Dolce & Gabbana Ruin a Model's Career

Model Zuo Ye attempting to eat pizza with chopsticks in a D&G commercial

Back in November, Dolce & Gabbana released a strange commercial where a Chinese model wearing a red dress from the Italian fashion house, is seen struggling to eat pizza, cannoli and spaghetti with a pair of chopsticks.

The Italian fashion design duo were accused of racism and cultural insensitivity for the commercials, which were timed just before they were about to put on their fashion show in Shanghai. It also didn't help that co-founder Stefano Gabbana got into a row on a private Instagram message when he apparently described China as a "country of s***". The screen capped conversation was published it online, compounding the already bad situation.

Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce giving an apology

As a result the fashion show was cancelled at the last minute when Chinese models and stars pulled out, and the two designers were shown in a video giving a sober apology for the PR crisis they had created.

Meanwhile the poor model involved in the commercial was attacked online by fellow Chinese, who accused her of "making money by insulting your own country" and "vilifying the image of the Chinese".

Two months after the incident, Zuo Ye finally spoke out, explaining she had not given enough thought to the content of the video and felt "very guilty and ashamed" about it.

"Personally I would never show any disrespect to my motherland. I love my country and feel proud to be able to represent China on the catwalk," wrote Zuo on her Weibo account. "I will draw a lesson from this and show the Chinese in a better light. Again, I apologize to my fellow countryman."

Zuo says she didn't have much say over the content of the ad

But how is this her fault? The recent graduate of South China Agricultural University wouldn't have known ahead of time what she was expected to do in the commercial and how it would impact her career, that she says is now almost completely ruined.

Zuo is a young model hoping to break out with this commercial, but she was unwittingly swept up in the racist ad. She said she was only told she was going to shoot a "fun video" involving Italian cuisine and the email briefing didn't give much more information.

During the three-hour shoot in a Chinese restaurant in Milan, everyone on set spoke Italian except the director, who instructed Zuo in English to show surprise, bewilderment and appreciation of the food, even though she felt awkward.

She said she questioned the use of chopsticks in the video, but was just told to follow instructions.

"I couldn't do it in the first try [picking up the cannoli with the chopsticks] and I asked, 'Are you kidding me? With chopsticks?' The director said, 'Yes! I know it's hard. Just try to do that'."

After two months' silence, Zuo apologized

"I felt awkward when using chopsticks for food that was larger than the normal size. I seldom laugh in my daily life but the shooting required a lot of extravagant acting and I felt very uncomfortable too," Zuo wrote.

She said as an ordinary model she was not allowed to give feedback on the commercial's content nor was she able to watch the final product.

However, many people online still weren't happy with her apology. "I still think your explanation was useless and your video disgusting. You can only blame yourself for having no distinguishing capability. No point whitewashing your wrongdoing," one internet user wrote.

Other sympathized with her, saying, "Blame a model? Why not blame the chopsticks while we're at it."

Zuo obviously wants to put this terrible incident behind her so she can move on in her career, but being dogged by those who cannot empathize with her situation doesn't help at all. At least she was brave enough to explain her side of the story, though it will take time for the fiasco to go away.

Fact of the Day: Microflats Getting Even Smaller

Can you live in a tiny space like this day after day, year after year?

Just when you thought Hong Kong flats couldn't get even smaller, they are.

Emperor International Holdings will have the tiniest flats in the city when it plans to launch a project where each unit measures 61.4 square feet or 5.7 square metres.

One can barely even fit a mattress in that space.

Located at 17-19 Yik Kam Street in Happy Valley, the project -- which is yet to be named -- converts an existing 21-storey commercial building into a residential one.

The unit's current measurement doesn't include the space allocated for a kitchen and bathroom.

But when they are added, the space is still smaller than a project in Jordan called AVA62. There each unit measures 152 square feet -- including a balcony -- selling for HK$20,000 per square foot or HK$3 million.

Microflats are very popular because average home prices have soared beyond the reach of average salary earners, prompting developers to scale down.

And to meet the demand, as many as 5,000 small flats are in in the pipeline every year until 2019, almost triple the average in the last decade.

We get that developers are appealing to investors and first-time buyers to create flats that are somewhat affordable.

But who wants to live in flats like that? What are the psychological effects of living in such tiny spaces?

It can't be good for one's wellbeing...

Fact of the Day: Hong Kong's Trashy Behaviour

Why is Hong Kong's waste output increasing each year and not decreasing?

Us Hong Kong people dump a lot of garbage.

Last year, an average of 14,859 tonnes of solid waste was thrown out every day, an increase of 3.8 percent from 2013. Most of it was a 10 percent increase in construction waste, according to the latest Environmental Protection Department statistics.

So the amount of municipal solid waste dumped in landfills increased 2.5 percent from an average of 9,547 tonnes per day in 2013 to 9,782 tonnes last year. This kind of waste is generated from domestic, commercial and industrial sectors, with one-third of it being food.

Most of the garbage, at one-third, is food waste

When broken down per person, per day, it's 1.35kg last year, 1.33kg in 2013, 1.32kg in 2012 and 1.27kg in 2011.

What are we throwing out? Can't some of it be recycled? And do we have to buy so much in the first place?

This is hardly helping to meet government targets of reducing waste by 20 percent by 2017, and 40 percent by 2022.

Recycling is doing poorly at a pathetic 37 percent last year, with the quantity of recyclable materials increased by 45,000 tonnes compared to 2014. While more metals are being recycled, the collection of paper dropped by 87,000 tonnes, and plastic by 144,000 tonnes.

The government really needs to subsidize recycling in order to make people think of this as a way to reduce their waste. We can always use the recycling for other things. It's not as if the city is poor -- we have the financial resources to support this industry to make it a more viable one and create jobs as well as clean up the environment.

Not everyone uses these recycling bins property...

In the meantime, green groups are calling on the government to implement the waste charging scheme as soon as possible, though they don't anticipate it being implemented until 2018 or 2019.

However, we can already envision people dumping their trash in public waste bins to avoid being charged, and this is being done already. Perhaps the waste management department does too good of a job taking away our garbage so there isn't an appreciation for how much trash we accumulate...