Category: Exclusive—Non-fiction
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It is difficult, at best, to take a leisurely walk in Hong Kong. The streets are congested with cars and trucks and buses, and the sidewalks are jam-packed with people. It is said that Hong Kong is a study in…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “He Wrote On” by Jeff Beyl](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/cha-an-asian-literary-journal.jpg?w=1024)
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Read “Reading Jin Yong in Translation, Part I” HERE.Click HERE to read all entries in Cha on John Minford. Jin Yong, aka Louis Cha Leung-yung (1924-2018). Picture via. ▚ Jin Yong…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Hot Popping Momma!: Reading Jin Yong in Translation, Part II” by Jeff Tompkins](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/20240315172927214401contentphoto4.jpg?w=1000)
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My wife’s family keep asking me if I “like Chinese things”. We recently went back to Hong Kong to visit them. We have been back to Hong Kong many times and although they know me quite well by now, they…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Do You Like Chinese Things?” by Jeff Beyl](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/cha-an-asian-literary-journal-1.jpg?w=1024)
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I found a small glass bottle lying in the street in Hong Kong. The bottle had no label, no embossing, no top. There was no indication of what it had originally been used for. It was just a small,…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “The Small Glass Bottle of Feathers” by Jeff Beyl](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/feathers.jpg?w=1024)
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Derek Tsang, Andrew Stanton, Minkie Spiro, and Jeremy Podeswa (directors), 3 Body Problem, 2024. We all die. Being a problem-solving species, this fact leaves us uneasy. The…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Alien Bless You: A Review of Netflix’s 3 𝐵𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑚” by Angus Stewart](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/3-body-problem.webp?w=1024)
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茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS Editor’s note: Matt Turner recently read Anthony Tao’s new poetry collection, We Met in Beijing, and went to a reading of his in New York. He wrote a short “consideration” about it all…
![[ESSAY] “Anthony Tao at Sunset Bar” by Matt Turner](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/anthony-tao_cha-an-asian-literary-journal-1.png?w=1024)
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Chinese Abacus 1814 One day, while wandering in the Mong Kok district of Kowloon, I bought an antique abacus. Known as one of the most densely populated areas on earth, Mong Kok is a busy shopping area with many open…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “The Abacus” by Jeff Beyl](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/20190329070933623.jpg?w=600)
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Read “Reading Jin Yong in Translation, Part II” HERE. Jin Yong, aka Louis Cha Leung-yung (1924–2018). Picture via. ▚ Jin Yong (author), Shelly Bryant, Gigi Chang, and Anna Holmwood…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Kung Fu Is a Store of Infinite Fun: Reading Jin Yong in Translation, Part I” by Jeff Tompkins](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/legends-of-the-condor-heroes--2.png?w=1024)
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Via. Faai-jee. That’s how to say, chopsticks, in Cantonese. That’s what my wife taught me. When we were first married, she taught me many Cantonese words for everyday things. One day, just kidding around, I called them choppers. As in,…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Don’t Call em’ Choppers” by Jeff Beyl](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/screenshot-2024-02-28-at-14.47.09.png?w=1024)
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I’d nervously sweated through the last 23 hours, certain I’d be escorted to a ventilation-less detention room to wait for a flight back to the US. And now I faced a Border Control officer who looked through my passport without…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “In Beijing: 12.26-1.10” by Matt Turner](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image0-2.jpeg?w=1024)
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“China is already a great power, and whether the next three decades will be a cold or a hot war, nothing can stop her now. By the year 2001 she will be a powerful industrial socialist State.”—Han Suyin, China in…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Han versus Kahn: 1970” by Angus Stewart](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/han-suyin-and-herman-kahn.png?w=1024)
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I blame my inability to speak Cantonese on waitresses in Chinese restaurants. My wife would say it’s all on me. To be fair, I should have kept it up. I should have practised more. You are getting better every day,…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “On Learning to Speak Cantonese” by Jeff Beyl](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cantonese.png?w=1024)
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Also read Andrew Barker’s tribute to Reid Mitchell. Photo of Reid Mitchell © Martin Alexander Describing a great and complex man as Reid Hardeman Mitchell (1955-2023) is not easy—he was a poet and a professor, bon vivant and raconteur, historian…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “A Tribute to Reid Mitchell” by Akin Jeje](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/reid-mitchell-cha-an-asian-literary-journal-2.jpg?w=1024)
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茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS [ESSAY] “Tragedies of Inequality: Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite and Jordan Peele’s Us” by Jonathan Chan Bong Joon-Ho (director), Parasite, 2019. 132 min.Jordan Peele (director), Us, 2019, 116 min. The sociologist Teo You Yenn…
![[ESSAY] “Tragedies of Inequality: Bong Joon-ho’s 𝑃𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 and Jordan Peele’s 𝑈𝑠” by Jonathan Chan](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/us.png?w=749)
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TH: James Batcho writes about Bangkok, his introduction to Asia. Normally when I come to Bangkok I stay in Sukhumvit. I’ve been doing that since my Busan days, starting around 2009, I guess. This time I’m in the Khaosan Road…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Khaosan 1996-2019” by James Batcho](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/khaosan1-blackwhite.jpg?w=1024)
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TH: In this essay, Matt Turner meditates on a couple of recent concerts he attended at Dream House and Task, both in New York. In late July this year, I attended a performance at Dream House in lower Manhattan; I…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “A Space for ‘Music'” by Matt Turner](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/dh2023_1.jpg?w=1024)
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TH: Aileen Blaney explores the gentrification of the Himalayan village in the new work-from-anywhere post-pandemic dispensation. In this piece, the coffee shop is used as a device for depicting the arrival of a cosmopolitan elite in rural India. “They’re ruining the Himalayas with their coffee shops and…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Basque Cheesecake in the Indian Himalayas” by Aileen Blaney](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/dharamshala-for-digital-nomads.jpg?w=1024)
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茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS [ESSAY] “Die With Your Pants Down: Patrick Tam’s Nomad” by Matt Turner Patrick Tam (director), Nomad (烈火青春), 1982. 157 min. This review contains spoilers. I really didn’t see the final scene coming.…
![[ESSAY] “Die With Your Pants Down: Patrick Tam’s 𝑁𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑑” by Matt Turner](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/nomad_japanese-poster.webp?w=1024)
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TH: Suo Er read part of this essay at the “Nature on Edge” panel at the Iowa City Public Library on Friday 8 September 2023, as part of the Iowa Writing Program Fall 2023. I’m not joking when I say…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Do You Have a Sea Chart in Your Mind?” by Suo Er, Translated by Suo Er and Grace Najmulski](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/suo-er.png?w=1024)
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[Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997: All Entries] TH: Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997, in 28 sections, was written originally in Chinese by Mary Wong and serialised in Ming Pao 明報 in 1997. The pieces, translated into English by…
![[Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997] “Half A Lifelong Romance” by Mary Wong, Translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/like.png?w=873)
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Translated from the Chinese original, also available below, by the author. Drawing by the author. The English translation is edited with help from David Morgan. George Lo, a watercolour teacher, provided the author advice on her painting. “Huh! So you think…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Big Sister Ping” by Jasmine Tong](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/sister-ping.png?w=1024)
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Click HERE to read Frances An’s Review of Eternal Summer of Homeland. Writing—like learning a new language, like moving across continents—is an adventure fraught with vulnerability. I began to write my first fiction collection, Eternal Summer of My Homeland, shortly…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “On Writing, Language, and the Longing for Home” BY Agnes Chew](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/agnes-chew-1.jpg?w=1024)
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Preface: À la recherche du temps perdu by Leo Ou-Fan Lee Translated from the Chineseby Heidi Huang A memoir, as the word itself implies, is a personal walk down one’s memory lane “in search of the lost time” against oblivion.…
![[EXCLUSIVE] Preface to 𝑀𝑦 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑡ℎ 𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑦: 𝐴 𝑀𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑖𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑒𝑜 𝑂𝑢-𝐹𝑎𝑛 𝐿𝑒𝑒](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/leo-ou-fan-lee_cha.jpg?w=1024)
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TH: We are pleased to present an exclusive essay by Frances An on her forthcoming novel, Ladder Brake. Frances also offered us an excerpt from the book. On Writing Ladder Brake by Frances An After her high-achieving older sister disappears,…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “On Writing 𝐿𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝐵𝑟𝑎𝑘𝑒” by Frances An](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ladder-brake-1.png?w=1024)
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Translated from the Chinese original, also available below, by the author. Drawing of Mimi by the author. Mimi I’d like to tell you about Mimi. She’s a cat, the shop cat of Taihing Fresh Fruit Store, downstairs in the Tai…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Mimi” by Jasmine Tong](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/mimi_jasmine-tong_cha-an-asian-literary-journal-1.jpg?w=1024)
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A scan of a photo I took in August 2015, with a Polaroid camera, using film made by the Impossible Project. It shows a section of a tree that was cut down. A time named “just the next day” and…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Just the Next Day” by Lydia Kwa](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/tree-shaman-1-1.jpg?w=907)
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I’ve cried a little today—at church, during the opening lines of the liturgy, and then again over Sunday brunch with my husband. Little ripples of grief bubble up to the surface, then recede. Another month of trying to get pregnant,…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Early Spring” by Sheela Jane Menon](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/story_pandemic-pup-1.jpg?w=1024)
Cha 