Hong Kong volunteers aid injured turtles after ‘mercy release’

There are concerns that the Buddhist practice could disrupt the local ecosystem and pose a risk to public health

At a drainage pool near a popular hiking site in Hong Kong’s rural Tai Po district, a group of volunteers armed with snorkels, nets and gloves wade through the muddy water to find dozens of turtles left there by residents. The red-eared slider turtles were released into the wild through a practice known as “mercy release” — a concept rooted in a Buddhist belief that freeing animals brings good fortune. But many animals are being intentionally captured and sold just to be set free, animal experts said, while the turtles often get hurt or even die after being left in waterways. There are also concerns that the release of the red-eared slider, which is not native to Hong Kong, could disrupt the local ecosystem and pose a risk to public health. Thousands of animals are affected every year and scores are likely to be released in May leading up to the Buddha’s birthday on May 19, conservation experts said. “It’s not suitable for these turtles to live in places like these catchwater drains or ponds because they are not local Hong Kong species,” said Sean Lai, who runs a concern group for abandoned turtles. “If they used to be cared for by humans, they won’t be able to hunt in the wild, they may not be able to catch the fish, shrimp, or food they need, then they’ll starve to death. Or due to the change of weather, they might freeze to death or die from the heat.” Lai said at least 28 out of the over 80 turtles his group found in the same drainage outlet this year were dead. Some had “mercy release” written on their shells in Chinese characters. He said his volunteers were taking care of more than 60 injured turtles — from treating skin infections to broken shells — and that the animals

By Yoyo Chow and Tyrone Siu

Kurt Cobain’s hair on the block

An online rock ‘n’ roll auction will feature clothing worn by Paul McCartney and lyrics signed by Bob Dylan, spanning Elvis to grunge

Guitars from Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton and Aerosmith as well as autographed memorabilia from The Beatles and even strands of hair from Kurt Cobain are some of the highlights of an online rock ‘n’ roll auction that ends over the weekend. Six strands of blonde hair from the grunge rock icon are part of a series of Nirvana offerings that also includes a Cobain amp and a rare group-signed blue Stratocaster-style guitar. The hair was cut by a friend in 1989 and the minimum bid is US$2,500. The Marshall amp has “Kurt” written faintly in the top right corner and was used by Nirvana during the ‘90s, as well as while the band filmed its Live and Loud video. It was later used by Hole and OPM after Cobain’s death. The minimum bid is US$15,000. (A guitar Cobain used for his MTV Unplugged show recently sold for US$6 million). The items are part of a slate of rock items being offered up by Iconic Auction, spanning Elvis to grunge. The auction closes Saturday. A portion of proceeds will benefit Crew Nation, a relief fund for live music touring and venue crews who are facing hardship due to the coronavirus pandemic. The item with the highest minimum is a collarless, dark blue jacket custom made for Paul McCartney that starts at US$25,000. It was worn onstage over a six-night stand at Bournemouth, England’s Gaumont Theatre in 1963. Tricia Eaton, East Coast consignment director at Iconic Auctions, said the jacket is one of the Beatles’ earliest stage-worn garments ever to come to market and captures the band pivoting from jeans and leather jackets. There’s also a copy of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band signed by McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and a sheet of handwritten Blowin’ in the Wind lyrics signed by Bob Dylan. The

Angelina Jolie leads tense ‘Those Who Wish Me Dead’

It would be an understatement to say that Angelina Jolie is put through the wringer in writer-director Taylor Sheridan’s new film Those Who Wish Me Dead. In just 100 minutes, she is beaten and bruised by nature, men and even some of her own choices — like a crazy stunt involving a parachute and a pickup truck. Jolie has always thrown herself into physically demanding roles, but her Montana firefighter Hannah Farber may take the cake for most cuts and shiners sustained in 24 hours. This is a film in which she’s running from hitmen, raging forest fires and past traumas. Apparently her face and body are the physical representation of that. Even so, it’s always a pleasure to see her back on screen, which has become rarer and rarer lately. Those Who Wish Me Dead was adapted from a novel about Connor, a 12-year-old boy on the run from a pair of assassins who killed his dad. Screenplay credits go to the author Michael Koryta, Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond) and Sheridan, who seems to be cornering the market on bleak and bloody Western thrillers. Sheridan wrote the screenplays for Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River, which he also directed. This outing is not quite as grim as Wind River but it’s still very much in that vein. And like his folksy-poetic dialogue or not, he knows how keep a film moving and give his actors juicy moments to chew on. (It should be no surprise that he too cut his teeth acting). He’s populated this film with solid talent including Jon Bernthal as a local sheriff, and Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult as the hitmen. Finn Little, who plays Connor, can turn on the waterworks and internalized trauma as effectively as Jolie. The film is

By Lindsey Bahr

Movie review: Green Jail

The title Green Jail is presented literally in this poetic, slow-paced and somewhat disjointed documentary. Somber shots of stunning, lush greenery frame the scenes throughout the film, following the final years of Yoshiko Hashima, the sole Taiwanese remnant of the notorious coal mining enterprise that once thrived on Japan’s remote Iriomote Island, off the east coast of Taiwan. Hashima, who first moved to this “island of death” at age 10, died at 92 in 2018, bringing to a close this little-known chapter of Taiwanese on the island. Not much actually happens in the film, but it’s poignant and visually stunning, a fitting ode to the ghosts of the past. The perpetually grumpy yet endearing Hashima rambles about her family history in a mixture of Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) and Japanese while carrying on her daily tasks in the idyllic village, her only companion a young, eccentric American tenant who spends his free time helping her with tasks, playing video games and participating in cultural activities. Hashima repeats and retells some events, and parts of the history is left somewhat unclear, but it underscores a life resigned to fate and hardship in a strange land that she is forever bound to. The dead silence of the surroundings starkly contrasts to the days when it was known as the “Green Jail,” where workers mostly from Japan’s then-colonies of Taiwan and Korea toiled under harsh conditions, many never to return home. The past is told through audio and video footage of Hashima’s adopted father, who recruited Taiwanese to work here, as well as surreal, recreated scenes of the difficulties of mining life. The ghosts (literally) of the miners, many trapped here due to morphine addiction and debt, still haunt the forests, and, as the film progresses, more and more appear, standing mournfully among

By Han Cheung

Coffee without beans?

A block away from the Starbucks on Seattle’s busy Western Avenue, a woman bends over a coffee grinder and a black kettle full of bubbling water, which sits on a hot plate. The air is thick with the roasty aroma of fresh-brewed java. The scene would be entirely unremarkable except for a few outstanding details. One, the woman is wearing a lab coat. Two, there’s a steaming glass beaker instead of a mug. And three, not a single coffee bean was involved in making it. This is the office of food tech start-up Atomo Coffee, where a team of food scientists and chemists led by friends and co-founders Andy Kleitsch and Jarret Stopforth are working on what they hope will be the successor to meatless meat, eggless eggs and milkless milk. Atomo’s coffeeless coffee is made from upcycled ingredients, e.g. sunflower seed husks and watermelon seeds, which undergo a patented chemical process to yield molecules that mimic the flavor and mouthfeel of the real thing. The resulting grounds are brewed just like a regular cup of coffee. And yes, it has caffeine. The US$100 billion coffee industry is one of the world’s most vulnerable to climate change. The plants that grow arabica beans — the most common worldwide, favored by both coffee snobs and chains like Starbucks — thrive in cool regions with distinct rainy and dry seasons. But global warming is causing those regions to shrink. Within the next seven decades, arabica is likely to lose at least 50 percent of its habitat, according to a 2019 report from scientists at Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. As temperatures continue to rise and growers move their farms in search of cooler temperatures, rates of deforestation rise, as well. ‘TESLA OF COFFEE’ This is where Kleitsch and Stopforth are hoping to step in. After more

What is LGBT+ conversion therapy and why is it so controversial?

Britain’s government vowed on Tuesday to ban LGBT+ conversion therapy and support people who have undergone the practice, joining other nations that have moved to outlaw treatments that aim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government said the process “can cause mental and physical harm” and should be stopped, even as some religious groups voiced concern that a ban could criminalize pastoral care for conflicted congregation members. Here are some key facts about the controversial practice: WHAT IS CONVERSION THERAPY The practice has its roots in society’s attitudes towards LGBT+ people. Until 1990, homosexuality was considered by the WHO to be a mental disorder, and gay sex remains illegal in 68 nations. Just two years ago, the WHO said being transgender was “not actually a mental health condition” in a further shake-up of its global manual of diagnoses. Facing societal pressure, many gay or trans people have sought to become heterosexual or what has become known as cisgender — a person whose gender identity matches the sex that was recorded at birth. Others are forced by family members or religious leaders to undergo conversion treatments, which can include talk therapy, hypnosis, electric shocks and fasting. Extreme cases, such as exorcism and “corrective rape” for lesbians, have been documented in countries such as Mexico and Cameroon. WHAT DOES THE LAW SAY? Four nations have implemented partial or total bans: Brazil, Ecuador, Malta and Germany. Last year, Albania’s licensing body for psychologists banned treatments that seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The US does not have a federal ban on conversion therapy, but 20 US states, including California, Colorado, New York, Washington and Utah prohibit the practice to some degree. The American Medical Association has condemned the practice as “harmful and ineffective.” Nearly 700,000 Americans have undergone conversion therapy, half when they were under 18,

By Hugo Greenhalgh

Book review: Novelizing Taiwan’s White Terror

Prison books are a semi-major literary genre. Works such as Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle, flanked by One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, are classics, with Dickens, Genet and Nelson Mandela also featuring. Most of them are at least partly autobiographical, and Tehpen Tsai’s (蔡德本) Taiwan White Terror novel, Elegy of Sweet Potatoes, is no exception. It was originally written in Japanese (Tsai was brought up during Japan’s occupation of Taiwan), then translated into Chinese. An English version, finely crafted by Grace Tsai Hatch, appeared in 1995 and now re-appears from Taiwan’s Camphor Press. The author, who helped with the translation, was her uncle. Initially set in 1954, it’s the story of Youde, a middle-school teacher in Chiayi, who is arrested and, on the evidence of alledgedly having a book written by Mao Zedong (毛澤東), is accused of being a Communist. He is held for over a year, in Chiayi, Taipei and elsewhere. Youde was born in 1925 in Chiayi County’s Putzu City (朴子). He went, as did Tsai, to the US for a year on a scholarship after graduating from university, and returned to teach in his home town. The least that could happen to him, a fellow prisoner thought, was that he would be sentenced to three years of “re-education without crime,” though a “workplace guarantee” was also possible, whereby an employer would guarantee his good-conduct, while his behavior was scrutinized. But the terrifying dictum of then-president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) was generally observed: Do not let one escape even if 100 are mistakenly killed. In Chapter 39, Tsai writes that when Taiwan was first placed under Chinese rule in 1945, only Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members were permitted to move here. Some Communists nonetheless joined the KMT as a cover and proceeded to infiltrate schools and offices and recruit for the

By Bradley Winterton

Environmental Impact Assessment: Taming Taiwan’s wild roads

People living in Taiwan’s cities hope for many things. Some might put cheaper housing or quieter neighbors at the top of their wish-list. Quite a few surely dream of more orderly, less congested roads. To get an international perspective — and find out what a specialist thinks could be done to make driving and riding less stressful and the streets safer — I reached out to Chiu Bing-yu (邱秉瑜), a PhD student in City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Chiu’s research focuses on how the supply of public transportation and land-use planning affect travel behavior, with particular attention to motorcycle use in Asia. A Taipei native, he has written scores of op-ed articles for Chinese-language newspapers and Web sites on topics related to traffic. When making cross-border comparisons, Chiu looks at countries where the nominal GDP per capita is within 10 percent of Taiwan’s. (He uses the nominal figure instead of purchasing power parity — which adjusts for the cost of living — because vehicles and fuel are internationally traded goods.) By this measure, Taiwan’s peers include South Korea, Spain, Italy, Cyprus and the UAE. TOO MANY VEHICLES With regard to traffic jams, Taiwan’s cities aren’t doing too badly. Chiu says that commuters in many countries, including wealthier nations, have it much worse. Kaohsiung, the only Taiwanese city on the 2020 INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard, last year recorded 27 hours lost to congestion. “Looking at cities in Taiwan’s peer countries, Italy’s worst is Rome with 66. In New York, the number is 100, and in Paris it’s 88,” he says. In a piece for United Daily News published April 28 last year, Chiu stressed that the principal cause of traffic problems in cities, including the conflict between pedestrians and vehicles, is the sheer number of cars and motorcycles. Of course, Chiu

By Steven Crook

Celebrities unite to back #StopAsianHate campaign

The Marvel film star Gemma Chan has revealed that she is frightened for her family in the UK after a surge in hate crimes against Chinese, Japanese and south-east Asian people. Speaking to the Observer to help raise awareness for a national #StopAsianHate campaign, Chan said she was “deeply concerned and disturbed” at police figures revealing that, in London alone, attacks on east and south-east Asian people (ESEA) have tripled over the past year. “Like many others, I worry for family members every time they leave the house or use public transport,” said Chan. “My mum has worked for the NHS for most of her life. She and my dad have been followed and subjected to a number of verbal assaults since the beginning of the pandemic.” Chan said that while the attacks on her parents did not become physical, many victims did face violence. Among several incidents, she cited an unprovoked attack on a 26-year-old woman in Edinburgh last week that ended in her hospitalization, the vicious beating of a university lecturer out jogging in Southampton and a physical assault on Singaporean student Jonathan Mok on Oxford Street in London. She warned that a tipping point had been reached. “The recorded figures are likely an underestimation because many incidents go unreported, both to the police and in the media,” Chan said. Chan, who starred in 2019’s Captain Marvel, is joined by a number of prominent individuals including fashion designer Alexa Chung, fellow Marvel star Benedict Wong, Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding and Vogue editor Edward Enninful in backing a GoFundMe initiative to support east and south-east Asian communities in Britain. “There is an urgent need for increased awareness and support so I am proud to help launch this fund, which will provide grants to grassroots organizations supporting ESEA and broader communities,” said Chan. In the

By Nosheen Iqbal

Myanmar 100 days: three female activists

They have given up everything and are working in the shadows to overthrow the junta. A hundred days on from the military coup that ended Myanmar’s brief dalliance with democracy, three women tell about their lives and their struggle, living between anger and hope. Their names have been changed because of the danger they face in speaking out against the regime. THE WRITER “They murdered my future,” said writer Ma Hninsi. Since the coup, the 55-year-old has lost her literary magazine, her lifestyle and her circle of friends. A political prisoner for six years under the previous military regime in Yangon’s notorious Insein prison, Ma Hninsi’s world collapsed again with the coup on the morning of Feb. 1. “There was a lot of confusion as communications were cut off. The streets were empty, only army supporters were parading around,” she said. The resistance organized itself quickly and Ma Hninsi demonstrated every day in Yangon. “For the first weeks, in the streets there were many people, women, children,” she said. “People were angry, but the atmosphere was peaceful. We sang and danced.” But then the atmosphere changed. “One day, the military started shooting. We understood that they had nothing left to lose,” she said. More than 770 civilians have been killed in the junta’s crackdown on protests, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a monitoring group. The junta reports a much lower death toll, and blames the violence on “rioters” engaging in “acts of terrorism.” On Armed Forces Day on March 27, around 100 people were killed in crackdowns on protests, according to the AAPP, the bloodiest day since the coup. Near Ma Hninsi’s home, students were surrounded. “I took advantage of a calm period to hide five of them in my car and evacuate them. Within minutes, we came across a patrol,” she said. Since then, Ma Hninsi has been hiding, writing

By Sophie Deviller

Notes from central Taiwan: Messages from the bubble world

Sifting through the last week or so of writing on Taiwan in the major media, the original title of this piece was going to be “Three Cheesy Pieces.” But in truth, the flow of effluent from the media exceeds my ability to represent it in a single pithy headline. It seems that the output of bad writing on Taiwan is equal to the square of the amount of attention our island nation receives. TRIFECTA OF TURGIDITY Leading off a terrible 10-day of prose on Taiwan was the The Economist’s piece, “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth” with Taiwan on the cover. The title was hilariously mocked on social media this week, and many commentators noted the complete lack of Taiwanese voices and perspective, as well as the piece’s absurd construction of Taiwan as a danger when the danger is China. But The Economist, despite its pretense to in-depth dead-white-male analysis, offered the same bubble world that such pieces always do. Another voice from the bubbly depths was Peter Beinart’s widely panned piece in the New York Times*, “Biden’s Taiwan Policy is Truly, Deeply, Reckless.” Beinart based the entire article on the absurd claim that US President Joe Biden is “making quiet, incremental, moves to establish official relations with Taiwan.” The Biden Administration has evidenced no such plans, of course. I have no idea how the paper’s editors let Beinart make such a transparently false claim, or why they did not source something sensible from the scores of competent writers and thinkers based here in Taiwan. Completing this trifecta of turgidity was Charles Glaser. Like some inept but malign cicada, Glaser surfaces every five years or so with a think-piece arguing that the US should sell out Taiwan. Asia expert Bonnie Glaser, the Director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund,

By Michael Turton

Taiwan in Time: Reviving Raohe Street

May 10 to May 16 Many elderly people wept as the crowds flooded Raohe Street (饒河街) on May 11, 1987. It had been over a decade since the street was this busy, the Minsheng Daily (民生報) reported. Locals set up altars along the way, praying that the grand opening of the Raohe Street Night Market would reverse their fortunes. It was Taipei’s first night market with government-mandated traffic control hours, banning cars from 5pm to midnight. “This is a great way to manage a night market, and other locales should follow suit,” the article stated. There were still some kinks to iron out. Vendors who illegally occupied vehicle lanes near the Songshan Bridge mostly refused to relocate to the night market. The Taipei City Government gave them 15 days to comply. Known as Xikou (錫口) during the Qing Dynasty, the area surrounding Raohe Street was one of Taipei’s wealthiest neighborhoods. There was no road to the Dadaocheng (大稻埕) area or Wanhua District (萬華) in the western part of the city, and the only way to get there was to catch a boat from Xikou Wharf. The area lost much of its former glory after the railroad was completed in 1891, but remained a notable business district until a street-widening project in 1975 led to a sharp decline. The revitalization plan worked, and today Raohe Street Night Market remains one of the most popular of its kind in Taipei. Coupled with the completion of the pedestrian-only Rainbow Bridge and adjacent riverside bikeway, the area is now teeming with activity at night and on the weekends. PROSPEROUS STREET According to the book Gazetteer of Old Songshan (古松山方志) by Wang Shou-ning (王受寧), the Xikou area boasted some of the largest Aboriginal settlements in the Taipei basin during the 1600s. The one near Raohe Street was called Malysyakkaw;

By Han Cheung

Taiwan: the pangolin’s last stand?

Who would have thought that Taiwan — just over 100km from China and a few hundred kilometers away from Vietnam, which are the world’s first and second biggest consumers of pangolin scales — would become the last beacon of hope for this imperiled species? In fact, pangolins — from sub-species in Africa all the way down to Indonesia — are the world’s most highly trafficked mammal. Thought to cure anything from HIV to hangovers, ground pangolin scales and pangolin soup (the photos online are difficult to stomach) are expensive delicacies in Vietnam and China, and the rarer the species becomes, the more it is sought after — because it is going extinct — creating a dreadful vicious cycle propelling the animal into oblivion. CONSERVATION However, Taiwan’s pangolin populations have recovered from previous hunting campaigns in decades past, and that this scaly anteater-like creature is now somewhat common on the island. Furthermore, pangolin-range countries with dwindling populations of this fascinating mammal (it is its own order in the animal kingdom — Pholidota) were, at least before COVID-19, collaborating with Taiwanese researchers and learning from Taiwan’s success in trying to bring the species back from the brink. Kurtis Pei (裴家騏), one of the most prominent wildlife conservationists in Taiwan, says that pangolins can now be seen in many rural areas. “The pangolin is increasing island-wide in the past decades,” Pei says. Pangolins can today even be found in places as popular and populated as Yangmingshan (陽明山國家公園), and even on my own university campus — Chang Gung University (長庚大學) — on the Linkou (林口)/Gueishan (龜山) plateau just south of Taipei, I was stunned when one of my students showed me a video he took one evening of a pangolin scurrying at a nervously fast pace near his dormitory once it realized it had been seen. This

By Gregory McCann

On the hunt for wild animals on the Jinshueiying Ancient Trail

The degree of a hike’s difficulty is directly proportional to how much conversation people will engage in. Barely a peep, for example, is heard from those summiting Jade Mountain’s main peak (玉山, 3,952m). The steep ascent to the ancient Aboriginal village of Kucapungane (舊好茶, Jiuhaocha) in Taitung County finds only the most experienced energized enough to weave a tale or utter an anecdote. A hike along the Jinshueiying Ancient Trail (浸水營古道, 1,490m), however, with its moderate inclines and long stretches of mostly horizontal path, ensures that hikers will engage in all kinds of banter. And that’s the problem — if you are on the hunt for wildlife. Voices make noise. Noise startles animals. And there are plenty of exotic animals — pangolins and Reeves muntjac (a type of small deer), Formosan rock macaques and civet cats — to be found on the Jinshueiying Trail. Stay with a group, though, and good luck getting close to any. Jinshueiying stretches 47km over the Central Mountain Range from Pingtung County’s Fangliao Township (枋寮) to Dawu Township (大武) in Taitung County. The trail was popularized by husband-and-wife Yang Nan-chun (楊南郡) and Hsu Ju-lin (徐如林), amateur adventurers who have done much to interest a whole generation of Taiwanese to leave the city and explore the history of the many Aboriginal trails that criss-cross the nation. Signs indicating historical anecdotes punctuate the well-maintained and easily traversable path, and point to the many wanderers who have used it over the centuries for the purposes of trade, migration and leisure. Although the trail is easily navigatable, getting to the trailhead on the Taitung side is a little difficult, so going with a group is recommended. Our party began on the Taitung side and hike 15km of the trail to Pingtung. After disembarking at Guzihlin Bridge (姑仔崙) we set out

By Noah Buchan

Inside the cut-throat battle to build K-pop’s next superstars

Thirty teenagers, thousands of hours of training, dozens of shattered dreams: it all comes to a head next week when the Blitzers will be launched into the cut-throat K-pop market, hoping to become the next BTS. An all-male septet — like the musical phenomenon that topped the US Billboard charts last year — their three years of training are being distilled into three minutes of music and dancing that will determine whether they are a hit, or just another nowhere band. The routine, always intense, is punishing in the weeks running up to their debut: gym sessions, singing lessons, promotional shoots, and around 10 hours of dance practice into the early morning. The program leaves them less than five hours sleep a night in bunk-beds in their shared Seoul house — the empty berths tombs for the hopes of those expelled after failing to make the cut. In a dedicated, mirror-lined rehearsal studio, the seven survivors stood poised for the opening bars of their first single, Breathe Again, outnumbered by managers, trainers and choreographers. The moment it came over the speakers they launched into high-energy lockstep moves, spinning each other around with military precision. “Though I want to hold your hands I can’t come near you/Because I’m stuck unable to move,” sang 17-year-old lead singer Cho Woo-ju as he jumped off a human staircase formed by his bandmates. As the song reached its climax they came together in a line-up, simultaneously throwing trademark K-pop poses. But the response was underwhelming. “It was just a warm up for you guys, right?” said a dance instructor. “Let’s do it for real now.” “Yes!” the boys responded with a unanimous shout. “We practice our dance moves until we synchronize them perfectly,” said backup singer Jang Jun-ho. ‘ONLY A COUPLE SURVIVE’ K-pop is the latest and biggest instance of the so-called Korean

By Kang Jin-kyu

In a new film, Gia Coppola dissects ‘Mainstream’ culture

Gia Coppola was feeling out of touch with popular culture when she stumbled upon the ending of Elia Kazan’s 1957 satire A Face in the Crowd several years ago. The story of a folksy truth-teller who rises to dangerous levels of fame and influence on television seemed oddly prescient (and this was before it became “trendy” again after the 2016 presidential election). The image of Andy Griffith laughing maniacally stayed with her. At the same time, she was watching the rise of internet stars from afar and wondering where art fits in a world where everyone just wants to watch others play video games and unbox toys. “I’ve always sort of felt a little bit like an alien or something. Just what I like is very different, I think, than what most people like,” Coppola, 34, said. “I think now because of the Internet it’s even more in your face of what gets gratification.” It was the genesis of her sophomore feature, Mainstream, in which a struggling young artist (Maya Hawke) inadvertently creates a monster when her videos of an antiestablishment loner (Andrew Garfield) go viral. The film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, is in theaters and on demand today. But even with a surname like Coppola, a well-reviewed debut film under her belt and a timely topic, it wasn’t an easy or straightforward path to getting Mainstream made. Her 2013 film Palo Alto was an evocative look at the lives of suburban teens that had more than a few people throwing out favorable comparisons to her aunt, Sofia Coppola. But this, she knew, was decidedly weirder. Things started to fall into place after she met Garfield through Greta Seacat, an acting coach they both work with. Coppola doesn’t want to act. “Nothing terrifies me more,” she said. It’s just a means to

By Lindsey Bahr

Along the camphor trail

Chu Mu-kun (朱木崑) carefully inspects a large boulder hauled from further up the Daniuci OId Trail (打牛崎古道). “This might work,” he says, rotating and repositioning it against the slope until it fits snugly. It takes two hours to manually make three steps using simple tools on the ancient trail, which has been rendered inaccessible due to the collapse of a wooden elevated walkway. “You have to transport goods up here to repair this walkway, which looks jarring against its surroundings to begin with,” Chu says. “Hand-built trails using readily available materials are easier to maintain and are better for the environment. We consider the comfort and safety of the user with each step.” More than 20 people, most of them first-timers including a few children, are participating in the trail-building workshop organized by the Nanshan Community (南山社區) in Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), and led by six instructors from the Thousand Miles Trail Association (千里步道協會). When complete, the Daniucih Old Trail will be part of the Raknus Selu (樟之細路), a roughly 400km-long network of historic paths connecting mostly Hakka villages from southern Taoyuan to northern Taichung. The association began promoting the trail in 2018, but it is still very much a work in progress. I was a bit disappointed when I tried to traverse portions of it last month, as little of it was marked and there was scant information along the way. Of course, I could have carefully mapped out the route beforehand, but I completely missed the two main historic paths in the Guansi area and ended up on a paved road for the entire first day. It wasn’t until the next day that I spotted the bright yellow Raknus Selu markers and its hand-built trails on the secluded Shihyingzih Trail (石硬子) near Beipu Township (北埔). When Hsu Ming-chien (徐銘謙),

By Han Cheung