Hong Kong Connection looked into the footage filmed by different media at Prince Edward MTR station on 31 August to see the appropriateness of the police's action. It also sourced a group of citizens affected by tear gas and worked with chemical engineers to test how much toxin left around residential areas.

Last year, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack issued a report on attacks on education by armed forces and armed groups. The report stated that in the previous five years there had been a dramatic increase in violent attacks on education, particularly on higher education facilities and their staff. It identified more than 12,700 incidents, involving harm to more than 21,000 students in 28 countries. The places affected were mostly known for their instability: Congo, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela and so on. Almost half of those attacks were associated with Islamic State. The coalition said the aim of these attacks was to suppress the voices of students and staff. Well, this week Hong Kong may have joined that list, despite its reputation as one of the world’s safest cities. Young people and students have been the driving force behind the current protests. Six months into the civil unrest, the battleground has expanded from the streets into university campuses. With us to discuss the current crisis are barrister Margaret Ng and Honorary Chair of the Liberal Party James Tien.

The Hong Kong Arts Development Council implemented the ADC Arts Space Scheme in 2014 to help address the problems of the lack of space for artists in Hong Kong. Under the scheme, three venues have been opened for a while, one in Aberdeen five years ago, and two in Kwun Tong last year. In late September, the scheme added a new space, this one in Tai Po, through repurposing a former secondary school. Japanese printmaker, Yukiko Morimoto mixes copperplate printmaking with mixed-media techniques such as photography, fabri transfer printing, pencil drawing and acrylic painting in her work. On show at the Art Projects Gallery until the end of the month, “Longing for Innocence” features a collection of images of children wearing masks of real and imaginary creatures. The Hong Kong Generation Next Arts annual music festival got under way last week. Now in its sixth year, the three-week long festival this year focuses on celebrating “great women artists of the world”. One of the highlights is a tribute to composer and pianist Clara Schumann. This year – September 13th to be precise - is the 200th anniversary of her birth. Canadian pianist Angela Cheng opened the festival with the Philharmonia APA, and she’s here to tell us just what made Clara Schumann such a musical pioneer.

Matthew Wong is a 17-year-old boy with intellectual disability. He had an unhappy life while in the mainstream school. He was teased by teachers and classmates for not catching up the school syllabus. He now studys at a special needs school. Teachers encourages Matthew to participate in different activities including stage performance. This boosts his self-esteem and encourages him to keep going with creative play. Matthew's dream is doing a job related to performing arts in the future. He hopes he could be a dancer, a stage performer or a makeup artist. But is it an easy road for a boy with intellectual disability to walk on? (Producer: Luther Ng)

Crime Alert – Supplement Scam

To the indigenous villagers in Hong Kong, paper-craft making is like a cycle. Every year, it appears in festivals, celebration activities, sacrificed offerings and religious ceremonies of all scales throughout the year. It constitutes a crucial part of the inhabitants’ lives, from one’s birth, growth to marriage. The Spring Lantern Festival falls on the 15th day of the Lunar New Year. In the walled villages in the New Territories, there is the traditional custom of “lantern lighting”. In the southern Chinese dialects, such as Hokkien, Hakka and the Weitou dialect, the characters “燈” (lanterns) and “丁” (male offspring) share similar pronunciation, so that “lantern lighting” symbolises having new male offspring, which represents the inhabitants’ strong hope for life. “Fa pao” (flower canon) is a unique traditional tribute which is a paper-craft altar used in celebration activities in Hong Kong in order to worship statues of different gods. In the old days, after worshipping the deities, villagers would have a game of scrambling for fa pao. But now it is replaced by a lot drawing ceremony. If a desirable lot is drawn, it means the person is going to have the blessings of the deities and everything will run smoothly in the upcoming year. Qilin has been venerated by Hakka people. In celebrations of local deities’ birthdays and festive events or occasions like weddings, moving in and “Ta Chiu” celebration, the qilin dance can always be seen, so as to bring about good luck and fortune. Since paper-craft items can show the imaginary images by 3D models, it is possible for the qilin to stay “alive” nowadays. Paper-craft products are not merely ordinary handicrafts. By making use of paper and bamboo, they form the radian of life. In order to make a paper-craft item, the processes of “binding, paper-mounting, painting, assembling” must be gone through, which resemble a person’s life: to make the skeleton of the paper-craft item by binding bamboo stripes with paper wraps. Next, a plain and simple model is made by mounting tissue paper onto the skeleton. After that, various colours will be painted onto the model. And finally, decorations are assembled to finish making the paper-craft item. From completing a paper-craft item to burning it down to ash, the whole process shows exactly the abstruse philosophy of life. Producer: Yeung King-chuen

People of different generations and ages have their own pace of life: Some choose to charge ahead at all costs during their youth, while some opt to stop and enjoy the slow life when they are in their prime. Regardless of whether you decide to take it fast or slow, we can still choose the pace at which we want to live our lives in our twilight years. 82-year-old Grandpa Poon (Stephen POON Tak-mong) has been involved in volunteer work since he retired from his stable career in civil service more than 20 years ago. At first, he only thought of it as a way to pass the time. As the days went by, however, he realised that he also benefits greatly from it, leading him to truly understand the meaning of “giving is better than receiving”. For Grandpa Poon, these 20-odd years of volunteer service have filled both his schedule and his heart. Meanwhile, 88-year-old Granny Cheng (CHENG Ling-yu) has devoted her entire life to caring for her family. When she was young, she worked in the garment industry to bring in additional income to support her family. She then quit her job in the latter stage of her life to take care of her grandchildren, shouldering the responsibility of looking after her family all on her own. Having experienced the trials and tribulations of life and tasted the bitterness of reality, Granny Cheng’s constant mention of “money” reflects the values of a particular faction of Hong Kongers. This is a story about the daily lives of two individuals in their twilight years. It is also a portrayal of certain Hong Kongers. Assistant Producer: Yim Pui-ying Director: Pang Chi-man Executive Producer: Ng Wai-in

Scheldt River is the lifeline of Antwerp in Belgium. “All an Antwerper has to do to connect with the rest of the world is simply dip his hand into the Scheldt’s water”, a former Antwerp mayor once said. The river’s branches of various sizes were the city’s earliest sanitary sewer system which was later transformed by the government gradually to become the sewer system crisscrossing the city. It was not until the installation of pipelines in 2001 that the old sewer service was officially ceased. The Scheldt River that flows from France and enters Belgium before reaching Netherland has bestowed Antwerp with the advantages as a port city. In the last 50 years, villages on both sides of the river banks have been transformed into container terminals along with the development of the port. And now there is only one village left – Doel. Doel was once populated by over a thousand people, but the number has dropped to around 20 today. For years, they have been standing against the ambiguous land resumption policy on one hand while believing that conservation counts much more than the unnecessary expansion of the port on the other. Their holdout has already come to the third generation who insist on living in this ghost town surrounded by dilapidated houses vacated deliberately. They simply want to deliver a message: The last generation does not stand alone, every generation cares for this last village by the river.

Hong Kong and Mainland China adopt different legal systems. The former has retained the common law system, which was used by Britain, while the latter adopts the civil law system. The two places’ understanding about the rule of law also varies. Since China’s reform and opening-up in 1980s, legal exchange and interaction between Hong Kong and Mainland China have gradually become frequent. The two legal systems have gone through the break-in period and fostered the commercial and economic development of the two places. The success rests mainly with the legal practitioners’ unremitting efforts to build the legal infrastructure. Professor Betty HO from the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong was the pioneer of legal exchange between Hong Kong and the Mainland. Professor Betty HO was born and raised in Hong Kong, and was familiar with commercial laws. During 1980s, she practised in a local law firm and was one of the few Hong Kong lawyers who took part in Mainland affairs back in those days. In 1992, Professor HO was invited to participate in devising the legal framework for the China’s state-owned enterprises to list in Hong Kong. During the working meetings between Hong Kong and Mainland China, Professor HO occasionally engaged in heated debates with the representatives of the Mainland, as she insisted in safeguarding the rights and benefits of the Hong Kong shareholders when state-owned enterprises came to list in the Hong Kong stock market. Professor HO was even more passionate about her legal education work. When she was teaching commercial laws at the University of Hong Kong, she was loved and respected by numerous students because of her conscientious teaching attitude. In 2002, Professor HO was hired by the Tsinghua University School of Law in Beijing. She resolutely left her job in Hong Kong and moved to Beijing alone to pursue her teaching career. Bringing the academic programme designed by her to Tsinghua University, Professor HO introduced the teaching of the common law system which was unprecedented in the Mainland at that time. She believed that legal education was one of the ways to foster a country’s development and improvement. In 2010, Professor HO, who had never been late, was absent at her last lesson. Her students went to her residence with doubt, and were surprised to find that Professor HO, who was always energetic, had passed out at home and become unconscious … In the course of legal exchange between Hong Kong and Mainland China, Professor HO’s generation was the builder and initiator of the legal systems. These days, China’s economy and global vision have greatly surpassed those in the early years of its reform and opening-up. Does Hong Kong still have certain roles under China’s well-established legal system based upon the rule of law?

Radio programmes centred on music have always drawn in music aficionados. For a song to tug at people’s heartstrings, in addition to a beautiful melody, evocative lyrics are obviously essential. It can be said that the 1970s and 1980s were a time dominated by the three lyricists, Cheng Kwok-kong, Jimmy Lo, and James Wong. Known by many as “Mr. Cheng”, Cheng Kwok-kong worked as a fulltime primary school teacher for 31 years. However, he is better known for the 2,000-odd Cantopop songs that he has penned the lyrics to. Mr. Cheng has loved drawing since childhood, and has learned disciplines such as oil painting, traditional Chinese painting, and landscape painting. Consequently, it is not uncommon for one to discover pictures within his lyrics. His love affair with music began with listening to the radio, another of his favourite childhood pastimes. “I used to sing Cantonese opera as I walked. Because I have a bad memory, I’d forget some of the words halfway through a song. I had to make up some lyrics to keep it going,” he says. Mr. Cheng and George Lam have been partners in crime since the late 1970s, with the former penning the lyrics to more than 80 of the latter’s songs. Among them, I Need You Every Minute was almost written entirely in colloquial Cantonese: “Having you with me makes me happier. I’m content with everything when you’re near. Even salty fish and bok choy taste like the finest fare.” Prof. Stephen Chu of The University of Hong Kong’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures points out that Mr. Cheng handled the lyrics expertly – it does not come across as being vulgar as is the case with many other Cantonese love songs whose lyrics are colloquial. Albert Au, who has been a radio DJ for 41 years, once took part in the production of a radio drama titled Coming Home. Its theme song, the lyrics to which were written by Mr. Cheng, won Au a Gold Song Award back in the day. The singer is very impressed by how the lyricist is able to depict the story and its associated imagery in spectacular fashion with just a few short lines. For 30 years, Mr. Cheng worked as a primary school teacher while spreading positive energy in the music industry. His works, which brim with positivity, have earned him the moniker of “The Inspirational Lyricist”. Apart from countless inspirational songs, the lyrics to the majority of children’s songs and cartoon theme tunes of the 1970s and 1980s were also penned by him. In recent years, he has expanded into a new territory, writing Cantonese opera plays and even establishing a children’s Cantonese opera troupe. He hopes that its young members can learn about the art form in addition to performing on stage, so that they can pass this cultural treasure down to the next generation. Executive Producer: Ng Wai In Director: Yau, Annie Assistant Producer: Yim Pui Ying