Category: Editorials
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The “Writing Singapore” issue of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal will be available in October 2018. Joshua Ip, one of the two guest editors who read the submissions with us, has written the following editorial. Also read Eddie Tay’s editorial…
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The “Writing Singapore” issue of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal will be available in October 2018. Eddie Tay, one of the two guest editors who read the submissions with us, has written the following editorial. Also read Joshua Ip’s editorial…
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[Header image, entitled “Kasuy”, is by Ricardo M. de Ungria.] File by genre file, they pulled into the computer station almost relentlessly. It was like being hemmed in skin to skin inside an MRT coach during the morning rush hour,…
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The first issue of Cha was published ten years ago in November 2007. It was also ten years after Hong Kong’s handover to China. These two facts are not coincidental. Since the beginning of Cha, I have completed my PhD…
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One of the pleasures of putting together this issue was seeing the rich interpretation of our theme. “Writing Japan” is not simply a matter of a Japanese writer in Japan writing in Japanese for a Japanese audience. Its scope is…
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Jo Shapcott’s poem “Myself Photographed” begins with an affirmative statement: “So this is me.” This line draws our attention to the subject of the photograph, although it does so with a slightly wry, or perhaps uncertain, tone provided by…
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‘Send me a postcard darling. How can I make you understand?’ —Shocking Blue In Chris Marker’s 1982 film, Sans Soleil, the female narrator whom we never see—Alexandra Stewart in the English version—reads, in a simultaneously insistent and soothing voice, fragments…
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‘The umbrella’s enigma remains unsolved.’ —Jean Baudrillard, Fragments, p. 79. In If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, Italo Calvino wrote of “this world dense with writing that surrounds us on all sides.” This was an apt description of the…
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My love for you is not like new linens—nice for the first week but shrinking after the first wash. “If” is the French for yew. A coniferous tree. I wish I knew who sent me this dream: “Tammy (or Lai-Ming?),…
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I am a proud, obsessive aunt. I ask my sisters to tag me whenever they post pictures and videos of my niece and nephew on Facebook. These are the notifications I love to receive the most. I play the videos…
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In May this year, I was fortunate enough to be invited by poet Ricardo de Ungria to be a foreign panellist on the second week of the 54th Silliman University National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, the Philippines. The workshop is…
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Valiant Beauty Seen on the Hong Kong Baptist University campus . Words from educators in Hong Kong: My students have told me they’re boycotting classes indefinitely. I am proud of them. How can one not be moved?—Eddie Tay I applaud…
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A Touch Of CrueltyIn The Mouth. Looking at old photos leads me to believe that the body evolves.—Edouard Levé I love to recall my dreams, no matter what is in them.—ibid. Of course, telling someone your insult is like telling…
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Venice, June 2013 ..Meetings with Remarkable Men and Women (Selected) The editorial for the Sixth Anniversary Issue of Cha i. There was a coffee house not too far from the university library (but far enough to deter most students from taking…
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Hula Hooping (First published in Berfrois on 28 February, 2013.) . . “First snowfall of the year, Issy-Les-Moulineaux” by Oliver Farry . I don’t want to be like a fruit that is small, round and has a bland taste. I like being written…
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this editorial was originally posted here | read the fifth anniversary issue of Cha here A Hundred Years of Karma Recently I’ve been riding the bus a lot—three hours a day, more or less. I spend one eighth of my time…
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originally posted here. In My Piecemeal Fashion With this pen I take in hand my selves and with these dead disciples I will grapple. (Anne Sexton, “Mother and Jack and the Rain”, Collected Poems, p.…
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originally posted here. Pillow Books [1] Things that quicken the heart/give you goose bumps—A Saturday morning latte, sprinkled with nutmeg. A cup of warm red wine infused with cinnamon. The wails of the neighbour’s cat—more human than feline. The alarm…
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originally posted here. Listening Outloud My favourite place in Hong Kong is forever tied to a book, or rather a scene from an audio book. The spot is a small glade a few kilometres south of Tai O’s salt marshes…
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originally posted here CHINA: WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT COULD BE . In an interview in 2008, I was asked whether my loyalty lay with “Hong Kong” or “China.” I remember finding the question easy to answer: “Hong Kong,…
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originally posted here THE CHINESE CURSE “May you live in interesting times.” Thus goes the first part of the famous Chinese curse, or at least the curse commonly attributed to the Chinese. Like all good curses at first sight it…
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originally posted here When You Live with a Poet When you live with a poet, you know exactly which three-year-old work she means when she asks, “Did you like the enjambment in the second stanza?” When you live with a…
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originally posted here The Mortuary and the App In this issue of Cha, we have a special section of essays devoted to picture book authors, curated by our Reviews Editor Eddie Tay. In one of these pieces, “Portrait of a…
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Originally posted here. Bathing in a Ski-Suit: Writing in a Second Language Background: On 30th April, 2010, I gave a speech at the official launch of VAANI, a group of Asian women writers and artists based in London. The launch…
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Thoughts of Trains; Trains of Thought There are two conflicting images of train travel. The first is of a train journey as romance, an unhurried and meandering trip through exotic lands—a luxurious ride eastward on the Orient Express, the slow…
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Better Housekeeping Anniversaries are, of course, a traditional time to take stock, find your bearings, make predictions about future directions. On the occasion of our second anniversary issue, I felt this would be a good opportunity to do the same…
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The current issue of Cha features a review of Todd Swift’s latest poetry collection, Seaway: New and Selected Poetry. One of the poems in the book, “Kanada Post”, offers this meditation on the expatriate experience. I remember some other life…
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– UNDER THE MOON, UNDER THE RAIN-HAT–0 Normally, the process for choosing a cover image for an upcoming issue of Cha is quite straightforward, and my co-editor and I come to a consensus without much trouble. This time, however, the…
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THE YEAR OF THE SHOE For a few days following the incident at Cambridge University in which a young German protestor threw a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiaboa, the small thread of the web that originates from my house…
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TIME AND DISTANCE Recently my Hong Kong-born co-editor has developed a series of strange new habits, or, perhaps more accurately, several symptoms of the same habit. Her new quirks include buying instant noodles in bulk, lingering in front of dim…
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