The nostalgia of the colonised
Ting-Jen Kuo
Taiwan is constantly forced to assert its own identity and presence. Yet this struggle hasn’t made it impervious to colonial hangovers.
Category: People & Places
The decoloniser
Munkhnaran Bayarlkhagva
Gankhuugiin Purevbat was never keen to claim credit, but his contribution to the rebirth of Mongolian Buddhism and the decolonisation of Mongolia cannot be denied.
Looking in
Ruby Jusoh
The rich traditions of Adat Perpatih in Negeri Sembilan demonstrate how deeply rooted customs can evolve while maintaining their core values.
Family duty
Kang-Chun Cheng
Creating Feeding Ghosts, a graphic memoir, was the only way Tessa Hulls could think of to repair her relationship with her mother and make sense of the responsibilities borne by each generation.
Ekphrasis
Michelle Aung Thin and Khin
Using the photographic archive to rethink Myanmar’s past.
A bookworm’s haunt
Nicholas Yong
A focus on Singaporean authors, coupled with the fact that bookstores in the city have found it increasingly difficult to survive, makes Book Bar feel like an anomaly.
An interview with Janet DeNeefe
Mekong Review
An interview with the founder and director of the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival
A third space
Ian Hollinger
When Witit Chanthamarit was a child, independent bookstores were not the rarity they are today. In opening Vacilando, he hopes to recapture the sense of community he’d felt before.
The power of queer humour
Seulki Lee
A conversation with Korean queer author and contemporary artist Ibanjiha on their art of humour and succeeding through the heteronormative and hyper-capitalist social order of South Korea.
Love and revolution
Amy Webber
The poet Kyi Zaw Aye once asked, “How can we encounter true love in times of war?” Since the 2021 coup in Myanmar, some couples have been trying to find their own answers.
You are not alone
Mili Semlani
Although democracy and media freedoms are declining in India, filmmaker Vinay Shukla seeks to inspire people to show up courageously to create a better society for everyone.
Gentle reading
Maureen Tai
At a time in which large bookstores have fallen to pressures like Hong Kong’s sky-high rents, gentle books survives as a nimble pop-up for used English-language books.
Memory and wheat
Kang-Chun Cheng
“Every time I’m here in Taiwan, I get to unpack a bit more of my family’s murky history.”
Onward the water flows
Dương Mạnh Hùng
The arts can remind us of our connections to home and nature as we are propelled forward by development projects that prioritise profit over nurturing rootedness and well-being.
Art beyond tourism
Naima Morelli
Bali is home to a thriving community of local artists with international pedigrees, all actively working from the island, opening their studios to visitors and fostering a local art community.
Dyeing art
Adil Hussain and Owais Gul
The ancient practice of dyeing yarn in Kashmir used to be the source of livelihood for hundreds of families, but modern techniques and tools have slowly pushed the tradespeople into the margins.
Forging identity
Martin Laflamme
Many Taiwanese have developed a new sense of self, proud of the island’s unique history, and Lee Teng-hui played a key role in that process.
First bend of the Nujiang
Jinendra Jain
The Kawa Karpo is one of the most sacred mountains in Tibetan Buddhism. A 250-kilometre circumambulation is completed by thousands of pilgrims every year.
Change
Peixuan Xie
As a mainland Chinese kid, I saw Hong Kong portrayed on TV as the epicentre of capitalism and sophistication; Hong Kong in real life, when I finally got to see and feel it for the first time, was much more than that.
Chinese / Indonesian
Yudhistira Agato
Living in Indonesia most of my life, I’ve always felt that I might be visibly ‘too Chinese’. In fact, Indonesia’s tricky relationship with its ethnic Chinese population began all the way back to the Dutch occupation.
This is not the Galapagos
Robert Wood
Like a magnificent tortoise, my aunt, the long-time Singaporean activist Constance Singam, ambles towards us to meet my children for the first time.
Assignment: China
David Frazier
An interview with Mike Chinoy about covering China for almost half a century, and his new book, Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic.
A voice abroad
Peter Guest
The Chinese Communist Party has “restructured the social order and silenced the people on the ground. Now they’re trying to extend their hands overseas, to silence overseas activists,” Christopher Mung says from the UK.
North Korean visits
John Gittings
John Gittings, formerly the Guardian’s East Asia editor, looks back on multiple trips to North Korea, from 1976 to 2001.
Street 200
Malin Annie Jansson
Street 200 in Phnom Penh is where people come together with a common passion for cinema.
When good Samaritans have money
Kevin Yam
The Hong Kong elite are said to be interested only in making money and not in universal values like democracy, human rights and the rule of law. But that’s not true.
The bookseller’s revolution
Emma Pei Yin
As a lead bookseller at The Book Cow, I’m not merely selling pages filled with words; I’m at the crossroads where books meet real life.
Public noise
Mikko Toivanen
Noise can be a powerful tool of protest but also healing, its cathartic value directly correlated with its loudness.
Entry from an immigrant’s diary
Thi Gammon
It had been four years since I last returned to Hanoi. I told myself that I’d never loved this city I had wanted to escape. But time may have helped heal old wounds.
Building an archive
Emi Donald
The Anjaree Archive preserves material collected over the decades by one of Thailand’s first advocacy groups for gender and sexual rights. But can an archive also tell the story of its own messy creation?
Sporting attitude
Kirsten Han
Could distance runner Soh Rui Yong’s absence from Singapore’s national team point to something bigger about how things work? He thinks this could be a “good opportunity” to ask questions.
Passport renewed
Benjamin Zawacki
Yo and Noom choose their books, in English and Thai, with care and purpose to ensure that Passport Bookshop has a clear identity and its patrons a quality read.
Reading Ma Sandar in Chiang Mai
Joe Freeman
It is especially important to pay attention to Myanmar right now, but the future of Burmese-language instruction in English is uncertain. Joe Freeman speaks with linguist Justin Watkins about his work.
A professional amateur
Brendan Ryan
It’s hard to pin down exactly how to describe Đinh Nhung and what she does. Her work has spanned art installations, photography, curation and the compilation of lexicons of queerness in Vietnam.
Inshallah
Abhishek Mehrotra
Hindu-Muslim relations are worsening across India. There have been no rumblings of communal strife in Kadayanallur yet, but news from elsewhere creates ripples of anxiety and worry.
The road to Muse
Bryony Lau
What happens in a border town when the border is closed? Bryony Lau travels to Muse in Myanmar’s northeast and reflects on its history and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bombays of the mind
Radhika Oberoi
It is impossible to mention Mumbai without alluding to its former name, Bombay. Radhika Oberoi reflects on reading Salman Rushdie’s writing about the city.
The play of power
Pauline Fan
Mak Yong encompasses elements of dance, drama, storytelling, music and ritual, and is a women-centred folk tradition nurtured by community bonds.
To the left
Erin Hale
‘Tò-uat’ means ‘turn left’ in Taiwanese Hokkien—a signal of political orientation rather than literal direction—and the bookstore’s website describes itself as “Taiwan’s only social movement–focused bookstore”.
Stating the obvious
Seulki Lee
Seulki Lee talks to Raphael Rashid about identity, belonging, and the things that people don’t want to acknowledge or discuss in South Korea.