Alexandra A. Seno

The sinewy man hawking papers to morning commuters in Kowloon is unusually animated on this drizzly March day. Beside him stands a shoulder-high stack of South China Morning Post newspapers; the headlines blare: TUNG 'WILL STAND DOWN EARLY.' He banters with a customer about the territory's hapless Chief Executive as he snatches her coins. "Yes, Tung has resigned," he crows. "It's good news!"The commentary speaks volumes about what has gone wrong in Hong Kong since Beijing handed control to...

The businessman delivered "a message from Beijing," says Albert (Taipan) Cheng, Hong Kong's undisputed king of talk radio. Early this year, he claims, a shadowy contact with close ties to Chinese authorities warned him to "tone down his antigovernment rhetoric" or suffer the consequences.

Apparently, price tags with several digits aren't exclusive enough for some fashionistas. To ensure that their very best customers are kept happy, several high-end brands are producing special-edition collections of shoes and bags.

Outside a traditional Chinese medicine shop in Hong Kong, locals mill about, their mouths covered with white masks. They look like ordinary Asian shoppers in the age of SARS--but they are in fact actors shooting the forthcoming film "The City of SARS." An anguished look at life in the territory during the epidemic, the film--a trilogy--includes a segment starring veteran Hong Kong actor Eric Tsang as a flashy businessman contemplating suicide after the pneumonia outbreak threatens to ruin him...

After september 11, the world changed for Muslim travelers. In June the U.S. Justice Department proposed a plan to fingerprint tourists coming in from the Persian Gulf, Pakistan and other "high risk" countries. "Are we all terrorists?" asks Shereene Al Halabi, a Malaysian married to a Syrian. "Because I am a Muslim, do I want to kill Westerners?

Thirty-one year old Hong Kong businessman Alfred Wong loves golf, but the wait to join local clubs can take a decade, and he refuses to pay the $650,000 it costs to buy a membership.

Most foreigners look at Indonesia and see the failing state evoked in international headlines: a place choking on smoke from forest fires, drowning in debt and struggling to quell ethnic rebellions and to recover from the Asian financial crisis.