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PostMag
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Editor's Letter
PostMagCulture

This week in PostMag: Hong Kong’s zine culture, a Macau noir and wild Tasmania

In the latest issue, we explore the city’s booming zine scene, and talk to author Lawrence Osborne about his Macau novel-turned-Netflix noir

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Zine publisher Cehryl, aka Cheryl Chow, features on the cover of this week’s PostMag print edition. Photo: Jocelyn Tam
Cat Nelson

Slow, scrappy creativity isn’t exactly the first thing that jumps to mind when you think of Hong Kong. This is a city of speed and polish – not hand-stapled booklets and photocopied pages. But in some ways that’s exactly why the rise of local zine culture feels so right. Space is tight, rents are high and everything feels optimised, so a little scrappy resistance makes sense. Zines are small, personal and defiantly lo-fi. And increasingly, they’re everywhere.

The Zine Yo! Fest, a multi-week celebration of DIY publishing, drew more than 500 people on the opening weekend. There were zines about everything from dai pai dong to personal grief. As Salomé Grouard reports, this is a medium for those without much of a platform in Hong Kong – artists, domestic workers, refugees – to be seen, read and taken seriously. I first learned about zines as a teenager growing up in a small university town, where the undergrads felt impossibly cool and light years ahead of me, even if it was only a five-year age gap. Zines were anti-establishment and instantly captivating to a teen. I didn’t expect to circle back to them more than two decades later halfway around the world but I’m glad for it.

From scissor-and-glue publishing to green velvet noir: The Ballad of a Small Player, Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel, has been adapted into a Netflix film with Colin Farrell in the lead. Annemarie Evans speaks with Osborne about the novel’s layered backstory: childhood scandal, gambling halls and the oddball charm of Macau’s real-life “Lord” of egg tarts. The film is lush and haunted, full of gamblers, ghosts and characters trying to outpace their past. I watched the trailer last month with interest but haven’t carved out time for the full thing yet. Evans’ interview has bumped it up on my list.

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There’s been a lot of chatter about Australia in my household recently (rescuing baby koalas and meeting Bluey are high on my kid’s wish list), so I was glad to discover a destination we could one day add to that inevitable trip. With no roads in and hardly another soul around, Tasmania’s Port Davey sounds like a rare pocket of true wilderness. Kee Foong boards a small expedition vessel to explore this corner of the world, where towering cliffs meet tea-stained waters and days unfold with nothing more pressing than a hike, a dinghy ride or doing absolutely nothing at all. Not a bad set of options.
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