People

Hong Kong's sole hat designer talks about her passion for making a piece of clothing not commonly worn by locals To Ms Jay Cheng,"hats are poems", as a hat is the piece of clothing that highlights the personality of its wearer. For that reason, those words have adorned the business cards of Hong Kong's only millinery trailblazer,whose clients include many local celebrities, including actoress Carina LauKar-ling and singer Eason Chan Yik-shun. "A good hat can make a big difference. It can make a beautiful lady more gorgeous," said Ms Cheng, showing her love and confidence in hats. Despite having made a name as a milliner, Ms Cheng still cannot quite explain why she has fallen in love with hats. She had started as a freelance fashion stylist after studying fine arts and printmaking in Canada. Some years ago, having decided to go back to school, she came across a course on millinery while browsing through the courses of the London College of Fashion. She was instantly hooked and decided to give it a try. Ms Cheng still remembers how she was impressed by a room full of millinery blocks when she first arrived at the college. "I felt that place was paradise to me," she said. After learning the basic techniques of making hats in the seven-day course, Ms Cheng further developed her skills by receiving training from a renowned British royal milliner, Rose Cory. In 2005, after completing the training, she gave up her job as a stylist and became a full-time milliner."I would feel sorry for myself if I did not try to be a full-time milliner, as I have developed a strong love for making hats and nobody's doing it in Hong Kong," she said. To Ms Cheng, hats have a great power of subliming a person's temperament …

Ms Denise Yeung says that women can also be great racecar drivers Ms Denise Yeung, one of the very few female racecar drivers in Hong Kong, has been participating in this traditionally male-dominated sport as an amateur racer for five years.

Some years ago, when Ms Smook worked for "Next", a jeans retailer, she started to realize the problem of how manufacturers directly discharged the dyed water and waste fabrics into the river near the factory in Bangladesh. "I was absolutely shocked and I don't want to be part of the waste," Ms Smook said.

It is another ordinary night for the toy designer sitting in the Mong Kok occupy site with his pen, iPad and notebook, which is filled with sketches and astonishing soundbites and scenes. Mr White Water, the artist's alias, designs toys that bring children and adults into a dreamy world. But he is more well-known for confronting reality through his online political comics "Boiling Frog" that went viral among netizens in 2011. Published on Facebook, his humourous and sarcastic comics against the Hong Kong government and the mainland have become very popular, but the 33-year-old political cartoonist says he faced struggles. Working as a full-time toy designer and part-time political cartoonist, he says it is hard as he has limited time to create and could barely make a living through his artwork. "The nature of political comics is not easily accepted by society," he said. His brainchild springs from the parable of the boiled frog, the idea that if water is heated slowly enough a frog will boil to death without even noticing. This described Hong Kong's situation three years ago, he said. The comics depicts his inner struggles towards political issues through portraying the life of two frogs debating current affairs. "The brown one reflects my true feelings while the green one symbolises the inner cynic in me who justifies things with scepticism," he said. By using metaphors commonly used in ordinary life, he expresses his ideas in the four-frame comic strip using a minimal style. What prompts him to use lively comics to express weighty political issues are his friends, he says. They have detached themselves from reality and seldom read the news. His comics have touched on significant moments in Hong Kong such as the umbrella movement and the anti-national education protest. "I try to bring them back …

IMAGINE leaving your family behind on New Year's Eve to tell somebody that their beloved one just died. Adding fuel to the flame, you ask the relatives to donate the organs of the dead, allowing little time for them to come to terms with the death. For Ms Tong Yuen-fan, one of the seven organ transplant coordinators in Hong Kong, her job means a constant confrontation with death day and night. "It is essentially a 24-hour task be- cause death has no schedule," said Ms Tong. When she receives a call from the Prince of Wales Hospital informing her of a potential donor, she will need to talk to the relatives about their choices as soon as possible. Time is a critical factor in organ transplant because the organs will start to deteriorate rapidly once the heart stops. How to convey the imminence of this matter to the grief-stricken families without causing antipathy is a question with no definite answer. "I would say something in condo- lence with the family. I would not bring up the topic if I feel that they are not ready to accept the death of their loved ones," she said. For instance, people would demand the doctors to resuscitate the patient even after he or she was declared brain-dead. Ms Tong added that it is important for the family to understand what brain death means and how an organ trans- plant is carried out. The mother of a do- nor kept asking every doctor she visited whether her son's death was real. It is hard to accept the death of your beloved ones when you can still feel the warmth of the body. But they are gone, together with the neural responses and brain functions. "Sometimes just being a compan- ion is enough. They need …

Q: What do you think is the major obstacle for true democracy in HK? A: I think there are really two sides of it. One is that people in power are never willing to give democracy easily because to a lot of people in power it's addictive. The more power they have, the more they want and they don't want to share it with the people. The other obstacle in many ways is whether Hong Kong people are prepared to sacrifice, are prepared to fight for a share of the power, a share of the wealth. Q: Some see Hong Kong as one of the freest cities in the world and that Beijing is already making some great concessions. Why are you fighting for democracy now, with controversial civil unrest? A: Because things change. Don't think that what you are enjoying is given, or that it will continue... So for ordinary people, like you and me, we have no protection other than having a system whereby we are ensured a free and new choice in who would be deciding things like our social policies, our electoral laws, who gets to be our secretaries, what kind of policies they devise. If you don't safeguard "one country, two systems", it will become "one country, one system". I think Hong Kong people are increasingly aware that if you want your 50 years to remain unchanged, if you want to carry out with your way of life, you want to preserve things, like Cantonese and the way we write our Chinese characters and our culture or even our breathing and living space, you've got to earn it. Q: The pan-democrats are going to veto the Beijing model and boycott the next round of consultation for the Chief Executive election methods, but some say it …

The owner of Pumpernickel says it takes her years to come up with the right recipe for running her bread business Every Pumpernickel cafeteria keeps a memo which lists the names of all its directors. The name Joan Yuen stands out not only because it is at the top of the list, but also because she has two titles — "Director" and "Head Baker".

A single mother struggles to raise her autistic son with love and strength

A chat with the longest resident in Christiania provides a glimpse of life in Denmark's self-proclaimed autonomous neighbourhood known as a safe haven for hipsters and drug sales. 

The persevering spirit of a young male ballet dancer has enabled him to reach stardom on stage.