The Works

Chinese opera and traditional music make up the main repertoire of the local ensemble The Gong Strikes One. That includes a range of genres, one of the most significant of which is naamyum, a form of Cantonese narrative singing that originated in Guang...

For several decades now, Chinese consumers have been a major force behind the rise in sales of luxury goods. In fashion in particular, China’s demand for luxury items has contributed considerably to the success of global brands. But high-end luxury goo...

Concerts featuring the recorder as the main instrument and early music as the repertoire are rare in Hong Kong. David Tong Shee-yiu has a passion for the instrument and for early music though, and is planning a series of concerts to highlight both. he'...

The complexities of the human body have often been expressed and interpreted through metaphor. German science writer and gynaecologist Fritz Khan explained the nature of the human body through visual and textual analogies in his book, “Man and Machine”...

Last summer, when the chamber ensemble Sea Island & Ferry came to our studio, they played us a new piece of music they'd composed for the exhibition, “In-Between” organised by the Hong Kong Museum of Art. This year, three members of the group have vent...

In the late 1980s, a style of rock music began to develop that was, and still is, recognised for its rhythmic variety and complex time signatures. Some listeners began to describe the music as mathematical: the term "math rock" was born. It's popular w...

Traditional Japanese puppetry dates back to ancient times when it was often part of shamanic religious services. By the17th century, during the Edo period, three main forms of puppet performance had developed and the art had become highly popular. In J...

Younger audiences may know Rebecca Pan best through her appearances in the movies of Wong Kar-wai or Hou Hsiao-hsien. But her career spans many genres, and her life as a cultural pioneer is the focus of a current exhibition in The Mills.

One cultur...

In Chinese opera, face painting is a symbolic language. Colours and shapes can reveal a character’s personality, social status, and moral code. However, in Sichuan opera, the coloured facial patterns are not painted. “Bian lian” or face-changing, using...

Artists have used pigment derived from stones to write and paint since the prehistoric era. The Mogao Grotto murals in Northwest China, the earliest-known examples of mineral pigment paintings in China, were created more than 1,500 years ago. Some mine...