Until June 29
The Tuen Ng (aka Dragon Boat) Festival may already have come and gone this year but it’s still not too late to check out the Tuen Ng Special Exhibition at the HK Maritime Museum. Ever wondered why dragon boats came to be associated with the festival? Heard about the special Tuen Ng drink? To get answers to these questions and more, head over to the museum on the ground floor of the historic Murray House now located in Stanley that’s open from 10am to 6pm Tuesdays to Sundays. General admission is $20 per person. For enquiries, call 2813 2322.

June 12-14
Feel free to say it loudly: the Not So Loud Theatre Company is celebrating its 18th year of existence with Fringe Firsts, a programme at the Fringe Club’s Fringe Studio. It includes premiere performances of The Making of YK Lee (the tale of a Caucasian man named Harry who, while writing under his Chinese nom de plume, finds that he is set to be a rising literary star) from June 12 to 14, and a one-day play-reading festival on Saturday, June 14, with the reading of three new works (Flower Mountain; Do Not Disturb; and Katoey) and opportunities for the audience to interact with – and provide feedback for – the writers. Showtime for The Making of YK Lee is 7:30pm each evening while the play readings take place at 12noon, 2pm and 4pm on June 14. Tickets for the former event cost $180 and for the latter $70 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288.

June 13-15
The National Dance Company of Korea has graced several Olympics – including Mexico’s in 1968, Los Angeles’ in 1984 and Barcelona Olympics in 1992 – with its presence and performances. While there is no word yet whether they will be at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, from June 13 to 15, the company will be presenting Millennium Road – Korean Fantasy here in Hong Kong. Established in 1962 to cultivate Korean traditional and folk dances, the national dance troupe will celebrate its country’s past and also look to the future with a varied programme of court, sword, drum and religious dances. All three performances commence at 8pm. Tickets for the June 13 and 14 presentations at the HK City Hall’s Concert Hall are priced at $220 to $140 while tickets for the June 15 show at the Tuen Mun Town Hall’s Auditorium cost $180 to $100 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

June 13-22
With just seven movies – two of which will be shown together – in its programme, the first-ever stand-alone New Zealand Film Festival in Hong Kong is more of a mini than a maxi film festival. Still, as the proverbial ‘they’ say, “Mighty oaks from small acorns grow.” Additionally, the selection boasts its fair share of intriguing offerings; among them, official Opening Film Eagle vs Shark, international film festival favourite Black Sheep and the family-oriented No. 2 (the last of which stars Oscar winner Ruby Dee). Tickets for the first screening of the festival are by invitation, but those for the others at the Palace IFC are $75 while those for screenings at Broadway Cinematheque from bc.cinema.com.hk or each cinema’s box office. For further details (including individual screening dates, times and venues), please refer to our Listings section.

June 14 and 15
You may have thought it was all over for another year but there is one more dragon boat race to be run – and for some people, the HK Dragon Boat Association’s (HKDBA) HK International Dragon Boat Regatta 2008 is the real sporting biggie of them all. And with over 120 teams, international as well as local, competing in a series of races along a 500m course, they might well be right! The races start at 9am and go to 5pm on June 14 and 15 over at the HKDBA’s Training Centre (Shing Mun River, On King Street, Shek Mun, Sha Tin). Admission is free but tickets must be obtained at the District Leisure Services Offices of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. For enquiries, call 2504 8332.

Thursday, June 19
An alternative rock diva (Reign Lee), an acoustic artist from whom views making music is cheap therapy (Scarlett Lewis), the front man and lead guitarist of Red Star Rising (Steve Cray) and a guitarist whose great love is his Gibson Blues King acoustic/electric guitar (Lani Giro) are the headline performers of the inaugural bc magazine Unplugged, a series of gigs designed to showcase and celebrate live, unplugged, acoustic music in the Big Lychee. Showtime for the Thursday, June 19, event at The Wanch is 9pm. Admission is free (but only to over 18s). For enquiries, call 2976 0876.

June 20-22
Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen is famed all over the world for stories like The Ugly Duckling, The Little Match Girl and The Emperor’s New Clothes. But it’s two of his less well-known works, The Dryad and The Shadow, along with anecdotes from his Parisian travels, that are the inspiration for The Andersen Project, a play by Ex Machina, Canadian Robert Lepage’s multidisciplinary production company. The Kwai Tsing Theatre’s Auditorium will be the venue for this multi-media “fairy-tale for adults” that tells the story of a Quebecois songwriter in Paris. Showtime on June 20 and 21 is 7:30pm while the performance on June 22 will begin at 2:30pm. Tickets for all three presentations are $360 to $160 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

June 21 and 22
The disastrous event known as the Great Sichuan (aka Wenchuan) Earthquake occurred on May 12 but more than one month on, aftershocks continue to be felt and relief efforts are very much ongoing. Among the charity events in the HKSAR in aid of this disaster relief is the Sichuan Earthquake Relief Concert includes the HK Youth Choir, the Kassia Women’s Choir, the Learners Chorus, the HK Melody Makers and the Pro-Musica Society of HK. The performances at St John’s Cathedral on June 21 and 22 commence at 4:30pm. Tickets are $150. For reservations, contact either Herbert Tam by e-mailing vocedacielo@gmail.com or by calling 9048 3306 (or Raymond Cheng, 9365 1636).

June 21-July 19
Care for our community? Then consider making a beeline to the HK Film Archive to check out the Care For Our Community programme of 16 films from the 1950s to 2008 screening from June 21 to July 19. Comprising acclaimed cinematic offerings by respected filmmakers of many generations (including Patrick Lung Kong, Fruit Chan, and Hong Kong New Wave directors Ann Hui, Allen Fong and Rachel Zen) that voice their concerns for Hong Kong people and society, they collectively document, detail and dramatize the concerns of different generations of Fragrant Harbour inhabitants. Tickets are $30 from URBTIX, 2734 9009. For further information (including individual film titles, screening dates and times), please refer to our Listings section.

Sunday, June 22
What is Romantically Reverent & Reverently Romantic? As far as the HK Oratorio Society is concerned, it would be Austrian composer Anton Bruchner’s Te Deum (aka Te Deum Laudamus, Ambrosian Hymn or A Song of the Church) and Italian opera specialist Gioachino Antonio Rossini’s Stabat Mater, a musical version of a medieval poem which gets its title from its first line of Stabat mater dolorosa (The sorrowful mother was standing). And those are precisely the two pieces that will be performed at the society’s Summer Concert on Sunday, June 22. With Carmen Koon conducting, the performance at the HK Cultural Centre’s Concert Hall will commence at 8pm. Tickets are $180 to $60 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.