South China Morning Post

Two years ago, I was invited to a public panel to discuss writing about minority characters in Singapore fiction.

“We can’t talk honestly about race though. How to fill the time?” I asked another writer. He replied, “We’ll just get the conversation started and then the race riots will take over.”

The race riots: Singapore’s biggest bogeyman.

Growing up, we were taught that the island state’s success depended on peace between ethnic groups.

From race-based housing quotas to prevent…

The Chinese government stepped up its rhetoric against anti-government protests in Hong Kong this week, warning that escalating violence by protesters in clashes with police was showing “signs of terrorism.”

Yang Guang, a spokesman for China’s top office overseeing Hong Kong policy, called on the city’s police on Monday to end “violent criminal activity” by demonstrators “with no hesitation or mercy.”

But analysts say Beijing is unlikely to directly intervene in Hong Kong, even as pressure is…

Lizzy Ran is happy with her life. The 29-year-old unmarried doctor from China's central Hubei province earns a decent income and spends her free time with friends or surfing the internet.

But her mother is worried about her.

“My mother is quite anxious for me – she believes getting married and having babies are things that a person must do in their life,” Ran said. “I don’t think so – marriage isn’t essential for me.”

Ran said she believed marriage was determined by fate, and she was not…

The UN Human Rights Office threw its weight behind calls to investigate the use of force by police during anti-government protests that have engulfed Hong Kong for more than two months.

The Geneva-based United Nations body said it had seen evidence of police actions that defied “international norms and standards.” 

“The UN Human Rights Office has reviewed credible evidence of law enforcement officials employing less-lethal weapons in ways that are prohibited by international norms and…

Thousands of anti-government protesters in Hong Kong have taken over the city’s airport, one of the busiest in the world, for a second day.

The airport was forced to cancel all flights leaving on Tuesday evening, although incoming flights were allowed to land.

Some travelers, who had missed two days of flights, grew angry and argued with protesters in heated confrontations.

Scuffles between impatient passengers and #AntiELAB protesters like this have happened a few times along the cart…

One of the world’s busiest airports was brought to a standstill on Monday by demonstrators angered by an escalation of the use of police force against anti-government protesters.

Thousands of demonstrators occupied Hong Kong International Airport on Monday afternoon, a day after riot police broke up citywide protests. More than 100 flights were canceled.

Protesters were particularly incensed by what they saw as the police's increasingly aggressive use of force in clashes with demonstrators,…

Almost five years ago on a local TV show in New York, the host was taken aback when the Jamaican reggae artist Gyptian was introduced by a diminutive, elderly Asian woman.

“He was not expecting to see a Chinese woman talking about reggae,” Patricia Chin, now 82, recalls with a laugh, during a telephone interview from New York.

But the half-Chinese, half-Indian Chin, who was born in Jamaica, knows just about everything there is to know about reggae. 

She and her late husband, Vincent “Randy”…

A number of different luxury fashion brands have apologized after coming under fire in mainland China for not explicitly including Hong Kong and other cities as parts of China.

Calvin Klein got in trouble over a pull-down menu on its US website, while Coach, Givenchy and Versace were all in hot water over similar looking tops naming major cities and the countries they’re located in.

Liu Wen, one of China’s first supermodels, canceled her contract with Coach on Monday, hours after Chinese fans…

Week after week since June, Hong Kong’s protesting youth have taken to the streets to demand accountability and democracy from a government that doesn’t seem to be listening.

You might call them “dreamers.” As peaceful protests escalated into a full-blown, sometimes violent, anti-government movement, demonstrators have turned to the use of code words to describe what they’re doing.

“Dreaming” and “sleepwalking” have emerged as two of the euphemisms most used by protesters to describe…

Anyone dealing with a cockroach infestation knows that the bug is virtually indestructible.

It can also carry loads of up to 900 times its body weight, shrink to a quarter of its height to fit into small crevices and live for a week without its head.

Inspired by the qualities of this insect, a group of researchers from China and the US have created a prototype of a fast-moving and nearly-indestructible mini robot, which could potentially replace sniffer dogs in detecting people trapped in…