Maggie Cheung, WestEast magazine, 2005

"WestEast", for those of us in the decaying rust belt of the United States, is a tantalizing and frustrating magazine. It shows up on the newsstands here less often than its quarterly publication schedule would indicate and the issues that do arrive are full of outstanding photography and graphics.

These are images of Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk which I scanned from a 2005 issue, which she guest edited. I don't know what a guest editor of a fashion magazine does other than get her picture on the cover and in a couple of features within--eighteen year-old fashion model Gemma Ward guest edited an issue of Australian Vogue and I think her pictures were in every article with pictures--but it resulted in an article by Maggie on the Hong Kong Tram. She writes that when she was very young in Hong Kong her family lived close enough to the tram line that she could hear the characteristic sound its bell made.

Some of the pictures are from a fashion spread, some from a feature of photos of Maggie on the tram plus a few others. It is difficult for me to judge images of Maggie Cheung since I have been enthralled with her since I first saw her onscreen in the 1988 Wong Jing masterpiece "How to Pick Girls Up", not a vehicle for stardom (or more than a paycheck for a few weeks' work) for any of the actresses involved. Kozo has a good review (which I don't full agree with) at LoveHKFilm . Given my heroine-worship of her I tend to think that any image of the divine Maggie is good although clearly some show her Magginess--to steal a phrase from Brian in his appreciation of her at his invaluable and slightly addictive site--than others.

So, here are the pictures that most captured my eye when going through this issue of WestEast.