Feature Stories

A good explanation is an art form, if a slightly mysterious one. We can all recognize a great explanation, yet picking apart the intricacies of how it is done remains elusive.  I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but...

Knowing the right answer. If you’ve ever spent three hours at the kitchen table sobbing over 3 x 7 = ???, you’ll intuitively understand the urgency around finding the “right” answer.  Indeed, in disciplines such as Mathematics or the Natural...

Among the 13 abbreviations for cities in Jiangsu Province, Nanjing stands out. Neither of the characters, “Nan" (南; south) or “Jing" (京; capital), are employed to abbreviate our City’s name. So why did we go with “Ning” (宁)? Could...

“How’d it go? Tell me everything. Do you want a smoke?”, Jialing asks rapid fire as she pulls a cigarette out from her pack of Nanjing Reds and tosses it at Rachel.  Rachel and Jialing are sitting on an old...

“… the bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space” So begins “Darkness” by Lord Byron, a Romantic era poem that takes a lyric wandering through an end-of-days scenario where all light and colour...

Whether you’re an artist working on a painting, or a songwriter trying to create the perfect album cover, or a popular local magazine using it as the theme of one of their monthly issues, colour lies near the centre...

Our emotions are colour coded. Love is red, so is anger. Envy is green, so is generosity. Sadness is blue, so is tranquility. As is the case with so much in life, the paradoxical is often the most comfortable...

Most of us see it every day. Maybe several times a day. Fluttering high over government buildings, large-scale institutions, tourist spots, the list goes on. The red and yellow is also nigh-on inescapable around each National Day. But what...