Most read of 2023: Michelle Yeoh’s fashion designer, China freeing a CIA spy – your favourite long reads
- A failed plan for a European ‘smart city’ piqued Post Magazine readers’ interest in 2023, as did a millionaire’s quest to stay young, and a father’s wart woes
- The untold stories of early Chinese Canadians got your attention too, as did a Chinese child star, a Hong Kong tailor to the rich, and a hotelier’s life story
From the plight of Abul Bajandar, known as “tree man”, to a look at the life of Hong Kong fashion designer Barney Cheng, a reminder of eight of the most-read long features published in the South China Morning Post’s Post Magazine in 2023.
1. More turmoil for ‘tree man’
After his story went global, Bangladeshi man Abul Bajandar, known as “tree man”, was able to get treatment for the warts that left his hands deformed, allowing him to hold his daughter for the first time. Then the warts grew back bigger than ever. In July, Post Magazine revisited his story.
2. Fashion designer Barney Cheng on his life
Hong Kong fashion designer Barney Cheng grew up in a big family, was inspired by his mother’s love of clothes and has rubbed shoulders with the fabulously rich.
3. Has he cracked the code of age reversal?
In March, we reported on how tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson is trying to turn back the clock by transforming his 45-year-old body into that of an 18-year-old through a US$2 million (HK$16 million)-a-year diet and exercise programme.
4. Museum shines light on untold stories
Little is known of the cruel treatment of Chinese people in Canada in the early 20th century, but a new Vancouver museum is bringing their untold stories to light. In July, Bernice Chan related some of those stories.
5. A Belt and Road project in tatters
6. Inside a spy story
In July, China scholar Jerome Cohen, in a first-person piece, recalled how he got the United States government to admit John Downey was a CIA spy, leading China to free him after detaining him for 20 years. He walked across the border into Hong Kong on March 12, 1973, Cohen recalled. The affair shows the folly of lying, he wrote.
7. Chinese child star lights up US stage
We recalled Chinese child star Chee Toy, who wowed US audiences in the late 19th century, before returning a decade later when her fame only grew further.
8. What makes a hotelier tick?
We profiled Girish Jhunjhnuwala, the founder of Ovolo Hotels, who got an early taste for entrepreneurship from his father and followed him into the watch manufacturing business.
He later opened a chain of serviced apartments before pivoting to hotels after the 2008 financial crisis.
