Latest news with #Lu
AsiaOne
8 hours ago
- AsiaOne
Mid-air brawl erupts on AirAsia X flight from KL to Chengdu over loud conversation
Unhappy with the loud conversations between a group of passengers seated near him on a flight, a man confronted them. Cabin crew on the AirAsia X flight eventually had to step in to defuse the situation after the two parties came to blows. The mid-air drama took place on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Chengdu on Monday (July 21) at around 10pm, said Sichuan police's airport bureau in a statement on Tuesday. Investigations found that the brawl involved the male passenger, surnamed Lu, and a group of four other passengers — two women, surnamed Meng and Zhang, and two men, surnamed Bai and Lei. The authority said the fight broke out after Lu was displeased with the volume of the group's conversation. Clips of the incident circulating online show a woman in a black and white T-shirt getting into an altercation with a man seated in the row in front of her, pulling at one of his belongings. The man retaliates, appearing to grab the woman's head, yanking her forward. Another video shows a second woman, wearing a cap and green outerwear, throwing punches at the man as a female flight attendant restrains her from behind. The flight attendant can also be overheard in the clips yelling at the passengers to remain in their seats. Both Lu and Meng sustained scratches in the commotion, said Sichuan police, adding that Lu, Meng and Zhang were detained, while Bai and Lei have been fined. In a statement to Malaysian publication Sin Chew Daily, AirAsia X confirmed the incident on board flight D7326. The Malaysian airline said its cabin crew immediately handled the situation in a manner which followed safety protocols. The incident did not affect the return flight arrangement of the aircraft. AirAsia X also said it has a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour that affects the flight experience, safety and comfort of others.
Indian Express
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Who is Siang Lu, whose novel ‘Ghost Cities' just won Australia's biggest literary award
Chinese Malaysian Australian author Siang Lu has won the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award – Australia's most prestigious literary prize – for his absurdist novel Ghost Cities, which masterfully weaves together parallel stories. 'I am honoured beyond belief, and beyond words,' Lu said after winning the prestigious award. 'I didn't dare dream of this. It didn't seem possible.' Lu receives AUD $60,000 (approx ₹33.6 lakh) in prize money as part of the award. The win was not exactly a surprise. Ghost Cities had already been shortlisted for six major awards and Lu was being compared to literary giants such as Haruki Murakami, Gabriel García Márquez, and even Kevin Kwan. Its publisher, University of Queensland Press, called it 'a profound and highly imaginative novel' that 'cleverly draws on Chinese history to explore the absurdity of modern life and work.' The judges called it 'a genuine landmark in Australian literature.' Lu's novel unfolds across multiple timelines and realities: in one strand, a young man named Xiang is fired from his job at the Chinese consulate in Sydney after it is discovered he doesn't speak a word of Chinese and has been relying entirely on Google Translate. He relocates to a mysterious, uninhabited megacity, one of China's infamous 'ghost cities,' and from there the narrative explodes into a kaleidoscope of myth and mirage. How is Xiang's quiet exile connected to a long-dead Emperor who creates a thousand doubles of himself? Or to a mountain that gains sentience and a libido? Or to a chess-playing automaton that harbours a deadly secret? In Lu's world, everything is metaphor and everything is literal. Lu first caught readers' attention with The Whitewash, his 2022 debut about the unraveling of a fictional Hollywood film meant to 'smash the bamboo ceiling.' That novel, styled as a mock oral history, satirised the politics of representation in the entertainment industry, and won the ABIA Audiobook of the Year with its pioneering cast of majority Asian-Australian actors. Where The Whitewash tackled race and pop culture, Ghost Cities zooms out to empire, language, and time. It is, as author Nick Earls put it, 'a stunning piece of writing. It's quite a feat to create one labyrinth in a book… but somehow Siang Lu creates two… and makes them act as mirrors to each other.' The novel has exploding libraries, shape-shifting doubles, and government functionaries who cannot speak the languages of their own bureaucracy. And there's Xiang, a kind of anti-hero, wandering through ghost cities that might be metaphors, or might just be real. Lu, who splits his time between Brisbane and Kuala Lumpur, does not court the solemnity that often clings to literary success. When his publisher made him start an author Instagram, he went rogue, launching #sillybookstagram, a feed full of Photoshopped book covers that deface his friends' work with pure nonsense. 'Why waste time write book when Silly PhotoShop do trick?' he writes, tongue firmly in cheek. A post shared by Siang Lu (@sianglu_author) Author Alice Pung put it best: 'The inventiveness, the genius of it all – it is like the lovechild of Viet Thanh Nguyen crossed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez crossed with Kevin Kwan. It is nuts, and deep, and moving, and also funny.' Lu also co-created The Beige Index, a digital project critiquing racial representation in film and media. Alongside fellow shortlist authors – Brian Castro (Chinese Postman), Michelle de Kretser (Theory and Practice), Winnie Dunn (Dirt Poor Islanders), Julie Janson (Compassion) and Fiona McFarlane (Highway 13) – he represents a new wave of writers reshaping the national canon. A post shared by Miles Franklin Literary Award (@milesfranklinliteraryaward) This year's judging panel—Richard Neville, Jumana Bayeh, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, and Hsu-Ming Teo—described Lu's novel as 'sitting within a tradition in Australian writing that explores failed expatriation and cultural fraud' while also being 'strikingly new.' 'In Ghost Cities, the Sino-Australian imaginary appears as a labyrinthine film-set,' the judges wrote, 'where it is never quite clear who is performing and who is directing.' Jane Magor, speaking on behalf of award trustee Perpetual, said Lu's win 'redefines what Australian literature can be….Our stories are ever-changing…. And the literary tradition Miles Franklin envisioned continues to grow in daring and unexpected ways.' The Miles Franklin Literary Award, established in 1957, was set up to honour a work of 'highest literary merit' that presents 'Australian life in any of its phases.' Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
Perth Now
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Chinese-Australian author wins major award
First time author Siang Lu has won the prestigious $60,000 Miles Franklin literary award for his novel, Ghost Cities, described as 'a genuine landmark in Australian literature'. It was rejected more than 200 times, both in Australia and overseas, and stayed in a drawer unpublished for 10 years before Lu's first novel The Whitewash was published. Ghost Cities is about a young Chinese-Australian man who is fired from his translator job at the Chinese consulate after it is discovered he cannot speak Mandarin. The deception goes viral on Chinese social media, with Xiang dubbed #BadChinese. 'Siang Lu's Ghost Cities is at once a grand farce and a haunting meditation on diaspora,' the judges said. Siang Lu has won the 2025 Miles Franklin Award. Supplied Credit: Supplied Ghost Cities was unpublished for 10 years after 200 rejections. Credit: Supplied 'Sitting within a tradition in Australian writing that explores failed expatriation and cultural fraud, Lu's novel is also something strikingly new. 'Shimmering with satire and wisdom, and with an absurdist bravura, Ghost Cities is a genuine landmark in Australian literature.' On winning the award, Lu, 39, said he was 'honoured beyond belief, and beyond words'. 'I didn't dare dream of this. It didn't seem possible.' Lu, who is of Chinese-Malaysian descent, moved with his family moved from Malaysia to Brisbane in the 1990s when he was four. The 2025 judging panel comprised Richard Neville, Jumana Bayeh, Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Prof Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, and author, Prof Hsu-Ming Teo. The Miles Franklin literary award was established in the will of My Brilliant Career author, Stella Miles Franklin, for the 'advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature'. Perpetual serves as Trustee for the Award.
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Miles Franklin Award makes history with 2025 winner, Siang Lu
Siang Lu has won the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel Ghost Cities, becoming the first male Asian writer to take out the coveted $60,000 literary prize. 'I had never allowed myself to think that this was possible, could be possible or was even a remote possibility,' the Brisbane-based author says. 'When I heard I was longlisted I was overjoyed and also scared, but the joy was 'wow, I didn't expect that' … then, when I heard I was shortlisted, it was that magnified. So I can't even properly describe how I feel right now, other than that it's the same feeling but so much bigger that I can't even see it.' Ghost Cities is about a young Chinese-Australian man who works at the Chinese consulate as a translator. But it subsequently turns out that he is, in fact, monolingual and has been relying on Google Translate. The 39-year-old author says he grew up like that character, speaking only English. Lu's family emigrated from Malaysia to Brisbane in the 1990s when he was four. He studied law and journalism at university ('law very badly', he says) and the one class he loved was creative writing. There were signs earlier, which his dad recently reminded him about. 'He told me that when I was in high school, maybe [age] 13 or 14, I went to a writer's camp and the writers had clearly done their job of instilling passion and excitement... According to my dad, and it's become family lore, I came home and said I wanted to be a writer.' Loading Lu's wife Yuan is also Chinese. While he had been to China before, when they got together he travelled there more frequently, to visit her family. 'It's always been in the back of my mind that I wasn't approaching my culture in the correct way. I first had to embrace the fact that I am of multiple cultures, and that's not an easy thing … for someone growing up in a dominant culture where everything you see on TV or read is from the white perspective,' he says. 'It sort of makes you want to be white and I had to reconcile with that in my writing. I was foregrounding white characters without knowing why.
The Age
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Miles Franklin Award makes history with 2025 winner, Siang Lu
Siang Lu has won the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel Ghost Cities, becoming the first male Asian writer to take out the coveted $60,000 literary prize. 'I had never allowed myself to think that this was possible, could be possible or was even a remote possibility,' the Brisbane-based author says. 'When I heard I was longlisted I was overjoyed and also scared, but the joy was 'wow, I didn't expect that' … then, when I heard I was shortlisted, it was that magnified. So I can't even properly describe how I feel right now, other than that it's the same feeling but so much bigger that I can't even see it.' Ghost Cities is about a young Chinese-Australian man who works at the Chinese consulate as a translator. But it subsequently turns out that he is, in fact, monolingual and has been relying on Google Translate. The 39-year-old author says he grew up like that character, speaking only English. Lu's family emigrated from Malaysia to Brisbane in the 1990s when he was four. He studied law and journalism at university ('law very badly', he says) and the one class he loved was creative writing. There were signs earlier, which his dad recently reminded him about. 'He told me that when I was in high school, maybe [age] 13 or 14, I went to a writer's camp and the writers had clearly done their job of instilling passion and excitement... According to my dad, and it's become family lore, I came home and said I wanted to be a writer.' Loading Lu's wife Yuan is also Chinese. While he had been to China before, when they got together he travelled there more frequently, to visit her family. 'It's always been in the back of my mind that I wasn't approaching my culture in the correct way. I first had to embrace the fact that I am of multiple cultures, and that's not an easy thing … for someone growing up in a dominant culture where everything you see on TV or read is from the white perspective,' he says. 'It sort of makes you want to be white and I had to reconcile with that in my writing. I was foregrounding white characters without knowing why.
