I was so proud of my New-York taxi-hailing skills, artfully applied in Kowloon, Hong Kong, of all places. But then when the police got involved…
Author: Joel M. Hoffman
Hong Kong’s Magical Luminous Ovoids
A magical collection of “luminous ovoids” transforms Hong Kong’s urban landscape at dusk, carving a peaceful, happy, otherworldly retreat into the space between the busy harbor and the even busier skyscrapers that define Hong Kong Island. Here time slows. Adults frolic. Smiles abound. And reality and make-believe mingle. The exhibition is courtesy of teamLab, the…
The Indian Shepherd
Perhaps the most striking feature of the shepherd is this: He is happy. “I have no stress,” he says, not boastfully, but rather as though he can’t imagine where stress could possibly come from.
Hong Kong’s Enchanted Port(al)
The pier is the nexus between land and water, an invitation to trust your life to a vessel mere “inches from death,” as the Roman poet Juvenal wrote. But it’s worth it. It always has been. Islands are different kinds of places with a different kind of daily life. Hong Kong’s pier is…
Planet of the Monkeys (in Hong Kong)
I felt like a visitor, even an intruder. And the eeriness of the scene underscored the vastness of our planet and the variety of life on it, and silently asked the question: To whom does our planet belong?
A Man and a Tree and the Nature of the World
Only after I saw this weary man under a tree in Hong Kong did it occur to me to ask the fundamental and important question: Why is it that in some places, as here, people can rest peacefully in public and not fear for their safety, while in other places the public space is a dangerous one?
Impressions of Singapore
Singapore is the battle between old and new, the product of three ethnic groups shepherd into the 21st century under the canopy of a common tongue and a united vision. The result is tension between past and future, but not among citizens. It is…
The Immigrant Man and the Immigrant Girl
This unlikely story is mostly about the immigrant girl, but it started with the immigrant man. And it ended with every country whose bounty and success attract people seeking a better life, because there in front of me was the whole immigration debate in a nutshell: a girl fleeing a country where she was valued less even than the clothes she wore, a new country that took her in, and a local population increasingly fed up with immigrants.
A Celebration of Turkey’s Erdogan in Sweden’s Capital (And the Debate Over Immigration)
A pro-Erdogan celebration in Stockholm, Sweden highlights a larger debate about the balance between preserving a country’s culture, on one hand, and admitting refugees and other immigrants, on the other. Or to look at it differently: “Who are ‘we’?” and “How much of ‘them’ should we tolerate?”
Bath, UK: Two Cities in One
Bath, UK is two cities in one. The first is classically attractive, the second, positively ravishing, luring visitors with pedestrian malls and fine food and diverse culture and seductive charm. You really don’t want to miss it!
