This week in PostMag: honouring the kind souls making the world a better place
Discover how small acts of kindness and community spirit, from dragon boat triumphs to eco-tourism, are transforming lives and places
Do you remember the last time you did someone a good turn?
I’ll go first. Just today, I held the lift for a harried-looking lady who was perhaps running late for work. In Hong Kong, where the “close-door” button is habitually mashed, I think that counts.
On a sombre note, more than six months on, the Tai Po fire is still taking a heavy toll on those affected. As a volunteer standing on the fringe of a catastrophe, how do you find the strength to show up time and again and help those in need? Hei Kiu Au speaks with three medical professionals who have spent years answering call-ups for humanitarian-crisis and disaster-relief missions around the world about their response to a tragedy unfolding in a place they call home and what it takes to keep hope alive.
Food, also, can be a vehicle for positive change. Gavin Yeung and Jocelyn Tam weather winding drives and bumpy rides to take us to the balmy reaches of Negros Occidental. In search of a growing slow-food movement that’s taking the Philippine island province by storm and setting it on a path beyond its long-held “Sugar Bowl” moniker, they discover that if doing good had a flavour, well, it might taste something like kinilaw.
On another island – Lantau, that is – we wind back the clock to the 1990s, when Michael Lau launched a critical search-and-rescue effort to save a dwindling population of tiny, endangered Romer’s tree frogs from the jaws of industrial development. Annemarie Evans speaks to the seasoned conservationist and herpetologist about his lifelong fascination with fauna and flora, and how a field trip to Lung Fu Shan to collect sand and stones for a fish tank kick-started his obsession with native species.