Celebrity Life

’Tis the season to reflect on the past, mull over the present and hope for the future, as we find out how four local personalities will be spending the holidays...

4 Hong Kong Personalities on the Festive Season

Jessica Jann, Actress

What’s your Christmas family tradition?

Lots of time together. I always used to go back home to California and be with my parents. We’d have a lot of meals together, spend time together, watch holiday movies and just be with each other.

What’s your favourite Christmas memory?

Years ago, when I was home for the holidays, I remember having a lovely family meal out with everyone. Then my cousins, my sister and I went to Downtown Disney in Anaheim. We ordered hot chocolate, sat by a fireplace, chatted nonstop and then got doughnuts afterwards. This year will be the third Christmas holiday when I won’t be back home.

Which moment from past holidays still makes you laugh?

Once my sister got us all, the entire family, these ugly, ugly Christmas sweaters but we absolutely loved wearing them! We laughed and took so many pictures!

What’s your Christmas wish?

I’m so lucky because my grandma (Abu) is in Hong Kong with all of us. I miss my parents, sister and nephew, but I’ll definitely be calling them. This year, I might still be in the hospital as my due date is really close to Christmas Day. My husband, Kenneth, and I are so excited, anxious and nervous. Christmas has always been my favourite holiday and I really can’t wait to hold my baby girl for the first time. I just wish she’s happy, healthy and I can’t wait to meet her.

Richard Ekkebus, Chef

Which Christmas tradition from your youth do you remember most fondly?

Back home in the Netherlands, my mum put a lot of effort into decorating the house and it was a true collective family effort – dad did the lights and fixed the tree, and my sisters and I would decorate the tree with garlands and hang Christmas baubles. But the most important part was the family reunion – grandparents, uncles and cousins all meeting. Large dinner tables and extended meals. We were allowed to sip our dad’s glass of wine to get a taste. The laughter, the happiness and, of course, the festive decorations and gifts.

What was your most memorable Christmas gift?

When I was 10, I got a concave skateboard to learn to ride in half-pipes. I was super into skateboarding but my skateboard wasn’t great, so my mum ordered one from a skate shop in Amsterdam – the real McCoy.

What’s your Christmas wish and hope this year?

Christmas is always a little awkward for me. I’m super-stressed, as it’s an important day for my guests. So we’re the family that unwraps gifts very early in the morning before I head off to work, to look after other families. With the pandemic, it will be a challenge this year, just as it was last year. We’d normally have our kids in Hong Kong but this year there’s an empty nest and – that’s somewhat sad. I want to make sure they all have a great Christmas, and my wife and I have organised parcels to be sent early so they reach them in time. We’ll probably do a thing on Zoom on Christmas Day.

Nick Buckley Wood, Art Connoisseur

What’s a favourite Christmas memory?

I don’t have many favourite Christmas memories in Hong Kong. I grew up in the city till I was 13 and then was in the UK. We don’t really celebrate Christmas that much in the Wood family. We all get together, and I suppose that’s the best memory – everyone being under the same roof. Otherwise, everyone’s scattered around the globe. I do like tropical Christmases more than snow-capped ones, probably because I’ve had more Christmases in Singapore and Hong Kong than elsewhere. So, sandcastle over snowman any day.

So a favourite Christmas meal for you would be?

Hainan chicken rice – with a giant chicken. And all the trimmings.

What’s the best Christmas present you ever received?

A puppy when I was a boy. A puppy really is the greatest present ever, at any age. I named him Tiffin.

Money no object, if you could bid for any artwork as a Christmas present for yourself, what would it be?

Maybe a Caravaggio. What’s a good Christmas-y painting? Maybe a giant pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama. What’s your end-of-the-year plan? I’ll be in Cambodia this year for Christmas. I bought an apartment and spent most of the year there, I was basically exiled – there’s no Covid where I stayed and I worked remotely. I’m also working on a non-profit project there. So this year I’ll be working on my apartment and the charity.

Elly Lam, Influencer

What’s your Christmas family tradition?

I have a big family, lots of brothers and sisters, and we all sit and watch old Christmas movies while sipping on homemade mulled wine.

What’s your favourite Christmas memory?

Cooking Christmas dinners together with loved ones every year is always a favourite. Oh, and I love Secret Santa!

Which moment from past holidays still makes you laugh?

Serving salty eggnog! It was ridiculous because it’s so easy to make. I was frantically trying to finish making Christmas dinner and, in the rush, I used salt instead of sugar in the mix! My helper served it thinking that’s how it’s supposed to taste. It was slightly embarrassing for me to serve failed eggnog – we still laugh about it.

For 2021, what’s your Christmas wish?

To be able to travel somewhere cold and snowy for Christmas this … well, I guess next year. I miss having a White Christmas.

The post Home for the Holidays: 4 Hong Kong Personalities on the Festive Season appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Former lawyer, model, spinning and boxing instructor and now mother to a wonderful one-year-old baby boy, Angie Ng opens up about the challenges of raising a child in a pandemic, how she copes with stress and her hopes for the New Year.

How was 2020 for you personally?

It was a difficult time for the whole world. But for me, it was really a time to spend with my family and just recoup. We wanted to be closer to nature, so we moved out to Stanley, which is really nice. It just feels very different from my life pre-pregnancy, if that makes sense. There are nice beaches, we’re away from everybody, and I can spend time with my son and watch him grow and change.

Moving to Stanley had been on the agenda for a long time — we wanted to be somewhere with more space and that was slightly closer to nature. We looked at different locations until we found somewhere we loved. With the virus, too, it was good to move away from things a little. We’re right by the sea, there are trees and plants, and the air is fresher. You just don’t feel as if you’re in Hong Kong.

You’ve worn many hats — lawyer, model and fitness instructor. Was this always the sort of life you imagined for yourself?

I never thought that a lot of the ventures I’m lucky to have been involved in could have happened. Law was a conscious decision. And, you know, modelling just somehow came along, and the more you do it, the more you’re exposed to different things and opportunities. It really is about making the decision to do something new and challenge yourself. I was lucky to be given these new opportunities. I was scared in a lot of situations, obviously doing anything new is often scary. But it’s all been very rewarding to learn different things, to be exposed to new skills and just continue to grow.

Was fitness always important to you?

Always. It goes hand in hand with what I do as a model. I’ve always loved going to the gym and exercising, and when given the opportunity to learn to be an instructor at XYZ, I just said to myself, “Why not? What harm could there be?” It gives you a different angle when communicating with people. You know, when you’re an instructor you’re also a performer, but at the same time, you’re also very close to the clients and in sync with them, as opposed to being a model where you are just performing.

That feeling of community in the fitness world is the reason why people enjoy going to group classes, right? That community will always feel like my community, even if I’m not there all the time. Even the cleaners would ask me about my child. And it’s such a nice feeling to have. I think the fitness community does breed this more than the fashion community.

What else do you do aside from boxing and spinning?

I also like lifting weights — I think lifting weights and toning up are so important. That and doing some form of easy yoga are my go-tos at this moment.

How do you find balance in life? What do you do when stress gets to you?

There are always a million thoughts going through my head, things to do with work, with my baby. What I like to do is to sit on my balcony and focus on my breathwork. I let these thoughts come to me and I catch them, I acknowledge them and then I let them go. I’m looking at a tree, I think it, catch it, I let it go. I have this call with Prestige, with you. I think about it, I let it go, and I'll keep doing this until there’s nothing to think about any longer. I’ve thought about everything I’ve had to think about. Then I’m just left with me and myself. Does that make sense? It’s helped me slow down and appreciate 2020 when things have been stressful and uncertain.

Can you share a little of your own pregnancy and childbirth experiences with us?

I wanted a natural childbirth for my son, so in the very beginning I didn’t want to take an epidural. But the thing is, my son was quite large and he had a very big head. It's often said that people with a fitness background have an easier time with childbirth. I can tell you that’s not true at all! After two hours of constant pushing you become really tired. I was pushing my hardest and looking at the doctor, asking if it made any difference and she would say yes, but my husband was shaking his head. In the end I had to take an epidural.

Were there any challenges you faced raising a child during a pandemic and how did you overcome them?

It's inevitably been a challenging time for all of us. As a mother, I've felt increasingly worried and am constantly trying to find the right balance between having my son at home and safe but still letting him go out and play with other children, to experience nature and attend classes. Then there’s the challenge of getting the baby/toddler to wear a mask or protective hat, which has become the norm nowadays.

What are your hopes for 2021?

2021 for me is the year to explore and learn more, as well as to focus on self-awareness and development.

The post Angie Ng: Fitness, Babies, and Hopes for the New Year appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, Hong Kong-based artist Peter Yuill has been making waves on the local scene this year with his solo exhibition Alignment at newly opened Gallery HZ on Hollywood Road. Following a star-studded attendance at his previews in Soho House Hong Kong, which saw politician John Tsang, singer/actress Joyce Cheng and Moiselle heiress Tiffany Chan among the crowd, art aficionados and artists alike concede that this will be a transformative year for him.

The art that Yuill produces is clean, minimal, Zen, extremely detailed and somewhat intimidating. Highly analytical and technical in appearance, his circular paradigm has become a trademark that’s inspired by the interconnectedness of the universe and the inevitable limitations of humans in their understanding of all the secrets of nature. In his show, Yuill turns the dichotomous relationship between the infinite and the limited into a powerful narrative of liberation through which he’s indeed achieved the alignment between his artistic and spiritual development.

Spirituality is a consistent theme in his exhibition, which is no surprise given his own strong spirituality and interest in the topic. Indeed, as he’s married to feng shui designer Thierry Chow, daughter of the famed feng shui master Chow Hon Ming, you could say that the theme dominates his life. In 2017, Yuill released an acclaimed series of works with static line, circular form and monochromatic shapes drawn and arranged by hands. The series represented his journey in finding the synthesis between two seemingly paradoxical realms – his logical mind and inner self.

[caption id="attachment_205689" align="alignnone" width="7192"] Limitless Path of the Intuitive Mind I, 2020[/caption]

Since then, he continues this journey by further reducing his pictorial vocabulary to a single shape – a circle – and finds his definitive language of expression that transcends all the dichotomies of the world and immerses viewers in the intricate yet harmonious dimension of the whole. According to Yuill, the circular iconography in his work “came from a long process of deconstruction that I undertook several years ago trying to get to the core essence of myself and my creative vision. I spent a long time being unhappy with the work I was making and really wanted to break everything down and discover what I was really all about. I continued to distil my work down more and more and more until I was eventually left with just a circle, and from there I began building back up again. To me the circle represents the marriage of mathematical and spiritual perfection.”

Yuill says this body of work has been incubating since last autumn, with hundreds of different sketches and concept drawings laid out to create the pieces he wanted to make. It wasn’t until December of last year that he began kicking it into high gear, which is highly impressive given that he then created the 14 original works and three limited-edition prints in a span of just three months. Whereas his previous works “were much more chaotic and aggressive, the pieces in Alignment are much more balanced and centred, reflecting that same feeling within me”, he says. Yuill says he always knew he’d be an artist in one form or another. “I’ve always been a fiercely independent and self-reliant person, and walk my own path. I never really fitted into normal society even from a very early age, and always knew that my own destiny was something that would cut against the grain. For a long time it was a very isolating feeling actually, until I realised that it was okay to think so radically differently from everyone around me.”

[caption id="attachment_205726" align="alignnone" width="859"] Peter Yuill working in his Chai Wan studio[/caption]

When asked to describe Hong Kong’s art scene, Yuill says that it’s a work in progress –  “Hong Kong is a very tough place to be an artist. There’s very little resources, very little establishment support and the rents are obscenely expensive. The city is run from a commerce mindset, not from a quality-of-life or appreciation-of-beauty mindset. This makes anyone doing anything that isn’t commerce-related always struggling and having to fight an uphill battle. "That being said, it’s not all bad either. As a younger city on the up and up, it can be easier to network and meet the kind of people that can help you develop, because everyone’s trying to do something, everyone’s a hustler. It also makes the creative community small, tight-knit and like a family. We’re all in this together and people help each other a lot.”

Yuill’s currently working with his good friend and fellow artist Simon Birch on his large project The 14th Factory, which also features several other Hong Kong, Chinese and international artists. Launched previously in Los Angeles, it’s now in the process of being moved to London – global circumstances permitting, of course.

Alignment is on view until May 9th at Gallery HZ.

The post Inside Peter Yuill’s Solo Show ‘Alignment’ appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.