Jollibee Fully Takes Over Tim Ho Wan

Tin Ho Wan is known for cheap dim sum with little quality

When I landed in Hong Kong earlier this year for my first visit in two years, my first meal was at Tim ho Wan just above the Airport Express.

It was quite busy at dinner time and my friend and I waited for about 20 minutes before we were seated at the back. The dim sum was meh, but the location was convenient and a quick meal before we went our separate ways.

It was opened by a former Lung King Heen chef

Interesting that Jollibee Food Corporation was interested in Tim Ho Wan in 2021 buying shares then, and in January purchased more to make it 92 percent ownership of the dim sum chain that has 80 restaurants in 11 markets, including Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Melbourne, Tokyo and Manila.

The latest news is that the Philippine-based fast food company Jollibee Food Corporation has now snapped up the remaining 8 percent of Tim Ho Wan and fully owning it.

Tim Ho Wan was started in 2009 by chef Mak Kwai-pui, who formerly worked at Lung King Heen in the Four Seasons Hong Kong. The tiny restaurant in Mong Kok was awarded a Michelin star a year later and quickly became the talk of the town.

It was then known as having quality dim sum at reasonable prices and maintained its one Michelin star until 2021, when it was downgraded to Bib Gourmand.

Perhaps peach mango pie at Tim Ho Wan?

Singaporean broadcaster and businessman Robert Chua and his brother Harry bought a stake in Tim Ho Wan in 2013 and brought the dim sum chain to the Lion City. They sold their stake in 2022.

Now what will Jollibee do with Tim Ho Wan? Offer peach mango pies for dessert? Open Tim Ho Wan next door to every Jollibee? How about deep-fried xiaolongbao? 

Knocking Down Loneliness in Toronto

Some 8,000 giant blocks were set up around Toronto

If you enjoyed playing dominoes as a child, setting them up vertically and then knocking them down in a line or pattern, then you might have enjoyed the giant version that was recently held in Toronto.

This past weekend volunteers help set up 8,000 lightweight concrete blocks that went down a 2.5km path through Canada's largest city this past weekend. 

Some 200 people helped set up sections of blocks

Some 200 people volunteered and each person was responsible for setting up 30-40 blocks around the pre-determined route that started at the corner of Niagara and Wellington streets and wound its way to the shores of Lake Ontario near Ireland Park.

The giant dominoes has been done in more than 20 cities since 2009, like London, Copenhagen and Melbourne, and the aim is to bring people together, says Julian Maynard Smith, artistic director and co-founder of Station House Opera that organised this project to Toronto.

"[Dominoes] is always about connecting different parts of the city," he says. Cities are by nature, a jumble of diverse people and spaces. And as the dominoes fall, they purposefully wind through the rich, poor, and in-the-middle neighbourhoods of a city. They travel through public and private areas; towering buildings and patches of parkland. The idea was that wherever you went, we would try and find those relationships... and make a line that connected all those different kinds of communities."

And in Toronto it did just that, with people cheering and running along with the giant blocks as they fell, curious to see if it all worked out in the end.

The dominoes were placed in a designed path

"We are closer than we think," says Ilana Altman, co-executive director of The Bentway, a public space that is trying to do community building.

"This season, The Bentway has been reflecting on a lot of reports that we've been hearing across our city... about a growing phenomenon of loneliness and a lack of social connection," she says, pointing to the Toronto Foundation's 2023 Vital Signs Report that the city is one of the loneliest places in Canada.

"So all of our programming has been geared towards helping to foster greater connectivity amongst neighbours," Altman said.

Speaking of lonely... would Hong Kong be interested in hosting this event? Might be fun to have the dominoes falling along the harbour front? Too ambitious to have it going up Lion Rock? Or it's not mega enough of an event?

Australian-Chinese Journalist Released

Cheng was detained for three years before being released

Late last night Vancouver time it was a relief to see Australian-Chinese journalist Cheng Lei had been released after three years in detention in China and was now back in Melbourne.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong greeted Cheng with a hug at the airport.

"She was in extraordinarily good spirits. I think I was more emotional than she was," Wong said of Cheng. "I think she's pretty tough. She looked great."

Cheng (left) and Wong hugged at the airport

Wong said she had promised Cheng's two children, 11 and 14, that the government would do all it could to bring their mother home.

"It was really moving to meet Cheng Lei yesterday and speak to her kids who are not much older than mine," Wong said.

She added she encouraged Cheng to thrive and be healthy and happy now that she's free. "That's what all Australians want you to be," Wong said.

It is believed improved relations between Australia and China helped secure Cheng's release, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had "good, constructive" meetings with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang about Cheng's case. 

In the last two weeks a deal was struck where Cheng would plead guilty to charges related to state secrets with no additional time in custody.

When she was working for CGTN, she was arrested in August 2020, with China's Ministry of State Security saying Cheng had provided a foreign organisation with state secrets she had obtained on the job in violation of a confidentiality clause signed with her employer. A police statement did not name the organisation or say what the secrets were.

Cheng has returned to her family

A court in Beijing convicted her of illegally providing state secrets abroad and was sentenced to two yeras and 11 months, the statement said.

Meanwhile Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the Chinese judicial system tried the case " in accordance with the law, fully safeguarding the rights enjoyed by the person concerned in accordance with the law."

However, in a letter that was made public in August, Cheng wrote how she only had sunlight in her cell for 10 hours a year, and to keep mentally fit, she recalled every place she had visited and moments, both special and simple, like the experience of sand between her toes to sunsets.

Nevertheless, Geoff Raby, a former Australian ambassador to China and a friend of Cheng, described China's explanation that she had been released according to the law as a "face-saving solution."

He said Wong and Albanese deserved credit for stabilising bilateral relations with China, and bringing up Cheng's case at every opportunity.

"Persistence and constantly coming back to this issue and advocating on her behalf in private but at very senior levels... trickles down through the Chinese system and I think the result we see thankfully... yesterday is a product of all that effort," Raby told Australian Broadcasting Corp.