A Talk With Zach Hines, the Last Editor of the Irreverent HK Magazine

HK Magazine, to many English speakers left out of the social, cultural, and political spheres of Chinese Hong Kong, represented a beacon for connecting with a Cantonese locale.

The first lifestyle magazine to hit the shores of Asia, HK Magazine inhabited a space in the larger English-speaking community of Hong Kong for coverage of local affairs and social issues in English, entertainment listings to keep in the loop of Hong Kong’s dizzying social scene, and snappy humorous features about art, fashion, dining out, and drinking.

From the publication's launch 30 years ago in June 1991 until its last issue in October 2016, HK Magazine enjoyed a fandom with many of the city's residents unable to read Chinese daily papers nor utter Cantonese, yet passionate about Hong Kong issues and the party scene that came later.

HK Magazine approached Hong Kong’s local affairs and issues with an outsider, English, and comedic perspective: editorials and features examined the worrying effects of the handover, the city’s unfair housing crisis, the disappearance of Cantonese culture, political strife during the 2010, 2012, and 2014 protest movements, abortion, feminism and LGBT rights, toxic expatriate culture, press freedoms, and the effects of an increasingly Sinicized Hong Kong.

Weekly issues of HK Magazine were released for free and could be found in bars and restaurants, coffee shops, bookshops, retail stores, and membership clubs across Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and New Territories, but primarily in areas heavily populated and frequented by Western expats and English-speakers, such as Central, SOHO, Wan Chai, Causeway Bay, and Tsim Sha Tsui.

The legacy HK Magazine endured in its later stages of life, before its sale to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in 2013 and closure in 2016, lives on in the minds of former readers and the man at the helm in its dying days: former editor-in-chief Zach Hines.

Zach’s nine years and 11 months tenure from 2005 to 2015 took HK Magazine from what he coined as the “second golden age of Hong Kong” in the period between 2001 and 2010.

In his seven years in charge of the magazine’s editorial stance beginning in 2008, Zach shaped the stories, comedic flavour, approach to current affairs, and local and foreign issues that defined HK Magazine as a leading space for what to do, eat, drink, and think.

A former freelance journalist and hobbyist-traveller, Zach’s first introduction to Hong Kong and his future home came in the early 2000s when trips to visit friends and research routinely brought him to the city.

He “loved” the people and city and friends he made and jumped on a job opening offered by then-editor Tom Hilditch in 2005 to publish books for the magazine – a position aligning with his previous experience working at a small publishing company in the U.S.

Ultimately, the role of writing and publishing books under the HK Magazine Media Group (the publishing company behind the magazine) never panned out as the magazine took a different direction in solely writing for a weekly readership.

In an interview with The Beat Asia, Zach spoke about his entrance to HK Magazine in 2005 and his strategy for moulding the publication into a space for a satirical and western take on Hong Kong.

"My principle and agenda for the magazine was to introduce the real flavour and spirit and character of Hong Kong to those living in the English-speaking community,” Zach says. He explains how the city’s expat community can be very insular and exist primarily outside Cantonese culture, thus lacking an entrance into local issues and the reality of Hong Kong.

“We made a strong effort to make [the stories and magazine] super inclusive; [portraying the] authentic culture and experience of Hong Kong, but just in English.”

Zach’s first role began in 2005 as assistant editor to Tom, a media hotshot with experience at the SCMP, Penthouse Magazine, and former Asiaweek Magazine. His job, in the beginning, was to sift through the “thousands of ideas” Tom had for feature editorials and cover stories that were “realistic enough” to run for the weekly issues.

Some leading Hong Kong-specific stories that Zach ran with included “I Hate That Guy: Hong Kong’s Most Loathed Politicians” (issue: 1056), “Show Us Your Brits: In search of Hong Kong’s colonial past” (issue: 1053), “So You Wanna be a Stand-up?: The Rise of Hong Kong Comedy” (issue: 1007), “You Lose: Is walking in Hong Kong an impossible game? (issue: 985), and “An Uphill Battle: The struggle for sensitive development in SoHo” (issue: 913).

Each issue, on average 48 pages long, would include a series of main sections that would regularly appear in the magazine: “Upfront,” a series of satirical commentaries on social affairs; “Letters” from readers; interviews with ordinary Hong Kongers in “Street Talk,”; “Features,” usually one local and foreign issue; “852,” categorizing latest shopping, dining, travel and beauty news; “Listings” for arts, nightlife, and film; “First Person,” a full-page interview with a notable politician, celebrity, or socialite; and attached classified section with comics, astrology, and a love and sex column.

His other focus consumed the coverage of the magazine's satirical and comedy pages, generating “funny content” around local affairs and trivial, nonsensical Hong Kong matters.

In the “News” section, Zach’s passion for satire shone. A selection of reader-submitted stories from the week before featured the most bizarre things that have happened in Hong Kong under “Last Week in Reality.”

In issue 940, a story published on May 6, 2012, described a Sai Kung-based-mother who was fined and had her license suspended after putting her daughter behind the wheel to drive because “she was throwing a tantrum.”

For two years, Zach worked with Tom to generate comedic content for the magazine in interviews with local bigwigs, the satirical “Mr. Know-It-All’s: Guide to Life,” and stories for the front-cover editorials.

HK Magazine’s first issue was published under the directorship of Asia City Media Group, a Bangkok-based media company specializing in Asian city living and lifestyle content. Touted as the “first to introduce city magazines to Asia,” Asia City assisted the “best friend” trio of American expats Greg Duncan, Steve Freeman, and Gretchen Worth in birthing HK Magazine.

The idea for HK Magazine sprouted in 1987, with the arrival Californian Steve, New Yorker Greg, and Ohio-born Gretchen to the city. Good friends since the age of 12 years old, Greg moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and asked Gretchen and Steve if they were interested in immigrating to the city to start an English magazine.

Greg has recalled with the press and in early editor statements in HK Magazine that the paper was born out of a frustration of “never knowing what was going on in town.”

When the trio formed in 1989, Gretchen mentioned that “you had to work really hard to know what was going on around town – read the papers, listen to the radio, talk to friends, get on the mailing list.”

It was a necessity thus to create a city entertainment magazine for Hong Kong, tying in and centralizing all sources of information for entertainment in the city, prior to the boom of food and beverage Internet listing sites and Instagram and Facebook. Their philosophy was initially to celebrate the city that the trio immigrated to and the “great things you can do here.”

Balancing their day jobs and working in Greg’s apartment, and then in a small Wan Chai apartment close to their June 1991 launch, personal success came when Gretchen saw a stranger carrying their first issue in Admiralty’s Pacific Place and calls started pouring in after about placing personals ads.

“It registered with people very quickly,” Steve said as the trio quit their jobs to pursue the magazine full-time. “We knew we were onto something”

According to Zach, HK Magazine “ran important pieces on the many changes and anxieties facing Hong Kong society as the handover approached – usually with a much-needed dose of humour.”

In 2008, Zach’s boss, Tom, left his position as editor-in-chief to create Hong Kong Living, a monthly expat-centric lifestyle magazine and now the largest independent English-language media company in the city.

With two years of guidance and “education” from Tom, Zach volunteered himself as the next editor to then-owner Steve Freeman who allowed him the opportunity to “give him a shot.”

In 2008, he assumed the role and filled the void that Tom left in his absence. “The challenge for me was how to make [HK Magazine] profitable, to take on board the concerns of the advertisers” that kept the publication afloat and supported the creativity and freedom of the editorial team.

“Within the culture of the company when I took it over, there was a strong division between the editorial department and advertising department,” Zach explained in an interview with The Beat Asia.

During Zach’s tenure at the publication, Gretchen assumed the role of CEO, Steve COO, and Greg as group digital director of HK Magazine Publication Group – the name change from Asia City Media Group in 2007.

Zach’s role-change to head of HK Magazine saw a shift in demographics for the magazine. Originally, the magazine published the city's loyal yet small expatriate community in the late 1990s. Reader feedback and data made it clear that HK Magazine’s reach extended into campuses and the city's high earners.

A survey done by Hong Kong Magazine in 2004 revealed that 87% of the readers held at least one university degree and 75% earned more than HK$30,000 per month. The publication’s target audience and reached readership were college-educated and those plugged into the industries concerned with what content was being pushed: food and beverage, politics, business, lifestyle, and media.

“Our target was to create more content appealing for younger English speakers,” Zach told The Beat Asia, “[the word expat] carries a lot of baggage, thinking of older white foreigners who have been living in Hong Kong for a long time.”

With a quoted potential readership of 400,000 readers, Zach forced a change in the editorial stance of the publication post-2008 to write more features attracting the educated student and professional adult, regardless of persuasion.

His direction for the publication involved a consideration of balance between appeasing advertisers and crafting stories that appealed to both the British banker and Cantonese student, the stay-at-home expat mother and local female business executive.

“I wanted to create a product that fit into the cultural milieu of the city,” Zach says.

He began working with local journalists, such as Yannie Chan who produced hard-hitting long-form pieces on disappearing Cantonese culture, a shifting political landscape, and issues of unaffordable housing, job security, and changing economic structures. He stressed an importance on the cover artwork of the magazine and the graphic details hidden within the inside features – a perennial characteristic of the many eye-catching covers.

“We would hire great artists who were Hong Kongers and could represent Hong Kong – the best artists we could find,” such as respected graphic designers Iris Mak, Tammy Tam, and Cecilia Chang.

“We were going for a vibe inspired by great magazines in the U.S, New Yorker and NY Magazine. We were very particular and consistent with our art style, focused more on illustrations rather than photography as the print quality lent itself a lot more to low-grade newsprint (that HK Magazine was printed on).”

HK Magazine’s first issue, called “HK: the Indispensable Hong Kong Guide,” was released in June 1991, with a limited circulation of 15,000 and 24 pages of guides for drinking, eating, partying, and schmoozing in the then-colonial Hong Kong city.

Well received by the young metropolitan crowd of English speakers in Hong Kong, the magazine renamed to “HK Magazine” and switched to a bi-weekly schedule in November 1992. Three years later in September 1995, it became a weekly magazine. Until Oct. 7, 2016, with their final issue, HK Magazine published weekly: 1,166 issues.

Gretchen explains that HK Magazine was the first lifestyle magazine in Hong Kong that was “honest, fun and modern.”

“Entertainment [was] part of the magazine, but not [the primary focus,” Gretchen points out, “[It was] about attitude about Hong Kong – caring about it, wanting it to be better, concerned about it when things are going wrong. Plus the fun stuff.”

Zach oversaw the magazine during the week of Friday, Jul. 12, 2013, the publication of the 1000th issue of HK Magazine. Page five of the issue recalled the 1000th to be the “hardest issue of HK we’ve ever had to do,” and the “only time we’ll ever be allowed to pat ourselves on the back.”

“Publishing 1,000 issues of anything is impressive in itself,” Zach said, when discussing the events occurring in 2013 with The Beat Asia.

In 2013, it was reported in local press that Asia City Media Group, HK Magazine’s publisher, had sold its Hong Kong arm, including the publication, travel magazine Where Hong Kong, Where Chinese, and women’s bi-weekly magazine The List to the SCMP for a total sum of HK$13 million.

HK Magazine was acquired by the SCMP as a means to keep the publication afloat, in a financial sense, during a period of change in Hong Kong’s media landscape. “Their ownership bought us a few final years of life,” Zach comments.

“We succeeded for a long time [to run HK Magazine independently and afterwards with financial backing], but the economics of [the industry] weren’t in our favor, in part due to the changing media landscape. We had no choice but to take their offer,” Zach says, noting “the beginning of the end” for the magazine.

At the time of the buyout of HK Magazine by the SCMP in 2013, the English-language market for lifestyle print media was tight and steadily declining. Asia City Media Group, the company in charge of publishing HK Magazine, was already seeing diminishing profitability from display advertising and event business during the beginning of the decade.

The magazine’s weekly circulation declined to 50,000 during the time of the buy-out, 60% of their average print run of 120,000 in previous years.

“HK Magazine,” Zach says, “was a product of its time. It went with the early ‘90s when Hong Kong was still great, had a period of decline after the handover, then got great again when everyone was optimistic about the future of China [in the early and mid 2000s].”

Despite their buyout from the SCMP, Zach remained staunch in his approach of being an alternative to the hard-hitting news agenda of their former-competitors-turned-owners SCMP. Their content was fresh, informative, artistic, and creative, without the constraints of an overbearing corporate owner. For 25 years, HK Magazine was a printed space for the free voice of Hong Kong issues and the pictorial art and creative writing of Hong Kong’s most passionate lovers.

Zach’s final issue, number 1086, came on Friday Mar. 6, 2015; the cover story a feature editorial of a guide to Hong Kong’s underground pop and modern artists titled “The Art Issue: Know Your Hong Kong Artists.”

The following week on Mar. 13, Luisa Tam assumed the title of editor-in-chief of the publication, a current senior editor at the SCMP.

Nine months after Zach departed HK Magazine and his city of 10 years to return to the U.S, Chinese tech company Alibaba Group announced the acquisition of the SCMP Group, which then included the SCMP and HK Magazine, for HK$ 2 billion.

On Sep. 26, 2016, the SCMP announced in an editorial that HK Magazine’s final issue would be released on Oct. 7, 2016, becoming the third SCMP subsidiary to close since Alibaba’s takeover, including 48 HOURS weekend magazine and the SCMP’s Chinese edition.

The decision made by SCMP to close the magazine was in part due to a larger effort under Alibaba to shift away from Chinese audiences and to generate coverage for a “correct perception of China” for western overseas reads. The liberal stance of HK Magazine may have never survived under the direct ownership of a Chinese conglomerate with ties to the PRC government.

HK Magazine’s closure was mourned worldwide. Former HK Magazine reporter, Grace Toi, wrote an “obituary” for the publication for the BBC on the day of its closure, celebrating its status as one of the only few English-language magazines in the city, “with a reputation [of being] fun, independent and free-thinking.”

Talking about the death of HK Magazine is bittersweet and emotional, Zach says. “I have no regrets […] I am grateful and thankful for the help of Sarah Fung (managing editor), Adam White (editor), and [Steve] for being a part of a very solid team and proud about what we did and represented.”

His only wish was to locate an online archive or website that held the total collection of the 1,116 editions of magazine. Mart van de Ven, a Dutch expat in Hong Kong, led a campaign in mid-2016 to secure as many archived issues as possible from the magazine. In October 2016, he created an online Google Drive archive storing 405 issues from 2007 all the way up to the final issue.

Zach emigrated back to the U.S. in 2015 before HK Magazine saw its final issue in October 2016. He now works as a screenwriter and novelist in Los Angeles, “the place to be to do this.”

In 2018, Zach published his first novel, NINE, a dystopic thriller set in a world where you are born with multiple lives, but you are forced to use them, available to purchase on Amazon.

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