Periscope

As airlines cut costs in the face of the fierce competition, front-line staff have to put up with heavier workloads and frustrated customers. We talk to flight attendants and ground-handling workers about their working conditions.

With stable jobs and incomes, professionals tend to keep quiet when it comes to politics. But in recent years, more professionals have been willing to speak out to safeguard the city’s core values. Some pan-democratic professionals have set up new platforms to gather like-minded peers to advocate for democracy within their sectors.

Hong Kong's status as a regional and international aviation centre and hub has long been a source of pride to the city's residents. But...

In 1997, the government announced a dramatic shift in education policy, replacing English with Chinese as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong schools. Not long afterwards it said it was making the teaching of Chinese in Putonghua a long-term goal. These were just some of the big education reforms that have been instituted in the last 20 years, which have left teachers scrambling to adapt and keep up, and students struggling under heavy workloads.

Long famed as a gambling and entertainment paradise, Macau is not exactly known as a place for political activism. Yet, in the past year, thousands of Macanese have taken to the streets to protest against an unpopular government policy, for labour rights and even in support of Hong Kong's Occupy Movement. Does this herald an awakening of Macau's civil society?

For years, Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement has concentrated its efforts on winning office through the ballot box. But more than 15 years since the handover, democratic reform in the city remains stalled. Increasingly, democrats are fed-up with trying to change the system through participating in it. As society debates plans to Occupy Central to, many have already taken their demands and protests out of the Legislative Council and onto the streets, organising campaigns of civil disobedience and seeking more radical means of resistance.

The Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok opened to great fanfare in 1997 and topped world rankings for a number of years. But it lost its crown in 2011 with staff shortages and the saturation of facilities cited as some of the reasons for the decline.

Many factory canteens inside industrial buildings are serving outsiders illegally. Canteen owners criticise the outdated regulations and call for the government to review relevant policies.

Each district has its own sports and recreational facilities, but what they have may not be what they need. Districts with ageing population don’t have much for the elderly, whereas others have gateball courts that are only used 40 per cent of the time.

In recent years, Hong Kong's government and business sector have increasingly looked to greater integration with the Mainland for development and growth. It cannot...