are very biased and use overly affective expressions to teach students “how to build a better sense of belonging to the motherland.” ...

Nine Hong Kong tourists are among the 19 who perished when a hot-air balloon in Luxor, Egypt turned into a fireball and plummeted a few hundred meters to a sugarcane field on the west bank of the Nile river. Only the pilot, who suffered burns on 70 percent of his body, and one other man, believed to be from Hong Kong, survived. Reuters reports that the cause of the accident, which happened on Tuesday, was a ...

A few days ago in Hong Kong, a young man was filmed yelling at, kicking and hitting a woman on the subway. The reason? According to Apple Daily English: A middle-aged woman accidentally kicked a boy's trolley while rushing to get to an empty seat. She blamed the boy for being in the way, and cursed him, telling him to "go tomb sweeping for your family." Offended, the boy began beating the woman, dragging he ...

Hong Kong lawmaker Chan Yuen-han (陈婉娴) and some scholars have recently suggested converting shipping containers into temporary housing, youth hostels or art studios. These containers could be set up under the city's nearly 2,000 vehicle flyovers and pedestrian footbridges. Ms. Chan believes the living environment of these shelters would be far better than the notorious “cage” or “coffin homes,” where many o ...

Need some relationship advice on Valentine’s Day? Listen to a lawmaker in Hong Kong. Ann Chiang, vice president of the largest pro-government political party in Hong Kong, taught wives “how to be open-hearted and get their husbands to come home” in Apple Daily. Chiang married her husband 16 years ago when she was 42. She thought that the most important thing between husband and wife was, not surprisingly, " ...

Ho, hum. Another Chinese New Year, another ridiculous, wonderful fireworks display over Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor. This happened last night, two nights after Beijing's skies were lit afire. No place in the world quite does New Year's Eve like China. ...

Recently, Lunar New Year Messages from the British Consulate General in Hong Kong and Macau have been among the most talked about videos in Hong Kong. The total views, including both Cantonese and English (above) versions, have surpassed 85,000 in four days. Not surprisingly, it’s the Cantonese version that's drawn the most attention. It’s not just because Caroline Wilson, the British Consul General to Hong ...

Google previously disclosed that it received nearly 450 requests from the Hong Kong government to hand over user data in 2012, an increase of 38% from the year prior. Recently, the Commerce and Economic Development, in a written reply to the Legislative Council, revealed for the first time that the government made more than 14,000 requests to Internet service providers (ISPs) for disclosure of their users' ...

With its vertically-oriented architecture, Hong Kong lends itself to the type of surreal, postmodern panoramas you see out of artists like Michael Wolf, but its layout can also be manipulated to reveal its horizontal, two-dimensional, anti-stereoscopic obverse: for example: ...

Recently in Hong Kong, a male pedestrian fainted on the street outside a busy Jockey Club Center. Two men nearby, ages 59 and 53, witnessed the incident and tried to rouse the pedestrian. Failing that, they came to the conclusion that they should call the police, but an important question remained – which one of them should pick up the phone and dial 999? Oriental Daily continues this strange tale. ...

A Hong Kong-born, British- and Harvard-educated woman, Sara Jane Ho, is opening a school of etiquette, the Institute Sarita, in the Park Hyatt Beijing. Price? Only £2,000 to £10,000 (about $3,140 to $15,700). Would you pay this much for, according to Daily Mail, "lectures on how to use a knife and fork properly, how to peel a piece of fruit, how to greet a prospective mother-in-law, how to walk in heels and ...

An update to the story of Cecil Chao Sze-tsung and his (one might say) Quixotic quest to marry off his daughter, Gigi, who's into women -- one in particular, Sean Eav, with whom she's in a civil partnership. According to Financial Times, Chao is now giving his daughter the freedom to choose who she wants to be with, as long as that person is 1) not Sean, and 2) a man. Rich people problems is what we have he ...