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Hong Kong City · Hong KongEditor’s note: Lydia Wong’s evocative essay explores salt as both a material and metaphorical force in Hong Kong’s cultural, political, and sensual identity. From ancient salt fields to contemporary political repression, she traces how salt symbolises preservation, resistance, and longing. Blending personal memory, linguistic insight, and historical reflection, Wong links salt’s transformative nature to the city’s fading freedoms and irreverent …Read Article
“SALTY WET 鹹濕” by Lydia Wong

Books · China📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Click HERE to read all entries in Cha on Mending Bodies. Hon Lai Chu (author), Jacqueline Leung (translator), Mending Bodies, Two Lines Press, 2025. 240 pgs.
For those who haven’t read the original Chinese version of Mending Bodies, this review contains some spoilers.
The climactic scene of Mending Bodies, Hon Lai Chu’s novel recently translated into English by Jacqueline…Read Article
“The Worst Kind of Dystopia: Hon Lai Chu’s 𝑀𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐵𝑜𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑠” by Luca Griseri

Singapore · Singapore📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Thammika Songkaeo, Stamford Hospital, Penguin Random House SEA, 2025. 256 pgs.
Stamford Hospital explores the solitude inherent in urban life and the ways in which immigrant mothers in the modern era navigate that solitude while balancing personal ambition and domestic responsibility. For too long, motherhood has been romanticised as a noble ideal—yet the loneliness of over…Read Article