Traditional Medicine

1. Rising stars of K-pop: Victon set their stall out with first full album, Voice: The Future is Now

   Sometimes a musical group’s talent is noticed immediately and sometimes it takes a while. Boy band Victon fall into the latter category.In the competitive world of K-pop, the seven members of Victon have shown their worth since the release of their first EP in 2016. But it wasn’t until 2019, when some members competed on the South Korean television show Produce X 101 – and one, Han Seungwoo, won a slot in the short-lived boy band X1, and then showed his artistry on stand-out 2020 solo EP Fame –…

2. Stilettos out, sneakers in: luxury designer shoes pivot as pandemic accelerates trends

   On a chilly, grey afternoon, what strikes shoppers in the Jimmy Choo’s store on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris aren’t the Avril stiletto shoes with Swarovski crystals that sell for €3,495 (US$4,250) but rather the pair of crystal-encrusted Diamond black sneakers that are €100 more expensive.The sneaker was launched two years ago, but it’s gained new relevance for a brand normally known for its 10cm-high (3.9-inch) heels.No Cannes Film Festival, no Met Gala, no nights out, postponed wedding…

3. How breathwork – ‘meditation on jet fuel’ – helped a cancer survivor overcome her depression and hives

   Beating cancer is no small victory, but for some survivors, depression follows in the wake of the celebration. After Melissa Yambao had surgery to treat early stage breast cancer in 2015, and started hormone therapy, she recognised the need for some fundamental lifestyle changes. She curbed her drinking and partying, began to exercise regularly, and looked for ways to usher in more calm. Despite not having had to undergo chemotherapy to treat her cancer, she experienced hair loss, and later,…

4. The show goes on for Singapore Art Week despite tourist restrictions, with a focus on introducing art to the community

   Singapore Art Week (SAW) gets under way this week, even though the country has yet to relax quarantine requirements for most overseas visitors.Now in its ninth year, the annual festival was initially conceived by the Singapore Tourism Board as a way to position the city state as Southeast Asia’s visual arts hub, but must carry on without the tourists, explains Tay Tong, the director of visual arts development at the National Arts Council.The event will feature dozens of exhibitions and public…

5. ‘Luang Prabang is dead’; in jewel of Laos tourism jobs have gone, businesses have closed, and the future looks uncertain – but a lot quieter

   An eerie peace has descended on Luang Prabang in Laos. Residents describe a tranquillity that has not been seen in the increasingly popular Southeast Asian tourist destination for decades.This should be high season for tourism in the town, which has held Unesco World Heritage Site status since 1995, although in recent years it has been busy year-round.Laos is a wild, landlocked country of jungle and mountains, and Luang Prabang is its crowning jewel. A spiritual place, the town is known for its…

6. Myth busting: Shenzhen’s sleazy past as short-lived gangster and gambling hub Shum Chun

   The great myth of Shenzhen bursting forth from humble fishing village to skyscraping megalopolis has been perpetuated ad nauseam for decades, by earnest politicians, foreign business consultants and lazy journalists alike. But the truth is more intriguing and, it must be said, far sleazier. Well into the 1930s, Shum Chun, the town that gave Shenzhen its name, was a gangsters’ haven serving risk-hungry Hongkongers pouring across the river that separated the British colony from the mainland into…

7. Netflix show Lovestruck in the City: a mockumentary in which the women are tough and in control

   The debut series of romance mockumentary Lovestruck in the City (Netflix, two episodes weekly) weighs in with an absorbing helping of both as it follows the adventures in love – or lack thereof – boasted about, admitted to, invented or concealed by six young men and women (three of each) making their way in the big city. Not that the city limits represent any geographical constraints, especially for on-again, off-again couple Jae-won (Ji Chang-wook) and Eun-oh (Kim Ji-won), who do their…

8. Martial arts meets special effects in The Storm Riders, where Ekin Cheng battled an invisible Fire Dragon against a blue screen

   Hong Kong cinema is constantly evolving, and martial arts directors are continually bringing something new to the genre to keep it current. The novel approach of The Storm Riders, released in 1998, was to use digital effects and computer animation in a wuxia film. The resulting martial arts fantasy, based on a popular Hong Kong comic by Ma Wing-shing, was a big hit with audiences in the city. It was helped by the presence of stars Aaron Kwok Fu-shing and Ekin Cheng Yee-kin in the leading roles,…

9. Bridgerton director Tom Verica talks working on Netflix costume drama – even though he’s not read any of the books series is based on

   Tom Verica is used to juggling.As a director, producer and actor for Shonda Rhimes’ production company Shondaland, he’s filmed dozens of episodes of gasp-worthy television. At one point, he was working behind the scenes on Rhimes’ ABC hit Scandal while moonlighting as a character (and sometimes corpse) on its time-slot neighbour How to Get Away with Murder .But it wasn’t until Bridgerton, the bingeable period romance filmed in Britain that’s the first fruit of Rhimes’ US$100 million deal with…

10. Marvel superheroes return … in WandaVision on Disney+, a quirky and original black-and-white sitcom

    When the Marvel superhero movies reached their box-office-shattering climax in 2019, nobody could have predicted the saga’s next instalment would be a kitsch, black-and-white TV sitcom called WandaVision.But a lot has changed since Iron Man and friends saved the world in that summer’s all-time record-grossing blockbuster Avengers: Endgame (and mopped up some loose plot points in Spider-Man: Far From Home shortly after.)The wildly popular franchise of 23 interconnected movies ground to a halt,…