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Editor’s note: Chris Song offers a rigorous meditation on the Fleurs des lettres Issue 118 cover controversy, where a grieving teenager’s image appeared without consent. Reading the intervention of Hong Kong Readers’ Bookstore, the magazine’s board of directors, and the…
![[ESSAY] “A Face, a Cover, a Failure: 𝐹𝑙𝑒𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑠 Issue 118 Cover Controversy” by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/copy-of-copy-of-copy-of-copy-of-copy-of-a-fragment-of-history-a-life-bound-in-dependence-with-the-river-as-kin.png?w=596)
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Editor’s note: Julia Merican reads Lu Lei’s practice through meals, menus, embroidery, and exhibitions, attending to how intimacy operates as both method and politics. From private dinners with strangers to layered textile works, Lu uses food and language to negotiate…
![[ESSAY] “A Seat at the Table: Lu Lei and the Politics of Intimacy” by Julia Merican](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/64901cc90ad6cbfa52190a71-biography_1325594-resize-1920-1234.webp?w=1024)
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[FICTION] “Sweating Labour, Angry Tears” by Kathy Nguyen In 2021, when the American economy slowly reopened after the world barely survived the dystopian ruinations caused by the pandemic, I chauffeured Má to one of her appointments in Fayetteville. Forty-six years…
![[FICTION] “Sweating Labour, Angry Tears” by Kathy Ngoc Nguyen](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/abstract-orange-brushstroke-white-paper.jpg?w=1024)
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Read Zheng Wang’s essay “A Gaze Across the River: On Translating Zhang Zhihao” HERE. Editor’s note: These translations, rendered by Zheng Wang, bring together a decade-spanning selection of Zhang Zhihao’s poems that dwell on family, rural landscapes, ageing, grief, desire,…
![[TRANSLATION] “Ten Poems” by Zhang Zhihao, translated by Zheng Wang](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/zhange28098s-profile-photo.jpeg?w=591)
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Editor’s note: Zheng Wang’s essay reflects on his encounter with the poet Zhang Zhihao and the process of translating his poetry across languages and generations. It traces their meeting by the Yangtze River into a broader meditation on rootedness, memory,…
![[ESSAY] “A Gaze Across the River: On Translating Zhang Zhihao” by Zheng Wang](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/https-__www.poetryinternational.com_en_poets-poems_poets_poet_102-28920_zhang.jpg?w=336)
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Editor’s note: Photographer Daniel Garrett examines debate over a Hong Kong protest photograph used on the cover of After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, written (2021) by Ben Rhodes, a senior adviser and speechwriter in the…
![[ESSAY] “After the Fall, Before the Image: On Reading a Hong Kong Protest as Book Cover” by Daniel Garrett](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/screenshot-2026-01-21-at-12.44.41.png?w=813)
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Editor’s note: John E. Barrios examines Norberto Roldan’s Viva España, Long Live America, staged from 25 November to 31 December 2022 in Museo Iloilo and Kri8 Art Space, as a meditation on colonial afterlives. He traces how Catholic relics, American…
![[ESSAY] “Postcolonial Ambivalence in Norberto Roldan’s 𝑉𝑖𝑣𝑎 𝐸𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑛̃𝑎, 𝐿𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝐿𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎” by John E. Barrios](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/norberto-roldan.jpg?w=1024)
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茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS [REVIEW] “The GPA of Youth: On Boredom, Brilliance and the Cost of Conformity in Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone” by Abhinav Tulachan Chetan Bhagat, Five Point Someone, Rupa Publications India, 2004.…
![[REVIEW] “The GPA of Youth: On Boredom, Brilliance and the Cost of Conformity in Chetan Bhagat’s 𝐹𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑃𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑜𝑛𝑒” by Abhinav Tulachan](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/five-point-someone-chetan-bhagat.png?w=1024)
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[ESSAY] “Fieldnotes: Bund and Flood” by Aizuddin Anuar Translator’s note: This is a translation of my own work, originally written in Malay and titled “Nota lapangan: ban dan banjir” (2025), which was published in MediaSelangor in Malaysia. Through a series…
![[ESSAY] “Fieldnotes: Bund and Flood” by Aizuddin Anuar](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/jelai-river_bund-aizuddin-anuar.jpg?w=1024)
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Editor’s note: In his latest essay for Cha, Daniel Gauss examines Dafen, a former rural settlement located in Shenzhen’s Longgang District in southern China, within the Pearl River Delta near the Hong Kong border. The essay examines Dafen’s transformation from…
![[ESSAY] “Dafen Transformed: From Painting Factory to Pre-Fab Cool Zone” by Daniel Gauss](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/img_20260117_151141.jpg?w=1024)
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