Hong Kong

About 100,000 people jammed the neon-lighted, rainy streets of Hong Kong on Wednesday for a fifth straight day to support the pro-democracy movement in China. Students, teachers, workers and clerks marched through Causeway Bay, a major shopping district. The marchers paralyzed traffic for two hours, chanting "Support Beijing students!"

The popular music-subscription service Spotify will soon be streaming even wider. The Swedish-English firm announced that it will expand its services into eight new markets , including Mexico, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. It will also fortify its main bulwark in Europe, opening in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland. Spotify currently sports 24 million users and 6 million paying subscription customers. The free version of Spotify includes occasional advertisements, while paid versions are ad-free.

The brief announcement that Disney plans to add a Marvel-themed land to Hong Kong Disneyland in 2017 raises a host of questions: Will Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men be getting their own rides? When will the Marvel characters be coming to Anaheim, Paris, Tokyo or Shanghai? And why, of all places, Hong Kong? Many of the most basic questions remain unanswered, in part because the announcement was made by a Hong Kong government official rather than Disney.

The cop thriller "Cold War" was the big winner Saturday evening in Hong Kong at the 32nd Hong Kong Film Awards, taking home nine trophies including best film, best actor for Tony Leung Ka Fai, best director and screenplay for the team of Longman Leung and Sunny Luk Kim Ching, and best newcomer for Alex Tsui. Presented by the Hong Kong Film Awards Assn., the Hong Kong Awards are the equivalent of the Oscars and the BAFTAs. Miriam Yeung won the best actress award for the romantic comedy "Love in the Buff.

Although you can feel caught in a concrete forest in the center of Hong Kong, there are economical and interesting ways to escape. Lantau Island, Cheung Chau Island and the Sai Kung region of the New Territories are accessible by inexpensive public transportation and less than an hour away from the city center. Lantau Island, which is also the home of the new Hong Kong International Airport, is twice the size of Hong Kong Island, with much of its land designated as parkland.

For Hong Kong residents desperate to flee before China takes over in 1997, the Federal Republic of Corterra sounded perfect. The tiny Pacific island nation was described as lying between Tahiti and Hawaii, with 80,000 citizens who enjoy democratic government, a British-style legal system and no income tax. Best of all, a newspaper ad here boasted, passports are bargain-priced at only $16,000. Three local businessmen quickly paid the $5,000 application fee. Then they discovered the catch.

Thousands of Hong Kong residents marched to the Chinese government's liaison office on Friday demanding that Beijing grant full democracy to the semiautonomous financial hub. Chanting "One man, one vote to choose our leader!" and clutching signs reading "Democracy now," the demonstrators set off from a crowded street in the heart of the central financial district. Some held aloft portraits of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, demanding his release after he was sentenced last week to 11 years on subversion charges.

Remember that long-running television series set in the fictitious Tuscany Valley (a.k.a. Napa Valley) years ago? Quite the soap opera, "Falcon Crest "  ran from 1981 to 1990 and starred Jane Wyman, Robert Foxworth, Lorenzo Lamas and the old Spring Mountain Vineyar d .  This was just when America was discovering its fascination with the wine country lifestyle. Now that the Chinese interest in wine is growing, it was only a matter of time before someone had the bright idea to make a television series about it.  According to Jayne Stars (Hong Kong celebrity news in English)

Foreigners who cook, clean houses and care for children in Hong Kong will not be eligible to become permanent residents like other workers from abroad, a final appeals court ruled Monday. The unanimous ruling disappointed the Filipino workers who pressed the case and activists championing their cause. Foreigners working in other jobs can seek permanent residency after living seven years in Hong Kong, but its immigration rules explicitly bar “domestic helpers” from doing so. Permanent residents can stay indefinitely and vote in Hong Kong.

BEIJING -- China's National Tourism Administration has issued an advisory on travel to Hong Kong after a video of mainland tourists being insulted and "forced to shop" by a Hong Kong tour guide sparked outrage on the Internet. A former British colony, Hong Kong attracts hordes of Chinese tourists, many of them on shopping trips for luxury or brand-name goods that are more expensive on the mainland. "An undated video clip currently circulating on the Internet shows a Hong Kong tour guide allegedly abusing a group of visitors from the Chinese mainland and forcing them to shop, triggering a backlash from the mainland public," the Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.

HONG KONG - Strung up in the Sunbeam Theatre in a gritty working-class part of this city are posters showing Cantonese opera singers, their red lips offset by chalk-white, made-up faces. In the faded lobby, where theatergoers mill on a Saturday afternoon, dozens of bouquets with handwritten messages are dedicated to the stars by fans. For four decades, this theater in North Point on Hong Kong Island has been one of the last remaining stalwarts for Cantonese opera in the city. But its existence is by no means guaranteed.

HONG KONG - When Mabel Cheung, one of this city's leading directors, shot her historical-political drama "The Soong Sisters" in China in the mid-1990s, the nature of the exchange for the co-production was simple: Beijing provided inexpensive manpower, and professionals from the British colony's highly developed movie industry provided the expertise. Hong Kong cinema, after all, had been enjoying a golden age for close to two decades - celebrated directors such as John Woo and Wong Kar-wai had helped the city's filmmakers garner a global fan base.

HONG KONG -- What is beautiful? Four celebrated Asian filmmakers tackle the question in “Beautiful 2013,” a quartet of short films at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, which wraps up Tuesday.  The Chinese video site Youku and the festival jointly commissioned the film following their initial collaboration last year, “Beautiful 2012.” That movie ended up touring to more than 20 film festivals and garnered more than 16 million hits...

Foreigners who cook, clean houses and care for children in Hong Kong will not be eligible to become permanent residents like other workers from abroad, a final appeals court ruled Monday. The unanimous ruling disappointed the Filipino workers who pressed the case and activists championing their cause. Foreigners working in other jobs can seek permanent residency after living seven years in Hong Kong, but its immigration rules explicitly bar “domestic helpers” from doing so. Permanent residents can stay indefinitely and vote in Hong Kong.

HONG KONG - Hong Kong-born, London-raised Roger Garcia continues his role as the executive director of the 37th Hong Kong International Film Festival. We talked with him about this year's event, which continues through April 2. What is the goal of this year's HKIFF? Our festival began 37 years ago as a cultural event to bring movies to Hong Kong to show people films that they might not otherwise have seen. Nowadays, because you can download and watch anything - anytime, anywhere - we do two things.

HONG KONG -- There is a moment in “The Last Time I Saw Macau” -- which plays Wednesday at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and is being distributed in the United States this summer by Cinema Guild -- in which the camera captures the city through the backseat of a cab. The small screen attached to the back of the driver's seat plays news footage of the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. But the image is upside down. The shot drolly observes Macau's new identity as a Chinese city.

CNN reports that an investigation is underway into the Hong Kong car crash that killed two chefs from Heston Blumenthal's famous British restaurant the Fat Duck . CNN said that newspaper reports and the Hong Kong Police Force identified the dead as Carl Magnus Lindgren, 30, from Sweden and Ivan Aranto Herrera Jorge, 34, of Britain. Their taxi driver also was killed. Blumenthal, who was in Hong Kong, identified the bodies of the two chefs, according to the Standard. Reports say that the two chefs were killed after a bus barreling downhill hit two cars, crossed into the other lane and crushed their taxi against another bus, resulting in the three deaths and injuring 56 people, including the driver of the other bus, a baby and a 90-year-old.

A barge carrying nearly 200 oil-pipeline workers capsized and sank Thursday in a typhoon in the South China Sea, killing at least 16 people, rescue workers said. Rescuers battling gale-force winds had recovered 12 bodies by early today, but they said time was running out to find survivors. Among 11 people still missing were four divers, believed to be three Britons and a New Zealander, who were dragged to the bottom of the sea inside a diving chamber attached to the barge.

BEIJING - China's one-child policy, sterilization and Japan-Sino relations are just some of the raw, real-life subjects tackled in a cluster of controversial independent Chinese films screening at the 37th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF). The festival, which kicks off Sunday and ends on April 2, features 306 feature films and shorts from 68 countries and regions. They range from the world premiere of Herman Yau's "Ip Man: The Final Fight" to the closing-night film, "Closed Curtain," directed by Jafar Panahi and Kamboziya Partovi.