Asia Society Hong Kong Movers & Shakers Podcast

Today's podcast is with Du Yun, born and raised in Shanghai, China, and currently based in New York City, works at the intersection of opera, orchestral, theatre, cabaret, musical, oral tradition, public performances, electronics, visual arts, and noise. Her body of work is championed by some of today’s finest performing groups and organizations around the world.

Known for her “relentless originality and unflinching social conscience” (The New Yorker), Du Yun’s second opera, Angel’s Bone (libretto by Royce Vavrek), won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize; in 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow; and in 2019, she was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Composition category for her work Air Glow. As an avid performer and bandleader (Ok Miss), her onstage persona has been described by the New York Times as “an indie pop diva with an avant-garde edge.”

Du Yun is Professor of Composition at the Peabody Institute, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

A community champion, Du Yun was a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble; served as the Artistic Director of MATA Festival (2014-2018); conceived the Pan Asia Sounding Festival (National Sawdust); and founded FutureTradition, a global initiative that illuminates the provenance lineages of folk art and uses these structures to build cross-regional collaborations from the ground up. In 2018, Du Yun was named one of 38 Great Immigrants by the Carnegie Foundation, and in 2019 the Beijing Music Festival named her “Artist of the Year.”

Sweet Land is now available for on-demand streaming. Please consider watching so the company can honor their contracts to pay their cast, musicians and the crew, due to the cancellation of half of the run. Thank you! I hope we are all doing well.

https://www.facebook.com/1059549730/posts/10219045691467428/?sfnsn=mo

Dr. Amos Danielli specializes in Electro-optics and Bio-photonics. After completing his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in the field of optical communication at Tel Aviv University, he worked in the industry for eight years and then return to the Academy. During his studies for P.hD, he developed a new technology to rapidly detect fluorescent-labeled probes at very low concentrations in homogenous solutions and continued developing it during his post-doctoral studies in Washington University, St. Louis.

In 2014, he has returned to Israel and joined the faculty of Engineering at Bar Ilan University.

During his stay in the US, he founded a company that commercializes this technology, and established connections with key figures in the fields of medical laboratory and diagnostics, and especially among troponin and heart attack specialists.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus, one of the most pressing medical challenges that doctors in areas affected by the crisis face is the need to test a high number of potentially infected people in a short amount of time. New technology developed by researchers at Bar-Ilan University might assist them in the mission, drastically cutting the time needed to analyze saliva samples.

Dr. Amos Danielli developed a technology for sensitive detection of virus-specific RNA sequences in 2007 to address cattle diseases. Since then, the same technology has been adapted for multiple viruses, including Zika.

Contact Dr. Amos Danielli:

http://www.amosdaniellilab.com/

http://www.eng.biu.ac.il/daniela8/

https://magbiosense.com/technology/

Today's podcast is with Wu Man, recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer giving her lute-like instrument—which has a history of over 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. Through numerous concert tours she has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions. Her adventurous spirit and virtuosity have led to collaborations across artistic disciplines, allowing her to reach wider audiences as she works to cross cultural and musical borders. Her efforts were recognized when she was named Musical America’s 2013 “Instrumentalist of the Year,” marking the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed on a player of a non-Western instrument.

Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Ms. Wu is now recognized as an outstanding exponent of the traditional repertoire as well as a leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music by today’s most prominent composers such as Tan Dun, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, and many others. She was the recipient of The Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University in 1998, and was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive The United States Artist Fellowship in 2008. She is also the first artist from China to perform at the White House. In 2015, she was appointed Visiting Professor of three major Chinese conservatories: her alma mater the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Xi’an Conservatory of Music, and Zhejiang Conservatory in her hometown; she has also served as Artistic Director of the Xi’an Silk Road Music Festival at the Xi'an Conservatory.

Live playback of Wu Man's Chinese lecture. Suxuan (bitter bitter heart) for one hour. Livestream playback (in Chinese)

https://www.facebook.com/643359479/posts/10157364900964480/?sfnsn=mo

Wu Man's getting ready for tomorrow's (Apr. 3) Silkroad Home Sessions with Wu Man (Facebook). The concert starts at 12pm PT/3pm ET. 🎼 Are you getting ready to join her? https://www.facebook.com/138665362813863/posts/3674991049181259/?sfnsn=mo

Today’s ASHK Movers & Shakers Podcast is with Alison Friedman, the Artistic Director of Performing Arts at the West Kowloon Cultural District one of the largest arts and cultural developments in the world.

During nearly two decades in China, Ms. Friedman worked closely with Chinese and international governments, non-profit and private organizations, as well as established and emerging independent performing artists across genres.

Alison is a board member of the International Society for the Performing Arts, one of the largest international alliances of leaders in the performing arts. She founded the successful cultural exchange organisation Ping Pong Productions (PPP) in 2010 after studying as a Fulbright scholar at the Department of History in Peking University and the Beijing Dance Academy in Mainland China between 2002 and 2003. Prior to PPP, Alison held producer and general manager roles at dance and music institutions including the Beijing Modern Dance Company as well as famed composer/ conductor Tan Dun’s production and management company.

Alison sat down with ASHK Executive Director Alice Mong to conduct the following interview.

Today's podcast is with Professor Ying Chan, an award-winning journalist, educator, e-learning advocate, and media strategist. She is a board member of the Media Development Investment Fund, and a member of the World Economic Forum Future Council on Information and Entertainment. She served on the Global Board of Open Society Foundations from 2013-17.

A Hong Kong native, Chan spent 23 years in New York City, covering immigration, campaign finance and US China-relations for both Chinese and English language media, including the New York Daily News and NBC News.

Since returning to HK in 1998, she has created two journalism schools as the founding director (1999-2016) and professor of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at The University of Hong Kong, and the founding dean (2003-2012) of the journalism school at Shantou University in China. Both programs are early adopters of convergent media, data, and enterpreneurial journalism, while being grounded in the best international professional standards.

She is a founding member of the the International Consortium for Investigation Journalists. Her honors include a Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism, a CPJ International Press Freedom Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Asian American Journalists Association, and a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. She currently mentors media startups in relation to China and cross-border projects, while conducting research on media in China and transitional societies.

Today's podcast is with Professor Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and the Center for European Studies, Harvard.

Professor Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is also a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is the author of fifteen books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, Empire, Civilization and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize. He is an award-making filmmaker, too, having won an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. In addition to writing a weekly column for the Sunday Times (London) and the Boston Globe, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, an advisory firm. His most recent book, The Square and the Tower, was published in the U.S. in 2018, and was a New York Times bestseller. A three-part television adaptation, Niall Ferguson’s Networld, will air on PBS in March 2020.

Today's Podcast is with Merle Hinrich, founder of Global Sources and the Hinrich Foundation. The Hinrich Foundation was established by Merle A. Hinrich in 2012, a global business leader and philanthropist. Mr Hinrich dedicated his 60-year career in Asia to facilitating the participation of emerging Asian economies in trade, driven by the belief that global trade helps break down barriers between nations by creating mutual interest, understanding and trust.

Mr. Hinrich’s journey started in 1964, when he was granted a scholarship to study at the American Institute of Foreign Trade – which is now called the Thunderbird School of Global Management. The school’s mantra – “Border frequented by trade seldom need soldiers” – left a powerful imprint on the young graduate, and inspired his future endeavors.

Subsequent work experiences in Japan, Taiwan and Korea in the 1960s further shaped his belief that trade promotes growth and development. By 1970 his first venture was born: Asian Sources, which later became Global Sources, a B2B trade media company to facilitate business transactions between Asian manufacturers and Western customers. A scholarship program was subsequently created to build talent in trade and support that goal.

After spending more than three decades assisting companies and countries from Japan to Pakistan with their export development, Mr. Hinrich’s view of free, fair, and reciprocal trade started to evolve. He began to see how critically important it was for trade to be mutually beneficial with balanced economic, social and environmental outcomes for long-term peace and prosperity.

He created the Hinrich Foundation to build leadership in trade, to research and to promote the conditions for making trade more sustainable.

Today’s Podcast is part two with Charlie Cook, Editor, and Publisher of The Cook Political Report described by The New York Times as “a newsletter that both parties regard as authoritative,” while CBS News’ Bob Schieffer called it “the bible of the political community.” Mr. Cook is also the co-author of the 2020 Almanac of American Politics, a biannual book widely considered to be the definitive publication analyzing U.S. elections, every state and every Congressional district in the country. Over the years Mr. Cook has served as an election night analyst for CBS, CNN, and NBC, and since 1996 on NBC News Election Night Decision Desk in New York. In 2010, he was the co-recipient of the American Political Science Association’s prestigious Carey McWilliams award to honor “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.” In 2013, Mr. Cook served as a Resident Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Charlie gave a lot of wisdom and we’ve broken it up into two episodes with the first outlining Charlie’s career advice as we get a more detailed understanding of how networking and connections in DC as well as a focus on Political commentary made him the foremost expert in the field and our second episode Charlie dives deeper into his detailed thoughts regarding the Democratic nominees, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg as well as the Republican strategy for Trump’s re-election in 2020.

Today’s Podcast is part one with Charlie Cook, Editor, and Publisher of The Cook Political Report described by The New York Times as “a newsletter that both parties regard as authoritative,” while CBS News’ Bob Schieffer called it “the bible of the political community.” Mr. Cook is also the co-author of the 2020 Almanac of American Politics, a biannual book widely considered to be the definitive publication analyzing U.S. elections, every state and every Congressional district in the country. Over the years Mr. Cook has served as an election night analyst for CBS, CNN, and NBC, and since 1996 on NBC News Election Night Decision Desk in New York. In 2010, he was the co-recipient of the American Political Science Association’s prestigious Carey McWilliams award to honor “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.” In 2013, Mr. Cook served as a Resident Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Charlie gave a lot of wisdom and we’ve broken it up into two episodes with the first outlining Charlie’s career advice as we get a more detailed understanding of how networking and connections in DC as well as a focus on Political commentary made him the foremost expert in the field and our second episode Charlie dives deeper into his detailed thoughts regarding the Democratic nominees, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg as well as the Republican strategy for Trump’s re-election in 2020.

Today's podcast is with Dr. Allan Zeman the Chairman of Lan Kwai Fong Group, a major property owner and developer in Hong Kong’s Lan Kwai Fong Area, one of Hong Kong’s most popular tourist and entertainment districts. The new California Tower at the heart of Lan Kwai Fong which features cues to the Group’s flair for design and attracted the top leisure brands that will take the district to new heights. Dr. Zeman is also the Chairman of the Lan Kwai Fong Association. Lan Kwai Fong Group in recent years, has expanded to various cities in China which include Chengdu, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Lan Kwai Fong Chengdu was opened in 2009. Dr. Zeman is also the owner of Paradise Properties Group, a property developer in Thailand which includes the award winning Andara Resort in Phuket.

Dr. Zeman serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director of Sino Land Company Limited, Tsim Sha Tsui Properties Limited, Global Brands Group, Television Broadcasts Limited (“TVB”), Fosun Tourism Group and is the Non-Executive Director of Pacific Century Premium Developments Limited, all of which are listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Dr. Zeman is also the Non-Executive Chairman of Wynn Macau Limited, a prominent gaming operator in the US and Macau. Dr. Zeman is a director of the “Star” Ferry Company, Limited.

Having lived in Hong Kong for over 45 years, Dr. Zeman has been very involved in government services as well as community activities. He was the Chairman of Ocean Park from 2003 to 2014 and is now the Park’s Honorary Advisor. During his tenor at Ocean Park, Dr. Zeman managed to raise visitor numbers despite the opening of rival Hong Kong Disneyland, making the park more attractive and generating record profits. A 2007 article in Forbes magazine, referred to Zeman as "Hong Kong's Mouse Killer" because of the success that Ocean Park enjoyed.