Forced to retreat southward by unrelenting winds, I made my way into Lukang (鹿港), which is never a bad thing. I had to abandon any thought of cycling up the coast of Changhua County into Taichung, but at least I could pedal around one of Taiwan’s most historic and characterful towns. However many times I go back to Lukang, I always seem to discover something I’d not noticed on previous trips. This recent unplanned visit was no exception. Freewheeling through side streets near the rightfully famous Longshan Temple (龍山寺), I found myself facing an unfamiliar place of worship no wider than a shop. Its name, Lukang Xingan Temple (鹿港興安宮), didn’t ring any bells with me, but its weathered exterior was instantly appealing. I’d barely got my bicycle locked when a middle-aged lady walked up to me and began talking. Four-fifths of what she said was in Mandarin, the rest in English. She mixed useful statements about the temple with prying questions (“What’s your line of work?” “How old are you?”). She also handed me a Chinese-language booklet that contained a sketch of the temple as it probably looked in the decades after its founding in 1684. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the temple faced one of the docks through which Lukang merchants imported stone, wood and silk, while exporting rice and sugar. Silt eventually blocked the waterways between the sea and the docks. By the second half of the 19th century, the town’s golden age as a cross-strait trade hub was over. The temple’s name derives from Xinghua (興化) Prefecture, part of Fujian Province in China. Even though the prefectural government was formally abolished about 300 years earlier, it seems the toponym was still in common use when Han people began to settle in Lukang. Old habits do indeed
In 1995, teacher and choreographer Lin Lee-chen (林麗珍) founded her company, the Legend Lin Dance Theatre (無垢舞蹈劇場), and marked its arrival with the first part of a trilogy about heaven, earth and humans that was inspired by years of research into Taiwanese folklore, customs and religious rituals: Mirrors of Life (Miroirs de Vie, 醮). The production was the beginning of her search to capture the beauty and spirit embodied in ancient religious performances as well as the timeless rhythm of nature, and Mirrors was followed by Anthem to the Fading Flowers (Hymne aux Fleurs Qui Passent, 花神祭春芽) in 2000 and Song of Pensive Beholding (Chants de la Destinee, 觀) in 2009. The trilogy became a quartet in 2017 with the premiere of The Eternal Tides (潮), which, like its predecessors, transported audiences into a mystical, tranquil otherworldly realm. In Lin’s productions, time, and her dancers, move with meditative slowness — even slower than the minute-hands of a clock watched by students counting down until the end of a class — so that they appear to just glide across the stage. Given the years between each new production, revivals of the works of the trilogy excite fevered anticipation among Legend Lin fans eager for a return visit to the worlds she creates. One benefit of the COVID-19 pandemic that has closed so many arts venues around the world, and temporarily shuttered those in Taiwan, is that the National Theater and other venues of the National Performing Arts Center are restaging classic theater and dance productions to fill gaps in their schedules caused by foreign artists and troupes canceling their appearances. Lin decided to revive Anthem to the Fading Flowers to mark the 20th anniversary of the production, and it begins a three-city tour at the National Theater on Friday next week. “The COVID-19 pandemic is
Borat is back — and the fictional Kazakh journalist’s new film spells bad news for Holocaust deniers, Donald Trump supporters and the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, out tomorrow on Amazon Prime, is the sequel to British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 smash hit mockumentary, which grossed US$260 million, earned an Oscar nomination and spawned endless poorly punctuated catchphrases. While the plot is under wraps, word of Baron Cohen’s latest outrageous ambushes on unsuspecting participants has spread like wildfire, with Giuliani issuing an angry denial Wednesday after being tricked into a fake hotel room “interview” with an attractive and flirtatious young woman. In the film, the encounter appears to leave the 76-year-old former New York mayor in a highly compromising situation, caught quite literally with his hands down his pants in the bedroom. Giuliani said Wednesday the scene was “a complete fabrication.” “I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment. At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate,” he tweeted. “If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar.” Filmed in secret this summer as the United States’ coronavirus lockdown eased, the follow-up movie again sees Baron Cohen hoodwink members of the US public and politicians via his bumbling and highly offensive reporter alter-ego. Giuliani, a close Trump ally who introduced the president’s speech to accept his party nomination this August, told the New York Post he had thought the hotel meeting was a serious interview about the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I only later realized it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me,” Giuliani told the publication, adding he was a “fan of some of his movies.” He is far from the only
This year’s Kuandu Arts Festival (關渡藝術節), which opened on Sept. 23 and runs through Nov. 29, is focused on music. Under the theme “Joy of Music,” a nod to the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven, the program features performances by seven symphony orchestras as well as several Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA, 國立臺北藝術大學) student and faculty shows, in addition to the annual film and animation festivals. However, there is still room for other performing arts, and two productions this weekend and next at the university in the hills of Taipei’s Guandu area (關渡) feature students from the School of Dance. The dance department is celebrating its 38th anniversary, so it is fitting that this weekend’s show, Four Chapters Of The Floating Life (浮生四闕), feature works ranging from ballet to contemporary to post-modern, choreographed by two faculty members, a guest professor and an alumnus. The show’s artistic director, Chiang Chiou-o (蔣秋娥), choreographed 2020 Spring, a classical ballet-based work set to Max Richier’s take on the “Spring” section from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Alumnus and Batsheva dancer turned freelance dancer/choreographer Lee Chen-wei (李貞葳) has contributed Unfold Unpaid (非常非償), an exploration of the conflicts and disasters confronting modern society, set to music by Teho Teardo, Death Grips, Ben Frost and others. Australian Leigh Warren’s GREEN T, created for graduate students, is a three-part work inspired by the ideals of the postmodern movement and the pop culture of the time, set to music by John Cage and Steve Reich. The final work on the program is The Floating Life (浮生) by Zhang Xiaoxiong (張曉雄), a restaging of a work he created for the 2006 Hong Kong Dance Academy Dance Festival, To Friends in Heaven. Zhang adapted the piece for Taipei Crossover Dance Company (台北越界舞團) in 2008 and then restaged it this year for the students.
A disconsolate mother dressed in white wanders through Mexico City’s floating gardens looking for her children killed by COVID-19, in a pandemic-era adaptation of a legend rooted in Aztec mythology. The traditional play La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) returns to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Xochimilco ahead of the Day of the Dead with a poignant tribute to the victims of COVID-19. The ghost with flowing black hair, who according to legend reappears every year searching for her downed children, has spread throughout Latin America. “It’s dedicated to the memory of all the people who left without saying goodbye to their loved ones and for all the families who have suffered this loss,” Nayeli Cortes, who has played the role of the weeping mother for 11 years, said. Measures such as face masks made of transparent plastic or cloth and a smaller audience enabled the 27-year-old performance and its flamboyant costumes to survive the pandemic. COVID-19 has killed 86,000 people in Mexico, one of the world’s highest tolls, and as in other countries kept people apart from their families. “Not being able to hug, hold hands or kiss (relatives) is very frustrating and that’s why right now it’s dedicated to them,” said stage director Maria Luisa Castillo. “We know that they are here with us and it is the homage that we can give them, and also to tell them, ‘Here we are. We remember you. You will never be forgotten.’” According to experts, the legend of the wandering ghost was first documented around 1550. It is associated with supposed dire omens prior to the Spanish conquest that predicted the end of the Tenochtitlan empire 500 years ago. The audience watched the show from the gondolas that ply the canals of Xochimilco, which usually attracts about a million tourists a year but was shut for almost
The prognosis for biodiversity on Earth is grim. According to a sobering report released by the UN last year, 1 million land and marine species across the globe are threatened with extinction — more than at any other period in human history. According to a recent study, about 20 percent of the countries in the world risk ecosystem collapse due to the destruction of wildlife and their habitats, a result of human activity in tandem with a warming climate. The US is the ninth most at risk. Despite this desperate outlook, the Trump administration, as part of its aggressive rollback of regulations designed to protect the environment, has lifted protections for America’s animals. It has shrunk several national monuments and opened up a huge amount of federal land for oil and gas drilling, coal mining and other industrial activities — actions that conservationists warn could imperil species whose numbers are already dwindling and that are core to the health of our ecosystems. Here we look at some of the animals most at risk from Trump’s rollbacks. WOLVERINES In 2019, the Trump administration changed the way the Endangered Species Act is applied, making it harder to protect animals. “There are many species that have been wrongly denied protection over the last several years because of this,” says Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Just last week, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will deny protections for the snow-loving wolverine under the Endangered Species Act. Wolverines were wiped out across most of the country by the early 1900s following unregulated trapping and poisoning campaigns. According to Hartl, they are slowly clawing their way back in some areas but there are presently fewer than 300 wolverines left in the contiguous US. SAGE GROUSE The Trump administration plans to open up drilling on 9m acres of
What sort of science fiction does Xi Jinping (習近平) like? How can China’s weathermen use the president’s political philosophy to improve their forecasts? In what ways can “Xi Thought” help prepare the country for the next big earthquake? These are the sorts of questions Communist Party cadres are now pondering as they prepare for the next big milestone in the president’s effort to cement control: Elevating Xi Thought alongside Maoism. The esoteric concept is expected to be written into the five-year development blueprint that will be unveiled after party meetings later this month. Everyone from diplomats to executives to sci-fi writers are under pressure to incorporate the broad, often fuzzy tenets of Xi Thought into their policies. The project is central to Xi’s effort to quiet opposition and to stay on past 2022, when he’s expected to seek a third five-year term as party chief. Once Xi has his own “-ism,” the theory goes, he’ll be elevated to a political standing on par with Mao Zedong (毛澤東), whose portrait hangs over Tiananmen Square and is printed on the currency. It will also make it all-the-more difficult to question his edicts. “Its importance lies in prominently raising Xi’s personal profile,” said Carl Minzner, a professor at Fordham Law School who specializes in Chinese law and governance. “Every time the command to study it is uttered on TV, and every time is written in a party document, it is a highly visible signal to both party officials and citizens at large as to who is on top, and whose orders actually matter.” TAKING SHAPE While some key tenets of Mao’s philosophy are included in the iconic Little Red Book, Xi Thought is still being shaped and yet to be compiled in one place, although the three-volume Xi Jinping: The Governance of China — a collection of his
Food can reflect culture, but can food also reflect history? That was what Lee Chi-lin (李其霖), associate professor of history at Tamkang University (淡江大學) wanted to explore when he gathered historians, local officials and culinary enthusiasts at the Tamsui Red House (淡水紅樓), an exquisite red-brick Taiwanese cuisine restaurant built in 1899. Lee planned the menu to reflect the historic Qing victory over the French in the Battle of Tamsui, also known as the Battle of Hobe (滬尾, Tamsui’s old name). On Aug. 23, 1884 war had broken out due to a territorial dispute in Vietnam between the French and Taiwan’s Qing Dynasty overlords. After capturing Keelung, French warships appeared just outside Tamsui in early morning of Oct. 2 and bombarded the port. The French Fusiliers Marins launched a ground assault on Oct. 8, but defending forces drove out the invaders in just four hours. The French defeat played a significant role in the Qing’s recognition of the strategic importance of controlling Taiwan and the imperial decision to separate Taiwan from Fujian as its 20th province in 1885. Lee’s 10-course menu illustrated significant aspects of the event. In battle storytelling fashion, Lee described each dish before it was served on the tables. However, gastronomic concerns over the order of the dishes took preference over the exact chronology. Dish 1 “Reveille:” The call to battle begins with a beautifully decorated local seafood boat. The French coveted the port of Tamsui, regarded as a stronghold of maritime trade since the 17th century. Heavily armed, the invaders are represented by a large crab. The Qing, poorly equipped but numerous, are the smaller prawns. And an uninvited Japanese admiral, Heihachiro Togo, watches while eating sashimi on the battlecruiser Amagi. Black beans and iron eggs (a Tamsui specialty) depict planted spies, including a British pilot named Bentley, who went by the
When Dalilah Restrepo, then a New York-based physician, clicked on an e-mail in 2018 asking if she was “looking for experiencing something abroad”, she was skeptical. “And then I opened it, and I was like … New Zealand? Gosh, that’s a bit drastic.” Restrepo, who had been in private practice for “10 or 11 years,” was exhausted. “The health system in the US is really toxic,” she said. Health disparities and “moral injury” had caused burnout among her peers, she said, and before the suggestion that she leave the States, she had thought of quitting her profession altogether. In March 2019, Restrepo joined a growing number of medical professionals from the US relocating to New Zealand. They come with admiration for a society that values scientific knowledge, what they see as the prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s progressive political ideals, and the pristine landscapes made famous by Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. “Everyone was like, ‘You’re going to heaven right? We’re really jealous,’” Restrepo said. POPULAR PASSPORT The number of American doctors yearning for such a move, recruitment firms in the US and New Zealand say, has increased substantially since the COVID-19 pandemic. With their skills in demand they are among the few professions able to obtain entry to a country whose passport — according to an index this month – is the most powerful in the world. “Some of the inquiries come from changes in their own employment due to COVID,” said Chad Saley, a spokesperson for Global Medical Staffing, a US-based firm that places American doctors abroad. “Others are interested in working there due to the country’s positive response to COVID.” New Zealand has drawn global praise after appearing to quell the spread of COVID-19, twice — with just over 1,500 cases and 25 deaths. On the night of Donald Trump’s debate with Joe Biden
Oct 19 to Oct 25 Ma Yi-kung (馬以工) sighed a breath of relief after the March 1981 meeting to “decide the final fate” of the mangrove forests of Tamsui. Even though then-premier Sun Yun-suan (孫運璿) had announced a year earlier that the Executive Yuan would pledge to protect the forest, the Water Resources Agency still insisted on razing them to build public housing. In June 1980, the forests suffered a serious blow when unscrupulous developers cut down over 30,000m2 of the plants, and experts rushed in to reverse the damage. Sun had announced on Oct. 22, 1980 that the government would protect the forest, but the Water Resources Agency refused to back down until that final meeting. “Especially considering our national power today, there is no need for us to destroy a stable ecosystem just for a little economic benefit,” Ma writes in the 1983 book We Only Have One Earth (我們只有一個地球), coauthored with her high school classmate and fellow activist Han Han (韓韓). “Today’s results bring at least a ray of hope to the future of Taiwan’s ecological conservation.” This was a year before the government established an environmental protection bureau, and Ma writes that at that time there were no laws enforcing environmental protection. “Only in the past 10 years have people started paying attention to ecology, and began considering our relationship with nature,” she writes. “Most people still judge these issues by values such as the usefulness of the mangroves. Can we eat them? Can we use them as fuel? Can we use them to fight cancer? It seems like things only have the right to survive if they have any use for humans.” Today, Ma and Han are considered pioneers of Taiwan’s environmental conservation efforts. Even so, attempts to develop the mangroves continued until 1986, when the government finally established the
The coronavirus pandemic has had many social, political and economic ramifications. One interesting side effect in the cycling world has been the demolition of the world record for everesting. The latest time of six hours and 59 minutes was set by Sean Gardner two weeks ago in the US state of Virginia. Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of everesting, most cyclists hadn’t until recently. Primarily an individual event, it is ideally suited to a time when social distancing and restrictions on travel mean that many local and international sporting events have been canceled, since it can be undertaken on any hill in any country, “or even on a bridge or the driveway of your home,” states the Web site of the Hells 500, custodian of the Everesting Hall of Fame (everesting.cc/hall-of-fame/#/). The concept is fiendishly simple, but achieving it is brutally difficult. All you need to do is cycle the height of Mount Everest, 8,848m, on a single hill in a single activity. “No time limit. No sleep.” HISTORIC ORIGINS The challenge can be traced back to 1994, when George Mallory, grandson of the mountaineer of the same name, was preparing to climb the real Everest in commemoration of his British grandfather’s disappearance there in 1924. As part of his training, he cycled up Australia’s 1,250m Mount Donna Buang eight times in 22 hours and 45 minutes. There have been 6,538 successful everesting attempts in 97 countries to date, with more added almost every week. This year, having been taken up by elite riders, the record has been broken six times since May 11, when American Phil Gaimon did the first sub-eight-hour ride. The most high-profile cyclist to hold the record was Spain’s seven-time Grand Tour winner Alberto Contador who posted seven hours and 27 minutes on July 6. To beat this, on July 30
The western half of Linnei Township (林內) is a flat mishmash of farmland, industry and residential neighborhoods. Most of the rest shows up on satellite photos as dark green, rugged and hilly. These woodlands, in the northeastern corner of Yunlin County, are easy to access, even if you’re using public transportation. I wheeled my bicycle off a local train at Linnei, rode south less than 200m, then turned left. According to a bilingual sign on the corner, the distance from there to Longguomai Forest Trail (龍過脈森林步道) is precisely 1,024m. But it’s a steep 1,024m. I had to shift into low gear before reaching a temple forecourt big enough for half a dozen tour buses. A pair of shrines, one behind the other, face the lowlands. The lower, larger building is Ji Gong Temple (濟公廟). Behind it, and slightly higher up the hillside, is Three Saints Hall (三聖殿). THE DRUNK MONK Ji Gong (濟公) is the name given to a 12th-century Buddhist monk who won respect and admiration during his lifetime for helping the poor and the sick. At the same time, he became notorious for habitually breaking two monastic rules, namely that monks shouldn’t eat meat or drink alcohol. Sometimes called “the drunk monk,” he’s often portrayed as unkempt and intoxicated. The statue that occupies the central position in Ji Gong Temple depicts the monk as a rakish, Errol Flynn lookalike. A gourd-type bottle dangles from his left hand. Ji Gong also appears in Three Saints Hall, on the right. This version looks suitably sozzled, and even less dependable. Among the offerings on the altar was an opened bottle of Red Label Rice Wine, a clear liquor that non-alcoholics use only for cooking. As usual, my pre-trip research hadn’t been very thorough. It wasn’t until I wandered around, and gazed down at the torii gate
It has been four years since Puyuma singer-songwriter Sangpuy Katatepan Mavaliyw released his award-winning album Yaangad (椏幹, Life), but his fans long wait ended yesterday, when he released pulu’em (得力量, Gain Strength). The release came ahead of a weekend of afternoon concerts at the Cloud Gate Theater in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) that his team are calling the “Sangpuy 2020 Cloud Gate Theater Sharing Sessions” (桑布伊2020雲門劇場音樂分享會). He has had a busy four years in the interval: providing vocals for then-Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) artistic director Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) 2017 production, Formosa (關於島嶼); touring in Europe; a three-concert run at the National Theater in Taipei in April last year as part of the Taiwan International Festival of Arts; helping his mother in the family’s orchard, and of course, working on new songs. That was in addition to picking up three awards at the 2017 Golden Melody Awards for Yaangad, including — in an historic win for an Aboriginal artist — Best Album of the Year, as well as his second Best Aboriginal Singer trophy — the first was for 2012’s Dalan (路, Road). The Taitung County native told a news conference in Taipei on Tuesday that one of the benefits of having some of this year’s tour dates in Europe canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it gave him more time to work on pulu’em, the first album he has coproduced. Collaborations with several Taiwanese musicians and arrangers led him into some new musical directions, he said, while meeting Belgian violinist-composer Wouter Vandenabeele and Senagalese musician Bao Sissoko, two members of the trio Tamala, at a music festival in Belgium last year, ended up with them working on one of his new songs, A Day in the Life (一天的生活). Some of the 10 songs on pulu’em — which means gaining strength and
Even though tomorrow’s Uanliu Music Festival (灣流音樂祭) features an all-Taiwanese lineup, virtually no Mandarin will be heard. Instead, the sounds of some of Taiwan’s once-suppressed languages — Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), Hakka, Atayal and Amis — will permeate the two stages and booths next to National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Drunken Moon Lake. The eclectic lineup includes Hakka folk icon Lin Sheng-hsiang (林生祥), last year’s Golden Indie-winning fusion group ChuNoodle (春麵), Hoklo indie rockers Windmill (風籟坊) and Atayal chanteuse Yaway Mawring. Put together and crowdfunded by members of the NTU Student Association’s native languages task force (本土語言小組) and NTU Taigi Bun Sia (台語文社, Taiwanese language club), the event is an attempt to get students to take interest in the issue of language endangerment and revitalization, which organizers say is often ignored. Event coordinator Lim Liu-sin (林柔辰) says that the most popular social topics on campus are gender issues and transitional justice, but she has noticed more people expressing interest at least in learning Hoklo over the past year. A Taichung native, she grew up speaking the language and competed in reading competitions, but after she moved to Taipei she found that there were virtually no opportunities to use it. “Only then did I realize that the Taiwanese language is disappearing and how important the issue is,” she says. Co-organizer Liau Tsun-khai (廖俊凱), whose parents spoke it at home but never to him, also experienced the same thing after moving to Taipei. On the other hand, although most of Jay Wei’s (韋晢) family came to Taiwan from China in 1949 and his mother tongue is Mandarin, he joined the native languages task force because he sees these languages as a way of establishing a distinct Taiwanese identity, and is also crucial to transitional justice. However, the students believe that the only way to truly preserve
Pecha Lo (羅珮嘉) isn’t concerned that fewer female Taiwanese filmmakers are focusing solely on gender equality. “Some may worry that the topic is being underrepresented, but I don’t think we should place limits on what stories women can tell; that is too politically correct,” the director of the Women Make Waves Film Festival tells the Taipei Times. “I hope to see them exploring a wider range of topics.” Going against the grain fits nicely with this year’s theme of “femture” (an amalgamation of feminism and future), where Lo encourages the audience to imagine and explore what it means to be a woman in the near or distant future — especially as the world is thrown into disarray by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now in its 27th year, the festival opens today with 76 films over 10 days, featuring mostly foreign films and a Taiwan competition section. “There are many mainstream forces dictating to us what kind of woman we should be,” Lo says, but she notes that even identifying as a woman is optional these days as gender becomes increasingly fluid. The visuals for the festival are markedly neutral this year, using muted tones and androgynous figures. “I’ve purposely blurred the portrayal of the woman, so that people are free to imagine what a woman might look like in the future,” Lo says. Last year, the festival addressed the big issues such as the MeToo movement and women regaining control over their bodies. This year, it examines problems that may not be as apparent, especially in a country like Taiwan where many mistakenly believe that gender equality has been achieved due to its high global rankings in women’s rights. “In the past two years, whether it be in the West or in Taiwan, society has become more aware of sexual harassment, but new problems
A lot was riding on the world premiere of choreographer Cheng Tsung-lun’s (鄭宗龍) latest piece, Sounding Light (定光), his first full-length work for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) since taking over as artistic director from founder Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) at the beginning of this year. Sounding Light, which opened at the National Theater in Taipei on Oct. 1, and will be in Kaoshiung this weekend and in Taichung next weekend, was a revelation — a light, airy work at once both earthy and etheral. However, it also raised the question of what it might have looked like if COVID-19 had not hit the world. Cheng has said in several interviews that he was inspired by the forced solitude of the mandatory 14-day quarantine that he and other company members had to complete after returning from a European tour earlier this year. The sounds of the neighborhood around where he was staying obviously made him more introspective than normal, and contemplative of the sounds of the natural world and those of humans. The result is a quieter, more subtle piece than audiences have come to expect from the man who brought the sights and sounds of his Wanhua District (萬華) childhood to life in 13 Tongues (十三聲) for Cloud Gate 2 (雲門2), or used technology to such great effect in Lunar Halo (毛月亮). Watching Sounding Light makes you feel like you are sitting in a sun-dappled glen early in the morning, seeing and hearing the forest come to life around you, but with a microscopic view of the insects, birds and other creatures. It was almost as if a David Attenborough documentary had come to life in front of you. The sounds — the breaths of wind, the rustling of leaves, the crepitation of cicadas and the patter of rain — are not from a soundtrack, but
Given that this reviewer managed to stay awake for the entire 135 minutes of Chen Uen (千年一問), it feels like the eponymous subject lived much longer than his 58 years. It’s a curious documentary since it was made entirely after Chen Uen (鄭問), the pen name of artist and illustrator Cheng Chin-wen (鄭進文), died of a heart attack in 2017. Viewers only get to know Chen through his vivid artwork and the people he met. Some old footage of Chen is used, but only sparingly, as he’s mostly portrayed as a silent animation, solemnly strolling through his old haunts and finally visiting his 2018 posthumous exhibition at the National Palace Museum. Director Wang Wan-jo’s (王婉柔) attention to detail is stunning, fully capturing the essence of the era in each stage of Chen’s life through music, framing, graphic details and recreated scenes. Even the backdrops to the talking heads are carefully designed and at times echo Chen’s artwork, making the entire film a visual feast despite a huge part of it being straight up interviews. Chen undoubtedly had tremendous talent and deeply inspired the people around him as he moved from venture to venture and locale to locale, and that’s what makes up the bulk of the film. His fantastical, colorful and unrestrained artwork is tastefully brought to life through animations, and his wide range of creative methods are painstakingly recreated, such as splashing ink onto the page out of frustration or searing the paper with a lighter. To people who knew him, Chen was a man that kept his feelings bottled up. Many say that he was a repressed, reclusive and melancholic soul who never seemed truly happy, and yet seemed to have a passion for life and the people around him. Assistants speak of his extremely high demands, yet fondly recall
While many outdoor festivals have fallen silent, the music plays on this weekend in Central Taiwan. The Compass Taichung International Food and Music Festival is set to kick off on Saturday and Sunday at the city’s Civic Square (市民廣場), popularly known as People’s Park. “There’s no better location in Taichung for an outdoor event,” said Douglas Habecker, co-publisher of Compass Magazine, which hosts the event, now in its 17th year. The spacious park is home to the annual Taichung Jazz Festival, which was canceled this year due to issues related to COVID-19. In addition to the usual genres of rock, blues and hip-hop, jazz has taken a higher profile at this year’s Compass festival. “In a very small way we tried to fill that void,” said Habecker. Jazzhead Trio and Mark Kuo’s Jazztet are two of the jazz groups featured, in addition to perennial favorites such as The ShapeMaster, Native Space and PhiloSophia. In all, 20 or so musical groups are set to take the stage this week, with singer-songwriters mostly performing in the afternoons and bands in the evening hours. Aside from music, dozens of local vendors will be on hand offering up diverse food and drink options. Non-profit organizations will include the International Women’s Association of Taichung, which will sell baked goods, with the profits going to a local charity. With warm temperatures expected, the event will take place rain or shine. For the latest updates, check the Compass Food and Music Fest Facebook event page.
This is a collection of four stories about Taiwan featuring four male Taiwanese authors. The opening item is Lady Wasi by the Atayal writer Walis Nokan. It’s set in the logging uplands during the Japanese occupation and in colorful prose describes the hard life endured by the laborers there, and the measure of relief provided by a female visitor called Lady Wasi. She eventually finds her perfect man, however, and so leaves the other workers notably unsatisfied. The author is prominent among indigenous writers in Taiwan and known especially for his two story collections, Cruelty of Wars (2014) and Seven-day Reading (2016). Gan Yao-ming’s (甘耀明) Have a Bite of Ghost couldn’t be more different. Apparently the phrase in Hakka means “stingy,” though in this context it means “too stingy to allow the kids something good.” And the story is about a child who is deprived of a share of a boar’s leg his poor family has somehow managed to acquire. It moves through stages of hunger until finally the leg has become rotten and of no use to anyone. The aim here is presumably comedy, but to be honest I didn’t find it very funny. But Gan has won many awards, including the Award of Taipei International Book Fair for his 2010 novel Killing Ghosts and First Prize in the Taiwan Literary Award for his 2015 novel The Pangcah Girl. Lin Chun-ying’s (林俊穎) ABC, Doggie Bites Piggy represents a distinct improvement. It’s set in the period immediately following the departure of the Japanese and the arrival of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Its subject could be said to be people’s illusions, and it’s unusual in having several allusions to Western literature. H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathurtra and the opening words of Dickens’ A Tale of
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