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5 of the best things to do in Hong Kong this weekend June 20-22

5 of the best things to do in Hong Kong this weekend June 20-22

From art to meaty Italian brunches, Hong Kong is dishing up something for everyone this weekend.
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Art lovers can head to M+ to see 'Trevor Yeung: Courtyard of Detachments', a reconfiguration of the Hong Kong artist's solo exhibition featured at the 2024 Venice Biennale.
At Italian steakhouse Carna, charismatic Tuscan chef
Dario Cecchini returns for a weekend of fun and food, while fans of Japanese manga series
One Piece can head to Moko shopping centre for a pop-up with lifestyle brand Miniso.
Movie fans can watch 28 Years Later, the hit horror series' latest instalment.
1. Yoga to de-stress
As part of a programme to mark International Day of Yoga – celebrated every year on June 21 – the Iyengar Yoga Centre Hong Kong invites people to let go of stress in a session led by its director George Dovas.

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M+ museum showcases 20th century Cantonese art
M+ museum showcases 20th century Cantonese art

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M+ museum showcases 20th century Cantonese art

The latest marquee exhibition to open at M+, Hong Kong's museum of contemporary visual culture , is 'Canton Modern: Art and Visual Culture, 1900s-1970s', a sweeping exploration of Guangdong province's artistic evolution and its enduring influence on Asian modernism . Debuting on June 28 and running until October 5, the show assembles more than 200 works from institutional and private collections, many of which have never before been displayed publicly, to trace the interplay between Cantonese creativity and the sociopolitical currents of the 20th century. Known throughout much of Chinese history as part of the Lingnan region, Guangdong witnessed a shift from the restrained aesthetics of classical ink painting as artists confronted the rapid societal changes of the time. Pioneers such as Gao Jianfu , whose 1932 masterpiece Flying in the Rain reimagined traditional bird-and-flower motifs through dynamic movement and emotional intensity, epitomised this shift. Flying in the Rain (1932) by Gao Jianfu. Photo: courtesy Art Museum, CUHK Art mirrored the region's position as both a cradle of revolutionary thought – Sun Yat-sen's 1911 uprising originated in Guangdong – and a laboratory for artistic experimentation. As printmakers, photographers and cartoonists, these creators used mass media to document social upheaval, from the Japanese occupation to post-war reconstruction, creating a visual vocabulary that balanced regional pride with a national consciousness. Cantonese artists mastered the art of going viral long before social media. The 1940 'Exhibition of Guangdong Cultural Heritage' showcased woodblock prints and political cartoons that circulated through clandestine networks, amplifying leftist ideologies during the second Sino-Japanese war. Liao Bingxiong's satirical sketches, for example, skewered wartime corruption while Yau Leung's street photography captured Hong Kong's post-1949 identity crisis – caught between British colonialism and Communist influence from north of the border. As M+ curator Tina Pang Yee-wan notes, the works of these creators 'takes us back in time as witnesses to the formation of our image-driven world'. Mother and Child in the Rain (1932) by Fang Rending. Photo: courtesy MK Lau Collection The exhibition's second act examines how artists negotiated shifting gender norms amid revolution and reconstruction. Wong Siu-ling's 1941 oil painting Sewing for You subverted traditional guixiu (gentlewoman) tropes by portraying a woman as an agent of wartime resilience. After the formation of the Chinese Communist state in 1949, socialist realism co-opted this imagery, transforming women into symbols of state vitality.

Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev plays subdued Beethoven and colourful Grieg in Hong Kong
Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev plays subdued Beethoven and colourful Grieg in Hong Kong

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Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev plays subdued Beethoven and colourful Grieg in Hong Kong

The secret to a good story is, as they say, in the telling. Legendary Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev wasted no time telling his tale to a packed audience in Hong Kong on June 17, launching into the Shigeru Kawai grand piano the very second he sat down. His recital was made up of two clearly opposed halves. The first saw his subdued yet thoughtful expressions of pathos and beauty in two of Beethoven's pillar sonatas, while a vivid depiction of Nordic nostalgia in a selection of Grieg's Lyric Pieces came after the intermission. The multifaceted musician-composer, whose distinguished international career began when he won first prize in the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition, showed he had some real doozies up his sleeves despite exercising considerable emotional restraint in the first piece, Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8, the 'Pathétique'. Indeed, those expecting more outward expressions of the dramatic, agitated aspects of the music may have felt like they showed up at the wrong wedding. Expressions of pathos in the Grave introduction were more introspective in his hands, and any showy displays in the ensuing Allegro di molto con brio were equally shunned.

‘I'll keep writing': Chinese novelist Mai Jia will not be outdone by AI
‘I'll keep writing': Chinese novelist Mai Jia will not be outdone by AI

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‘I'll keep writing': Chinese novelist Mai Jia will not be outdone by AI

At this year's Beijing International Book Fair, a forum on writers' perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) saw Chinese author Mai Jia make a gentle but firm stand. Dressed in a light beige jacket, the celebrated novelist sat alongside three other panellists as he offered an unusually personal and philosophical take on AI and human creativity. A recipient of the prestigious Mao Dun Literature Prize, Mai Jia is best known for his espionage fiction. His reflections touched on a deeper unease shared by writers and artists around the world: where human creativity stands in a time when machines are learning to imitate – and even threatening to outpace – human imagination. 'I've never really used AI,' the novelist said. 'But I've played with it. And I played with the intent of proving it's not worth playing with.' His remarks drew laughter, but it was evident he was serious about the mindset behind his experiment. Amid AI threat, Hong Kong artists say they must hone what makes art uniquely human 'I approached it with distrust. I hoped to mock it. And to a certain extent, I succeeded in doing that, so I never really used it.' Reports that Mai Jia had somehow contributed to the development of AI-generated fiction in his style were, in his own words, 'pure rumour'. 'I never demonstrated anything. I never helped build such a thing,' he said plainly. For the novelist, the rise of AI is not just a question about the future – it's a reckoning with the past. 'When we talk about AI, we think we're talking about the future. But that's not the wise thing to do,' he said. 'AI has a surging, even violent vitality. It's coming at us like a monster, like a giant we can't stop, and we have no idea where it's going or what it will become.' The 31st Beijing International Book Fair opened on Wednesday, displaying around 220,000 books from China and abroad. Photo: AFP He suggested that rather than speculate about the future of AI, people should examine its roots and view it as the culmination of a long 'digital revolution'. In his view, this revolution began when numbers first entered the human language roughly 5,000 years ago. 'When early writing systems emerged, numbers were a part of them. But numbers were never content to remain just a part of writing. They've always wanted to rebel.' The writer traces the first major turning point back to 1837, with the invention of Morse code – 'a great technology created by a great man,' he said – which allowed a message to be transmitted across oceans using only digits. This marked the first true success of the digital revolution for Mai Jia. But it came at a cost. 'Digital encoding brought us immense convenience. A message could travel from China to Europe or the United States [in one] morning. But it also introduced trouble,' he said. 'It brought cryptography. It dissolved language. It turned language into a puzzle, an obstacle.' British musicians protest government's AI plans with an 'almost' silent album Later came the second wave – computers, developed in the mid-20th century through the foundational work of figures like John von Neumann and Alan Turing. 'Instead of converting writing into ten digits, they reduced it to just two: zero and one,' he said. This, he argued, was a more complete digitisation than Morse code ever achieved. The benefits were vast – 'an entire library can now fit in a screen, a single phone' – but so were the downsides. 'When that screen is in your hand, yes, it holds endless text. But it also drains your time, digs into your greed, and pulls you downward,' he said. 'It disintegrates your attention. It exaggerates your desire to sink.' The third wave, the novelist believes, is AI. And it's the most transformative yet. 'For the first time, we are talking not just about reading or attention but about writing itself. Before, no one imagined that technology could replace the human mind in creating.' He said that today's AI revolution has created something new: a creative anxiety disorder. Over 1,700 exhibitors from 80 countries and regions took part in the fair, with Malaysia as this year's guest country of honour. Photo: Xinhua 'I don't know how this revolution will evolve. But here's what I do know: Even if AI defeats me, even if every word it writes is better than mine, I will still write,' he said. 'Not because I want to compete with it. But because writing is how I survive. If I don't read, if I don't write, I don't know how to live.' He ended with a quiet but firm conviction: 'If AI writes better than me, I'll write. If I write better than it – of course, I'll write.'

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