B&B Hong Kong Style
B&B or "bed and breakfast" is a popular choice of accommodation for travellers in many parts of the world, including Asian destinations such as Taiwan and Japan but in Hong Kong, many of them operate in a grey area due to the lack of specific regulations.
Alternative Paths to Universities
Associate Degrees were introduced in 2000 to provide more opportunities for students to pursue tertiary education if they failed to get onto a traditional undergraduate programme. They were supposed to lead to either jobs or to eventual entry into a university degree course. Varsity looks at whether they have fulfilled their promise.
Sensing Cinema
Cinema is an experience of sound and vision but that doesn't mean the blind and deaf can't enjoy it too. As Varsity learns, audio descriptions can bring the cinema-going experience alive for the blind. While subtitles that go beyond dialogue to descriptions of other sounds in a film enrich cinema for the deaf.
Differing Fortunes Await Young Politicians Across Political Divide
More and more young people are entering politics in Hong Kong, but what kind of support can they expect? Varsity learns young politicians in the pro-establishment camp have access to far more resources than their pan-demoracy counterparts.
A Wordy Debate
An official signboard in the New Territories written in simplified Chinese sparked a backlash against the writing system. Purists fear simplified characters will replace traditional characters in Hong Kong.
Doulas in Demand
Parents of Dragon Year babies can expect competition for many services and goods. From hospital beds to baby formula and down the road, school places. But for the new parents, there is also a scramble for the services of doulas who give specialised help to new mums.
Time to be a Dad
Hong Kong lags behind other developed economies in providing paternity leave for new fathers but the government is hoping to set an example by giving male civil servants paid paternity leave. Varsity talks to some fathers about what being home during the first days of the children's lives means to them.
Peel Off the Label
The recent court-cases over whether foreign domestic workers should have the right to apply for the right of abode in Hong Kong has sparked heated debate. Filipinos and Indonesians have borne the brunt of emotional rhetoric warning and doomsday predictions. But while most Filipinos are working as domestic helpers in Hong Kong, the territory is also home to a Filipino community that includes professionals and business people. Varsity meets some of them.
Remembering or Re-imagining British Hong Kong?
Why would young people who were in kindergarten when Hong Kong was handed over from Britain to China feel nostalgic about colonial Hong Kong? Is nostalgia for a seemingly rose-tinted past a kind of escape from disatisfaction with the present? Varsity explores.
Dead Confusing
Government policy on columbaria and funeral niches leaves public in the dark when it comes to finding resting places for their departed loved ones.
