Black and White Photography at M+

Two Women (Gloucester Road) by Yau Leung

At Hong Kong's M+, there was a special exhibition featuring black and white photographs sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Entitled Noir & Blanc: A Story of Photography, it seems like a good excuse to features pictures from famed photographer Fan Ho, known as the "Cartier-Bresson of the East". 

Ho's photos show cool composition

He was born in Shanghai in 1931 and at the age of 14 was given his first camera, a Kodak Brownie from his father. Within a year he won his first photography competition in 1949 and when he was 18 years old he bought a twin lens Rolleiflex.

A few years later Ho and his parents moved to Hong Kong, where he created numerous stunning images of the city. They include Smoky World, 1959, where he has a low angle shot looking up at people walking through Central Market. It looks very dramatic with a smoky atmosphere as people walk up and down the stairs, and there are gradient tones from white to black.

One his his most famous pictures is Approaching Shadow in 1954, where Ho composes a striking image of a lone woman stands against a wall looking down. In this photograph he manipulated the image by adding a diagonal shadow in the darkroom, apparently alluding to the fading of youth.

Another lovely photograph called Reflection, 1951, features the patterned grilles on windows and in one of them is a shadow of a person.

Liu captures everyday Chinese life

There are other photographers like Yau Leung's Two Women (Gloucester Road) taken in 1961. Two women shown from the back wearing form-fitting qipaos and heels as they walk under the covered walkways of shophouses in Wan Chai. 

For a bit of brevity, contemporary photographer Liu Heung-shing's China After Mao - Skating in Dalian, 1981, shows a man wearing drab work clothes but donning a pair of roller skates and skating past Mao Zedong, who stands valiantly in the wind.

It's a great contrast between the two, Mao serious and looking undeterred, while the man holds a bird-like pose, his left leg in the air, his arms out wide, showing that Western capitalism has made life more fun in China. 

The exhibition even has a self-portrait of landscape photographer Ansel Adams. Called Self-Portrait, Monument Valley, United States, taken in 1958, he is a silhouette, standing on a mountain with his camera on a tripod as there are lightning bolts in the sky over the mountains. 

Adams' wild self-portrait

What a lovely treat to see these photographs, particularly those of Fan Ho!

Noir & Blanc: A Story of Photography

On until July 1, 2024

M+

Hongkongers Flock to Warehouse Stores in Shenzhen

Hongkongers are joining tours that take them to Sam's Club

For Hongkongers, visiting Costco in North America is a wide-eye opening experience. 

The members-only warehouse store sells everything from milk to laptops, refrigerators and roast chickens at very good prices. Hongkongers look in wonder at products stacked on pallets and items sold in bulk or in giant containers that would take a while to use up.

There is no Costco in Hong Kong otherwise Park 'n' Shop and Wellcome would be up-in-arms if that kind of rivalry elbowed its way into the city. People would need bigger flats too to store all this stuff in bulk. 

Everything here is much cheaper than in HK

However, there is competition south of the border, as Hong Kong residents eagerly sign up for shopping tours to Shenzhen, where one stop on the itinerary is at Sam's Club, a warehouse store operated by Walmart, and named after Sam Walton, the founder. 

There are 44 Sam's Clubs in 25 cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, Hangzhou, Xianmen, Chengdu, Shenyang and Ningbo.

As part of the tour, visitors can get a one-year membership for two people for 260 yuan (US$37), which can easily be made back from buying everything from food to giant-screen TVs.

The tours are especially popular with young people who are eager to find deals, as well as products they can only find on the mainland. 

They can snap up fresh seafood, frozen dumplings, Godiva chocolates, Ippudo instant noodles, and even fresh hairy crabs.

Wandering the warehouse store is eye-popping

Who knew young Hongkongers would be so keen to shop in Shenzhen?

But with inflation soaring in the city, it's become a novelty to discover bargains galore in warehouse stores.

Remembering a Beloved Novelist

Ni was a prolific writer of over 300 novels

Science fiction fans are mourning the loss of novelist Ni Kuang who died on July 3 at the age of 87 of skin cancer.

He was very prolific, writing over 300 novels around the themes of wuxia and science fiction, as well as over 400 film scripts. How he managed to do all that is an amazing feat in itself. 

Ni came to Hong Kong in 1957

Originally from Shanghai in a family of seven children, Ni joined the People's Liberation Army at the age of 16 and was posted in Inner Mongolia in 1951.

But five years later he was convicted to 10 years' imprisonment as a counter-revolutionary when he and other soldiers removed wooden planks from a bridge to burn so that they could stay warm in winter. Ni thought he would receive the death sentence when his dog bit the commanding officer, and it took him six months to flee to Hong Kong via Dalian, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Portuguese colony Macau.

He arrived in Hong Kong in 1957 and started off working as a labourer. He became a writer after Ni won a writing competition in a newspaper.

Some of his best known works include Wisely Series, and Dr Yuen, as well as screenplays for such films as Fist of Fury, One-Armed Swordsman, The Assassin, and Crippled Avengers. 

Ni was a staunch anti-communist and in Britain's impending handover of Hong Kong back to China in 1997, he immigrated to the United States with his wife in 1992, but they returned in 2006 after she could not get used to the lifestyle there.

Nevertheless, Ni was well known for his anti-communist stance, which he would weave into his work.

Many of his novels were adapted for film

One journalist remarked after Ni's passing that in 1989, he said any struggle for democracy and freedom in Hong Kong is dangerous under an authoritarian regime.

Another journalist points out that in Ni's science fiction novel Chase the Dragon, he wrote about the fall of a great city in the east. It was not destroyed by natural disasters, but human's wrongdoings. And he wrote this around the time of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in the early 1980s...

How prescient. 

But perhaps he just knew from his personal experiences what would happen to Hong Kong...