Your Hong Kong weekend drinks guide for February 7-9
With Lunar New Year in the rear-view mirror and Valentine's Day just around the corner, the party doesn't stop in this city. Le Chamber from Seoul, one of Asia's 50 Best Bars, will visit Ozone, while The Bombay Canteen will drop by for a stint at Bar Leone – and Terrible Baby has a cocktail for those looking for love in Hong Kong. Friday, February 7 Ozone x Le Chamber Ozone, the highest bar in Hong Kong, is hosting Le Chamber. Photo: Handout
What: It's a new month – and the highest bar in Hong Kong is hosting mixology high-fliers Le Chamber for one night only. Louis Eom and Mr Lee will represent the visiting Seoul bar, which garnered the 48th spot on last year's Asia's 50 Best Bars, and is known for serving modern twists on classics like the Sidecar made with oolong and English breakfast tea – or using Korean ingredients like the medicinal Ssanghwa tea.
Where: Level 118/F, The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong, International Commerce Centre, 1 Austin Road West, West Kowloon
When: 7pm-11pm Saturday, February 8 Terrible Baby Terrible Baby's February special cocktail, At the APT. Photo: Handout
What: With Valentine's Day menus and offers just around the corner, Terrible Baby is ahead of the curve with their At the APT cocktail to celebrate this season of love. Until the end of the month, head to Eaton HK to try this combination of vodka, pineapple juice, hibiscus cordial, lime juice and raspberries, finished with sparkling wine.
Where: 4/F, Eaton HK, 380 Nathan Road, Jordan
When: 2pm-2am Sunday, February 9 Bar Leone x The Bombay Canteen and Chaat The interior of Bar Leone. Photo: Handout
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HKFP
4 days ago
- HKFP
12 arrested in Hong Kong-Shenzhen joint operation targeting suspected fake concert tickets
Hong Kong and Shenzhen authorities have arrested a total of 12 people in a joint operation targeting the manufacturing and sale of suspected fake concert tickets. More than 400 high-quality counterfeit or half-finished fake concert tickets were seized by Hong Kong and Shenzhen police in a recent crackdown on a cross-border syndicate, the city's police force said at a press conference on Sunday. Four men, aged between 24 and 39, were apprehended in Shenzhen, including a Hong Kong man who mainly resides in mainland China and is said to be the mastermind of the syndicate. During the raid in Shenzhen, local authorities seized suspected counterfeit tickets for ongoing and upcoming events, printing machines, invisible ink, cutters, envelopes, and other equipment used to produce the suspected fake tickets. In Hong Kong, seven men and one woman, aged 19 to 65, were arrested for offences including conspiracy to defraud, possession of false documents, obtaining money by deception, and money laundering. They were linked to at least 16 cases of fake concert tickets, with total estimated losses exceeding HK$100,000. Local media reported that the tickets included the concert of South Korean pop star Kwon Ji-yong, also known as G-Dragon. Police said last week that his fans were scammed out of more than HK$610,000 worth of fake tickets to his sold-out Hong Kong concerts. Police said the seized tickets were highly convincing, with the font, anti-counterfeit features, and paper quality closely resembling those of genuine tickets. However, there were minor flaws that could be spotted with the naked eye, for example, differences in the wording of the English terms and conditions, as well as variations in the placement of punctuation marks in the Chinese text. In June, eight people were arrested for allegedly selling high-quality counterfeit tickets to concerts by Cantopop star Nicholas Tse, Taiwanese singer Jay Chou, and four other musicians. The eight suspects were part of a cross-border syndicate involved in at least 40 suspected scams, according to local media, with total losses estimated at around HK$650,000.
HKFP
27-07-2025
- HKFP
Moving between cities and tongues, poet Tim Tim Cheng wants to put Hong Kong's writing on the map
Hong Kong poet Tim Tim Cheng's social awakening began on one Lunar New Year day in February 2011. At that time, Cheng – still a teenager – was among a small crowd that gathered in Choi Yuen Tsuen for an arts festival, dubbed 'Choi Yuen Tsuen Woodstock,' put together by villagers, indie musicians, artists, academics, and activists to count down the village's final days. The village was set to be torn down to make way for a high-speed rail project connecting Hong Kong to mainland China, despite fierce resistance from villagers and activists. That day, Cheng watched frontman and lyricist Leung Wing-lai of Hong Kong band An Id Signal, who, with no stage to play on, stood barefoot in the dry soil and wailed into the mic as clouds of dust billowed around the audience. Up to that point, for most of Cheng's life, Hong Kong had felt like a blur. 'Choi Yuen Tsuen captured moments when Hong Kong came into sharper focus for me,' she said. Fast forward 14 years, Cheng, now a published poet who splits her time between Glasgow and Hong Kong, was in a much larger crowd at the band's album launch in April. Her connection with An Id Signal has also come full circle. Cheng, who recalled first seeing the band as a secondary school student, is credited with the translation of the band's lyrics for its latest release. 'It was volunteer work,' she said of the translation project. The band's single 'Volatile Consolation' makes an appearance in her latest English-language poetry collection, The Tattoo Collector – the off-kilter, dissonant screams translated onto paper. Writing about those moments, she said, was a way to connect with history. 'I think one of the biggest takeaways I got from writing this book is to sit with the pain of the disappearance of formative things, be it music venues or large-scale protests,' Cheng said, alluding to shuttered livehouses and mass protests in Hong Kong. The Tattoo Collector, Cheng's second book, was published in 2024 – three years after she moved to the UK and just a year after she published a shorter collection, Tapping at Glass. Two months ago, The Tattoo Collector was longlisted for the inaugural poetry category of the Jhalak Prize, which awards books by writers of colour in the UK and Ireland. Earlier this month, Girl Ghosts, one of the poems in The Tattoo Collector, was shortlisted for the Forward Prizes for Poetry, one of the leading poetry awards in the two countries. Now the poet is branching out and starting to think that translation could help deepen her relationship with Hong Kong's literature – in both English and Chinese – and the city itself. New generation Cheng, 32, is part of a new generation of Anglophone Hong Kong poets, following a lineage of literary figures and translators from the city, such as Jennifer Wong, Mary Jean Chan, and Nicholas Wong. Hong Kong's English literature has found increasing recognition over the past decade. Thanks to those writers, there is a growing interest among academics in this literary genre to understand how residents feel about the social and political changes in the city. 'They paved the way for writers like me who write about Hong Kong,' she said. However, save for a quip or two in English, Cheng's interview was conducted fully in Cantonese – reflecting her in-between cultural belonging. Cheng grew up in a working-class family in a public housing estate in Tin Shui Wai, in the northwestern New Territories. She was raised by her Indonesian-Chinese great-grandmother and grandmother, who moved to the city from Fujian. She never learned much about Hong Kong from them or her Cantonese-Hokkien parents. 'When I was younger, I wanted my English to be perfect, so I avoided Chinese books. But that was a terrible way to think,' she said, looking back on an Anglophilic streak she had during her time at an English-language secondary school and casting it aside as a symptom of the early-2010s-era British 'soft power' invasion. Cheng did a double major in English and education at Hong Kong Baptist University, where she formally studied and wrote English poetry. After graduation, she spent several years working as an English teacher. Teacher salaries were decent, but burnout eventually set in. Her last job as a full-time teacher was at the Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, a somewhat unorthodox secondary school in Kowloon City, which allows students specialising in creative arts to work on their own passion projects in their own time. Pointing to the catalysing effect the students had on her and lamenting the lack of 'sustenance' that the city could give her writing, Cheng left Hong Kong to pursue a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Edinburgh – with a loan from a friend – in 2021. 'Lived outside, hidden behind' The poet signed copies of The Tattoo Collector by crossing out her transliterated English name, 'Tim Tim Cheng,' and scribbling the Chinese characters of her name underneath. Occasional Cantonese colloquialisms appear in Cheng's English poems, possibly alienating – or engaging – readers outside Hong Kong. She harbours a sense of scepticism towards the English language. Despite it being her default 'literary language,' she feels both close to and alienated from it. English is a language she has simultaneously 'lived outside' and '[hidden] behind,' she writes in her book. While bilingualism is usually treated as a prized skill in Hong Kong, the poet has a more ambiguous take. 'BYELINGUAL,' Cheng wrote in a text message to HKFP, referring to the state of speaking two languages but losing proficiency in both. It was her sense-for-sense translation of a Cantonese idiom literally meaning 'neither salty nor bland,' which she had earlier used in an interview to describe how she viewed her relationship with the two languages. The Tattoo Collector oscillates between Hong Kong, where she was born and raised, and Scotland, where she is currently based. It features conversations on class and privilege with a classmate in Glasgow and memoirs of Hidden Agenda, a defunct live music venue in Hong Kong's industrial district that was raided by the police in 2016, as well as rural landscapes, motherhood, immigration, and pro-democracy protests. Meanwhile, Girl Ghosts, a poem partly inspired by stories she heard from her mother and grandmother, is a homage to the poet's family roots in Indonesia and Fujian. These hybridities and in-betweens have left Cheng feeling like something of an outsider, never involved enough in one place or one language. But her plans to live between Hong Kong and Glasgow have necessitated acceptance of that identity. 'If I'm writing about Hong Kong from the position of someone who's outside the city, there comes a point where I have to accept that my understanding can't fully represent the experience of people who are here,' Cheng said. 'This collection actually isn't very 'Hong Kong,'' she said about her new book. There are just too many niche aspects of the city that would still feel foreign or unknown to the broader public at home, she explained. 'Hidden Agenda – who the heck would know about that?' Yet, Cheng, who references specific policy issues in her work, is anything but detached from the city's affairs. Hong Kong's cutthroat property market, a whale that succumbed to a gash on its back two summers ago, and a stalled reclamation megaproject appear as short vignettes in her poem 'Lantau (Rotten Head),' a reference to the archaic Chinese name for the city's biggest island. Cheng admits she was a bit 'reckless' when picking out her subject matter. 'After I got the contract from the publisher, I realised I could write anything,' she said. It got to a point that Cheng received reviews saying that her poems were incomprehensible or that they were too reliant on gimmicky Chinese characters. On the one hand, she dismissed the criticisms, saying that her critics would have understood her writing better if they had resorted to Google. On the other hand, she had a positive reaction. 'I actually like seeing these comments, because I started out writing with the intention of serving an audience that knows what happened, to write in our own language,' she said. It was a matter of balancing 'which people you want to reach and the scale you want to achieve.' Diaspora When discussing the locales that shape her work, she is hesitant to identify herself as part of Hong Kong's diaspora. Indeed, she hasn't completely settled overseas. Cheng, who now lives – and writes – between Hong Kong and Scotland, is already preparing to start teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's English Department in September. Before flying back to Glasgow for a four-month stint in May, she spent a little under half a year in Hong Kong: teaching, holding book talks, editing, and supervising master's projects, scraping together funds to pay for a five-year talent visa, student loans, flights, and rent in the UK. Yet she is somewhat wary of Hongkongers overseas. 'Some Hongkongers here don't want to hang around other Hongkongers because they're worried their children won't be able to integrate and become a 'real UK Citizen,'' Cheng said, with an air of contempt. Cheng recalls attending a Lunar New Year fair, where Hongkongers – those 'who had decided they weren't going back,' she said – printed out Hong Kong road signs, mailboxes, and vending machines as decorations, as if to preserve an image of the city they knew. 'But maybe Hong Kong's streets have changed so much that they're no longer the same image,' she said. 'I still want to know what's happening on both sides; I'm a bit nosy like that.' Slow to pigeonhole herself into overseas publishers' cliches of what a 'diaspora' poet might be, Cheng doesn't feel the need to idealise Hong Kong, as some self-proclaimed diaspora poets might do for their home countries. 'You left for a reason. Your origin might not have given you enough, so why talk about it like it's something great?' she asked. For Cheng, translating is also a way to put Hong Kong writers on the map, without overtly caving to the Anglospheric gaze. 'I want to catch up on Chinese stuff that I missed out on, but I don't want to deviate too much from what I'm currently doing,' she said. She recently began translating Hong Kong writer Lee Ka-yee's essay collection Exposure, under the mentorship of literary translator Jennifer Feeley, who translated the works of the city's late literary icon Xi Xi. 'It's also a way of putting my understanding of Hong Kong to the test,' Cheng added. 'A lot of writing that comes out of Hong Kong, especially work that can make it into the English-speaking world, always has this vibe that it was made with the expectation of being seen by other people. But Ka-yee and other local Hong Kong writers just approach writing simply in terms of how they see the world, how Hongkongers see the world. And I want to bridge those gazes through translation,' she said. 'Maybe it's also a way to tell my younger, 12-, 13-year-old self: You actually can flow between Chinese and English.'
South China Morning Post
18-07-2025
- South China Morning Post
Bar Leone's Lorenzo Antinori on the secret to his latest Asia's 50 Best Bars win
Bar Leone is drenched in Italian kitsch – portraits of famous (and not-so-famous) Serie A footballers, vintage movie posters of Al Pacino, even Vacanze di Natale '91. Now, after being crowned Asia's Best Bar for the second year running at this week's Asia's 50 Best Bars awards in Macau, perhaps it's time staff found room on the wall for one more poster – of Rocky. Bar Leone's story mirrors Sylvester Stallone's underdog tale. Like Rocky Balboa – the unknown brawler who shocked the world by going the distance with champion Apollo Creed – this Bridges Street cocktail bar burst onto the scene, barely a year old, and achieved a historic result, clinching the title of Asia's Best Bar before being announced runner-up at World's 50 Best Bars later in the year. In the sequel, Balboa cemented his legitimacy by defeating Creed. Similarly, Bar Leone topped the Asia rankings again this year, proving last year's result was no fluke. Lorenzo Antinori behind the counter at Bar Leone. Photo: SCMP/Jocelyn Tam 'When you get validated a second time by something like 50 Best, it's amazing,' says co-founder Lorenzo Antinori of his establishment's latest triumph, flashing a grin. 'But we've never really worked towards a number. We work towards creating good experiences,' he adds with perfect Italian charm. Antinori is no stranger to success. His bar programme at The Four Seasons' Argo earned widespread acclaim, and within the F&B industry, he's well-liked and respected for his work across continents. But Bar Leone's success feels different. The constant line outside is a clear sign of Bar Leone's new-found prominence, signalling a shift in Hong Kong's bar scene from (former number one) Coa and Shin Hing Street to Bridges Street. Yet inside, little has changed. The staff are still welcoming despite heightened customer expectations, and the food and drinks are of the same stand-out quality despite the surging number of guests and orders. 'Nothing changed but everything changed,' muses Antinori of the past 12 months. The Asia's 50 Best Bars winners celebrate after the ceremony in Macau. Photo: Handout Last time we spoke, Antinori asserted that Leone's success was 'not about the drinks' – a seemingly fanciful claim for a cocktail bar charging not insignificant sums. After all, why pay for vibes at Leone when cheaper options exist?
