A new section of Taipei City bike path will open soon along the southern bank of Jingmei River (景美溪). Discovery of this missing link by members of Skeleton Crew, a Taipei-based group of cyclists that grew out of off-season training by dragon boat racers, reignited debate about how many kilometers of bike path there now are in Taipei. Their guesstimates ranged from 60 to almost 400 kilometers, though calculations used different criteria and definitions. Some said “Taipei means Taipei City,” others that this would be silly since it was too easy to cross unknowingly into New Taipei City, Keelung City or even Taoyuan County. Yet others raised the problem of non-contiguous sections, such as short lengths along the north coast or that along Daiyujue River (逮魚崛溪) in New Taipei City’s Pinglin District (坪林), which, passing blossoming banks and echoing with birdsong, is often touted as the area’s nicest ride. This led to debate about the relative aesthetic merits of various rides, and best places to stop for snacks, meals and beverages. Map apps were downloaded, estimates revised but, ultimately, it was decided there was only one way to measure the entire network: the Skeleton Crew would cycle a route along all the rivers in and around the Taipei area that was contiguous and never doubled back on itself. Normally the Skeleton Crew wouldn’t consider riding riverside bike paths on weekends when they teem with other cyclists, many on rentals and YouBikes, often in large groups chatting or veering randomly and stopping suddenly, never imagining there might be 100 kilograms of lycra-and-steel hurtling behind them at 30kph. And so it should be, because the riverside bike paths are a wonderful way for non-cyclists to get a safe taste of this healthy, economic, convenient, non-climate-change-gas-emitting means of transportation. After all, one of the key
Decapitated and eviscerated, the two frogs lay on their backs in a clear broth. Noticing that other diners didn’t hesitate to pile toothpick-thin bones and bits of mottled skin on their tables, I set to work with chopsticks and spoon. I was winding up a day trip to Beigang (北港), the religious capital of Yunlin County, when I strolled east onto Minjhu Road (民主路) from Wenhua Road (文化路) and came across this eatery. I’d gone to the intersection to see an obelisk that honors the man regarded as Beigang’s founding father. The Yan Si-ci Pioneering of Taiwan Monument (顏思齊開拓台灣紀念碑) celebrates the arrival in 1621 — or possibly 1622 or 1624 — of Yan Si-ci (顏思齊), a Chinese trader who’d been living in Japan. Some say he left Japan because he took part in an unsuccessful uprising against the shogunate. Others think that changes to the business environment forced him to seek pastures new. Whatever Yan’s motives, the 13-ship convoy he led dropped anchor here. His followers unloaded their supplies, and did their best to establish themselves in a place that the local Aboriginal people called Ponkan. The new arrivals recorded this toponym as Bengang (笨港, literally “stupid harbor”). It wasn’t until well into the 19th century that this odd place name was replaced by the insult-free Beigang (“north harbor”). CHAOTIAN TEMPLE I’d begun the day at the house of worship that gives Beigang its cultural and spiritual significance. Chaotian Temple (朝天宮), founded in 1694, is a key center of the Matsu cult. The pious come from all over southern and central Taiwan to pray to the sea goddess. However, because of a falling out between the leaders of Chaotian Temple and those in charge at Dajia Jenn Lann Temple (大甲鎮瀾宮), the famous annual multi-day pilgrimage that honors Matsu each spring no longer passes through
Music of all genres can provide hope and inspiration, cheer us up when we are down or encapsulate our despair when we are feeling low and just want to wallow for a while. Songs are the hallmarks by which we measure life’s passages. Tunes from Broadway musicals serve this role well, which is why five artists with backgrounds in musical theater and opera, who found themselves safely ensconced in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic, decided to do something to cheer people up. The result is Bright Lights for Dark Nights (曙光再現 音樂劇之旅), billed as “an international musical extravaganza,” which opened at a performance space in Taipei’s Nangang Bottle Cap Factory last night for a four-show run, featuring songs from musicals of the past 50 years. The two-act production starts with songs from darker musicals to symbolize the angst that so many people felt last year, with songs from well-known productions such as The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked and Hamilton to those from shows that might not be as well known to local audiences, such as Spring Awakening, Hadestown and Bonnie and Clyde. Act 2 focuses on the light at the end of the tunnel and the bright lights of Broadway with songs such as Don’t Rain on my Parade, Bring Him Home, Move On and Songs for a New World. Australian Paul Whiteley, an actor/singer/musician turned event promoter, is one of the producers of the program as well as a performer. His resume includes Australian productions as well as international tours of shows such as The Phantom of the Opera. Bonnie Lin (林姿吟) is a bel canto soprano with a background in opera and musicals as a performer and choreographer, as well as a television show host. Mandarin Wu (吳曉清) is a professional singer and dancer and has taught musical theater, dance and choreography
Judging by Tang Tsung-sheng’s (唐從聖) performance in The Servant of Two Masters (一夫二主) on Saturday night at Taipei’s Metropolitan Hall, his nickname of Action Tang is well deserved. Starring as Truffaldino, the servant at the heart of the play, Tang is rarely offstage or even at rest: He whines, wheedles, holds endless conversations with himself or the audience and is always on the hustle. Performance Workshop (表演工作坊) founder Stan Lai’s (賴聲川) Mandarin-language adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1743 play kept the improvisational, broad-based and often bawdy basics of the comedia dell’arte tradition of the Italian playwright’s original, but Lai also reduced the cast to a minimum by having everyone but Truffaldino double-up on roles, albeit with sometimes ill-disguised cover-ups. The compactness of the revival of the company’s 1995 production was also highlighted by Lai’s inventive set design, created for the company’s five-city tour in mind: the cast and crew are in Taichung for two shows tomorrow and Sunday at the Taichung Chungshan Hall, before heading further south in the coming weeks. Lai designed a large steel box, made up for four open-sided cages on casters that each hold three or four brightly painted flats, which opens up to form the interior walls of a house, the exterior walls of an inn and a Venetian cityscape. A chandelier, along with a few more painted flats from the fly loft above the stage, a couple of chairs, boxes and tables round out the list. Lai opens the play with the betrothal of Clarice and her true love, Silvio, watched over by her father, Pantalone, and his, Dr Lombardi, along with her maid Smeraldina and a family friend, the innkeeper Brighella. The proceedings are interrupted by Truffaldino, who is looking for a job, and then Beatrice, who appears in the guise of her dead brother, Federigo, who
As youngsters, Cheng Chin-ching (鄭錦卿) and Cheng Yu-yen (鄭玉燕) were tasked with picking pebbles out of the piles of rice and beans in their family’s small rice mill. Now in their seventies, the siblings quietly carry on their grandfather’s work at the 80-odd year old Hsin Ching Li Rice Factory (新慶利碾米廠), which is Taipei’s only remaining operation of its kind. Although they’re glad that the city designated the two-story structure on Dihua Street (迪化街) as a historic site on Dec. 28, they also lament that none of the younger generation want to take over the business. There’s even trouble hiring workers, as they currently just have a family friend helping out when needed. “The work is physically straining and the profits are low,” Cheng Yu-yen says. “No young people want to do this.” Small-scale rice milling has never been a lucrative business, but things have gotten harder over the years as people consume less rice and large-scale rice mills in the south dominate the industry with cheaper land and labor. “In the old days, a big family could consume 60kg of rice in a week,” Cheng Yu-yen says. “Now, a household doesn’t even finish 6kg in a month. But business is stable. We just need to make enough to feed ourselves.” The Chengs seem to be unassuming, matter of fact people who don’t think much about how they’re preserving their heritage business and outliving their competitors. Nothing notable has happened over the years, they say; business just carries on day after day. “The shop needed help so I came back after I finished school,” Cheng Chin-ching says. “It’s my ancestral business, so I’ll do it until I can’t do it anymore.” FAMILY BUSINESS Before even entering the dimly lit shop stacked with rice bags, keen-eyed visitors might notice that the sign outside still shows a seven-digit
Treated with violence and relentless mockery, and shunned to the point that even her grown children don’t want anything to do with her, 55-year-old transgender woman Evon (Lee Lee-zen, 李李仁) has paid a huge price just to be her self. As if things couldn’t get any worse, she loses her job and her only friend is murdered when walking the streets. And that’s just the beginning. The events that happen to Evon may seem a bit too exaggerated to create despair and emotion, but it also starkly highlights the challenges transgender people face in Malaysia, where the film is set. There, they long suffer from widespread brutality, injustice and discrimination, while religious authorities continue to arrest and punish people just for their sexuality. While not nearly as bad, don’t think that there isn’t a problem in Taiwan. It isn’t exactly rosy for the transgender community here either despite the nation’s advancement in LGBTQ rights. Lee, who lost 13kg for the role, portrays Evon with finesse and subdued emotion — she rarely reacts even in the most heartbreaking and humiliating situations (including her daughter screaming at her in public for daring to attend her wedding), but Lee is able to exude the sheer disappointment and sorrow through the cracks of Evon’s stoic exterior. And when Evon does break down, all that’s repressed gushes out in a lifetime of pain. Lee invokes just the right amount of femininity for this setting and does a convincing job, while the over-the-top diva role is claimed by her roommate and friend, Lucy. The dynamic between the two is fun but brief. An extremely gentle and sentimental soul, Evon desires intimacy and family. She was a caring family man who waited for her wife to die before transitioning and for the previous 10 years has used her wife,
The planet is facing a “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” that threaten human survival because of ignorance and inaction, according to an international group of scientists, who warn people still haven’t grasped the urgency of the biodiversity and climate crises. The 17 experts, including Prof Paul Ehrlich from Stanford University, author of The Population Bomb, and scientists from Mexico, Australia and the US, say the planet is in a much worse state than most people — even scientists — understood. “The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms — including humanity — is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts,” they write in a report in Frontiers in Conservation Science which references more than 150 studies detailing the world’s major environmental challenges. The delay between destruction of the natural world and the impacts of these actions means people do not recognize how vast the problem is, the paper argues. “[The] mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization.” The report warns that climate-induced mass migrations, more pandemics and conflicts over resources will be inevitable unless urgent action is taken. “Ours is not a call to surrender — we aim to provide leaders with a realistic ‘cold shower’ of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future,” it adds. Dealing with the enormity of the problem requires far-reaching changes to global capitalism, education and equality, the paper says. These include abolishing the idea of perpetual economic growth, properly pricing environmental externalities, stopping the use of fossil fuels, reining in corporate lobbying and empowering women, the researchers argue. The report comes months after the world failed to meet a single UN Aichi biodiversity target,
In Taiwan — A Light in the East David Pendery aims to create “a systematic, relevant and in essence scholarly (if somewhat easygoing and personal) study of important issues and topics in Taiwan.” In my review of an earlier Pendery book, Something Super (the Taipei Times, April 2, 2013), I said that the book had two heroes, Taiwan and the author himself. This time the emphasis is firmly on Taiwan. Pendery is very interested in politics, though admitting his “Chinese skills are not advanced enough that I can read political news in every newspaper and understand every statement that politicians make.” He begins with the hypothesis that the entire population of the innumerable Pacific islands originated from Taiwanese aborigines migrating southwards. He goes on to make a case for the modern Taiwanese too being great migrators, what with students going to study abroad and 196,691 Taiwanese living in the US, according to the 2010 census, plus many more of Taiwanese descent. Pendery then goes on to touch on the Dutch, Spanish and (far more long-lived) Japanese arrivals, though arguing that these foreign presences were not the cause of Taiwan’s modern internationalism, but rather the adventurous and out-going mind-frame of the Taiwanese people themselves. “Taiwan is a prosperous, generous, healthy and dynamic country that seems to be enjoying the best fruits of its political choices,” Pendery writes at the end of a consideration of Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, which argued that the spread of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism may be the end-point of humanity’s political evolution. How remote this now seems! But all this is only by way of a general introduction, and Pendery proceeds to write at great length on the issue of Taiwan’s diplomatic status (what if one day its diplomatic
The farming of African oil palms, which has transformed vast areas of Malaysia and Indonesia, is one of the world’s most controversial types of agriculture. Demand for palm oil — a common ingredient in processed foods and personal care products — drives deforestation and the destruction of tropical peatlands. To make space for oil-palm plantations, tracts of forest are cleared, sometimes by bulldozer, but often by burning. Forest fires release huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, as well as soot. In Sumatra and Borneo, orangutans, rhinos, elephants and tigers are losing their habitats to the African oil palm, as are clouded leopards, pangolins, macaques and tapirs. Several of these species are vulnerable; some are critically endangered. In Europe in particular, photos of orphaned orangutans upset consumers. Fearing boycotts, retailers have sought alternatives to palm oil, or to source the commodity from growers certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). This Kuala Lumpur-based NGO develops and implements global standards for the environmentally and ethically-sound production of palm oil. The industry-dominated RSPO is not without its problems. It has been accused of greenwashing and, as recently as last month, of certifying palm oil produced on plantations guilty of serious labor abuses. Switching from palm to other oils could be even worse for the environment. Joe Fassler, in the March 2016 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, points out that: “No other crop can yield even a third as much oil per acre planted. And along with using less land, the oil palm gobbles up significantly fewer pesticides and chemical fertilizers than coconut, corn or any other vegetable oil source.” At the end of 2018, British supermarket chain Iceland ceased manufacturing products which contain palm oil. By May 2019, UK department-store chain Selfridges had eliminated palm oil from its own-label range. British online retailer
The National Theater and Concert Hall (NTCH) in Taipei “needs to move with the times to maintain its significance in society,” its Artistic Director Liu Yi-ruu (劉怡汝) said in a recent interview. Liu added it is not enough for appreciation of the performing arts to be limited always to the same group of people. “The industry needs to venture outside its realm and find a place among the general public,” said Liu, who returned to the NTCH in April 2018 as its artistic director after a four-year break. She said one initiative to attract wider patronage was the renovation of the Performing Arts Library, which is scheduled to reopen on Jan. 20. It will offer better access for people with disabilities and accommodation for the average person. “Regular folks may be intimidated by the idea of going to a live performance, but they can easily go to the library to watch videos or listen to the audio of a performance,” Liu said. The new library, which has seen a decline in visitors that averaged 1,000 per year over the past three years, has meeting spaces and is designed to serve as a window on the NTCH, Liu said. In an effort to attract more people, the NTCH has introduced audio guides of its performances, subtitles during performances and child-care services for theater and concert-goers, she said. There is also a more relaxed approach during certain performances, which allows people in the audience to enter and leave at anytime, Liu said. Nonetheless, Liu said, performances remain central to the NTCH, which is now also producing shows instead of just hosting them. At the Taiwan International Festival of Arts, which will be held March 2 to May 2, the NTCH will produce A Thousand Stages, Yet I Have Never Quite Lived, a solo performance by
In March, as coronavirus deaths in the UK began to mount, two hospitals in northeast England began taking vitamin D readings from patients and prescribing them with extremely high doses of the nutrient. Studies had suggested that having sufficient levels of vitamin D, which is created in the skin’s lower layers through the absorption of sunlight, plays a central role in immune and metabolic function and reduces the risk of certain community-acquired respiratory illnesses. But the conclusions were disputed, and no official guidance existed. When the endocrinology and respiratory units at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS foundation trust made an informal recommendation to its clinicians to prescribe vitamin D, the decision was considered unusual. “Our view was that this treatment is so safe and the crisis is so enormous that we don’t have time to debate,” said Richard Quinton, a consultant endocrinologist at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. Soon clinicians and endocrinologists around the world began arguing about whether sufficient levels of vitamin D might positively impact coronavirus-related mortality rates. Some considered the nutrient an effective treatment hiding in plain sight; others thought of it as a waste of time. In March, the government’s scientific advisers examined existing evidence and decided there wasn’t enough to act upon. But in April, dozens of doctors wrote to the British Medical Journal describing the correction of vitamin D deficiencies as “a safe, simple step” that “convincingly holds out a potential, significant, feasible COVID-19 mitigation remedy.” In the Newcastle hospitals, patients found to be vitamin D-deficient were given extremely high oral doses of the nutrient, often up to 750 times the daily measure recommended by Public Health England. In July, clinicians wrote to the journal Clinical Endocrinology to share their initial outcomes. Of the first 134 coronavirus patients given vitamin D, 94 had been discharged,
Anyone viewing events in the US last week, with seditionist terrorists attacking and occupying the Capitol building, naturally might ask whether the same events could occur here in Taiwan. As people are pointing out, in a way they already have. In 2004 after the election Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supporters, led by the losing presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰), staged protests which became violent, while claiming numerous election irregularities, none of which were ever documented. Sit-ins were staged at courthouses across the nation, lingering for a week afterwards. In 2000 after Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) won for the first time, KMT supporters staged violent protests against then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in front of KMT headquarters. One of his advisors, Hsu Li-teh (徐立德), was dragged from his car and beaten. Lee was only able to leave party headquarters after riot police had cleared the street in front with water cannon. The quiet acceptance that accompanied the KMT’s more recent election losses shows that odds are against a violent putsch by rightists, at least from that quarter. Taiwan also has some advantages that the US does not, including structures for monitoring and neutralizing disinformation, much better social cohesion, a civic nationalism that incorporates democracy into the national identity and far more robust and fair election procedures. There is no question that the potential is there. Afflicted with competing Chinese and Taiwanese nationalisms, Taiwan hosts a morass of conspiracy nonsense. There are long-running conspiracies about the 2004 assassination attempt on Chen, and on the conduct of the election itself, narrowly won by Chen. On the far right of the KMT there used to be people who argued that former president and KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was a closeted Taiwan independence supporter. More recently, the claim that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) thesis is a fake, invented
Jan. 11 to Jan. 17 Cheng Jih-ching (鄭日清) tried hard to keep a low profile at his regular job, but that was impossible for a person who had already won three national singing contests, recorded two acclaimed albums and was in high demand for Taiwan’s then-burgeoning live variety show scene. The popular “Baritone King” (中音歌王) worked quietly as a draftsman at the Directorate General of Highways during the day, and rushed off on his bicycle after work to entertain fans in his energetic “dance-move-sing” (跳動唱) signature style. His supervisors and colleagues turned a blind eye to his moonlighting at first, but Cheng began taking days off to partake in variety shows in central and southern Taiwan in the early 1970s. He was constantly worried that this would affect his day job, since government workers were discouraged from frequenting these venues as they did not have the best reputation. “The venues would advertise the show in the newspapers, and they would list my real name,” Cheng says in an episode of Taiwan History (台灣演義) on Formosa TV. “When I returned to work, I made sure I treated my coworkers to meals and brought them souvenirs.” However, what really caused problems was him appearing on television to judge singing contests — which was not allowed, and his coworkers often reported the behavior to the higher ups. Cheng ended taking an early retirement at the age of 56, upon which his career really began as he completely delved into the scene. ALWAYS SINGING Cheng was born in 1924 in today’s Guting (古亭) area in Taipei. At the time, the area was mostly inhabited by Japanese, while most Taiwanese lived in Wanhua (萬華) and Dadaocheng (大稻埕). The Cheng family enjoyed such privilege because his father worked for the Japanese government. In this
People considering opening a museum are often told, apocryphally, that only four museums in the world make a profit. Consequently, even with a well-stocked shop that may break even and an attractive cafe that, in pre-COVID times, might perhaps bring in a little money, it would take a very foolish person to spend around 5 years to construct a museum halfway up a hill in the western suburbs of Taichung. Or a very generous person. For this, according to Operations Director Howard Wang (汪家灝), was the time spent constructing “the retirement gift to the world” from King Liu (劉金標), founder of Giant Bicycles, the world’s largest bike manufacturer making more than 6 million bikes per year. So when Giant opened its new headquarters in 2019, plans for the Cycling Culture Museum (CCM; 自行車文化探索館) nextdoor were well under way. Clearly Liu, as he sips cocktails on his yacht or however he’s spending his sunset years, has deep pockets. Which is just as well, since the 30 or so visitors per day, even paying NT$400 per head for entry plus an optional NT$100 for an audio guide, are unlikely to make much of a dent into the costs of keeping the lights on and the interactive, floor-to-ceiling, virtual-reality cycling displays running. EARLIEST ORIGINS Split into eight sections over two floors, with the Tour de Cafe on the third, the museum begins with exhibits introducing 200 Years of Cycling. These start with a copy of the 1817 Laufmaschine, really a precursor of a bicycle since, although it has two wheels, relied on riders to propel themselves by running. Frenchman Pierre Lallement added pedals in the 1860s; the penny-farthing of the 1870s enabled faster speeds by drastically increasing the size of the front wheel; this was swapped to the back in the 1880s for greater stability, especially when going
Despite urban sprawl and industrialization, you needn’t travel far in Taiwan to see paddy fields. In 2019, rice was cultivated on 270,066 hectares of farmland — almost 7.5 percent of the country’s land area, and only very slightly less than in 1903. Per hectare yields now often exceed 7,000kg, perhaps six times greater than in the mid-18th century. Much of this progress can be credited to the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR, 中國農村復興聯合委員會), which channeled US technology and fertilizers into local agriculture after 1949. JCRR advised farmers to plow to a depth of 15cm instead of the usual 10cm, as deeper rooting increases the absorption of nutrients. When transplanting, farmers were urged to discard plants that weren’t obviously strong and healthy. According to a 1964 propaganda article, which boasted that per hectare yields in Yilan County had topped 4,600kg for the first time, “Use of fertilizer — both potassium and nitrogenous — was approximately doubled. More than three times as much money was spent on pesticides to make sure that insects didn’t reap the benefits of the increased growth. Spraying was carried out according to a synchronized, coordinated schedule.” Since the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule, one part of Taiwan has enjoyed a stellar reputation for its rice. Grain grown in Chihshang (池上) in Taitung was considered so excellent it was supplied to Japan’s royal household. These days, the township’s paddy fields aren’t just a source of a valuable commodity, but a tourist attraction in their own right. My most recent wanderings through Chihshang began not at the famous and over-Instagrammed trees named in honor of actor Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) and singer Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), but 1.8km to the north, outside the Rice-Husking Mill of Chihshang Farmers Association (池上鄉農會觀光米廠). The fine dust blowing across Lisyue Road (力學路) made it obvious the mill
Wednesday’s sweeping arrests of more than 50 pro-democracy activists, pollsters, politicians and fundraisers in Hong Kong seemed to all but criminalize opposition politics in the city. Those arrested face charges of subversion for their role in unofficial primary elections held last summer that aimed to maximize the pro-democracy bloc’s performance in elections to the city’s legislative council. “The plan of any opposition party is to win an election, [or] to be in a position for the government to negotiate with you; that is the virtue of democracy. So why it should be seen as a plot, as subversive? That’s beyond my comprehension, but that is the reality in Hong Kong,” said Prof Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. “Clearly we are moving towards a semi-authoritarian environment.” The long-shot goal of the loosely allied group who have been detained was to claim half the seats on the legislative body — despite an electoral process stacked against them by design — and to use that to block the government’s agenda and force the resignation of the city’s chief executive, Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥). They were not planning to use violence, or break the law; the project took advantage of provisions laid out under the Basic Law, the city’s constitution. The mass arrests showcased the Hong Kong authorities’ severely diminished tolerance for peaceful, political opposition in a city that just a year ago still enjoyed a limited form of autonomy. Last summer it was transformed by Beijing’s passage of a sweeping national security law, ostensibly to crackdown on protests that roiled the city for over a year but used to attack critics in politics and beyond including in the media, academia and education. “What is normal in the rest of the world, and was normal in Hong Kong until a few months ago, is not normal in Hong Kong
When Kaafiya Abdulle gave birth to her son in April 2017, she chose to breastfeed. A year later, she switched to baby formula, hyper-vigilant of the effects nursing had on her breasts. Unhappy with the sagging and shrinking that had occurred, she began to research breast lifts — a procedure she desperately wanted but never had the courage to pursue. Until the pandemic, that is. Social pressure to have emerged from the pandemic as a better version of oneself appears to have resulted in stigma for those who haven’t used the time for self-improvement. With amped-up betterment messaging on social media about getting in shape, staying productive and starting a side hustle, people like Abdulle have turned to drastic measures to keep up. “There’s been this popular [messaging] that you’ve had all these months at home, and if you don’t look better than you did before … then you haven’t really accomplished something,” she says. “That’s when I started to think maybe I should get my boob job,” says Abdulle, who just underwent breast augmentation in Helsinki, where she resides. Plus, there are other silver linings to the pandemic. “Everything is pretty much closed,” Abdulle says. “I have time to heal right now because I’m doing my schoolwork from home.” For those reminding us of how Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine, many are finding another side-effect from all the immense time we are spending at home: increased self-scrutiny. “People have more time on their hands. They’re spending more time in front of the mirror or on themselves, so they’re becoming more critical,” says Jacob Sedgh, a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon based in southern California. With people venturing out less, he adds: “[People] aren’t spending as much money on travel or clothing, and instead are spending more money on fitness and looking good.” Sedgh has seen
Chiu Chia-hao (邱家豪) once desperately chased down a butcher truck to obtain caul fat to recreate his late grandma’s signature dragon-phoenix leg (龍鳳腿), a fish paste snack made to resemble chicken wings. And Cheng Ching-teng (鄭靖騰) thought he came across the perfect specimen to make his heritage cuttlefish balls, only to find that it was not suitable for blending into paste. “Dad told me, and I didn’t listen,” Cheng laughs. Having little formal training, the two went through much trial and error until they perfected their family traditions. Even after 52 years in the fish ball business, Shih Mo-chou (石莫愁) wakes up at 3am every day to personally taste the shop’s pastes, vividly recounting all the times that things went wrong when she didn’t do so. Chiu’s Dragon-Phoenix Leg (邱記龍鳳腿), Cheng’s Da Fong Fish Ball (大豐魚丸) and Shih’s Xie Cheng Fish Ball (協成魚丸) were among 30 nationwide winners in the government-sponsored Fish Paste King competition (魚漿王爭霸戰), the results of which were announced late last month. The offerings were colorful and diverse, as fish or seafood paste is a staple of the Taiwanese diet and can come in countless shapes and forms, from balls to cakes to dumplings. In the old days, it was a way to make use of excess fish and unsellable specimens or scraps, but today fish-paste products are ubiquitous as snacks at night markets or side dishes in Taiwanese eateries. XIE CHENG FISH BALL (協成魚丸) Growing up in a wealthy, scholarly family, Shih was clueless about food preparation until she opened up shop with her husband at the age of 23. Her late husband was having difficulty finding work, so a fish vendor at Taipei’s Dalong Market (大龍市場) suggested that they start a fish ball operation, which was lucrative at that time. Shih’s husband was in charge of hand-mincing the paste and
New Taipei City-based Performance Workshop (表演工作坊) is beginning the new year by launching what it calls a “classic reproduction tour” with a revival of its 1995 hit, The Servant of Two Masters (一夫二主), which opens tomorrow night at Taipei’s Metropolitan Hall. Company founder Stan Lai (賴聲川) adapted an Italian comedia dell’arte classic, Carlo Goldoni’s 1743 masterpiece The Servant of Two Masters about Truffaldino, a scheming, jobless manservant who thinks he has struck gold when he accepts job offers from two different people, which proved so successful that the company went on to adapt two more of Goldoni’s plays, The Comedy of Sex and Politics and The Venetian Twins. In the 18th century works, Lai found a simpatico spirit of improvisation, with the fast-paced banter and physical comedy that have also become the hallmarks of Performance Workshop productions. Lai’s witty adaptation added some touches that make The Servant of Two Masters relatable to contemporary audiences, be they Taiwanese in 1995 or those in Shanghai, where the troupe staged the play in 2015 and again in September of last year. In Goldoni’s tale, Truffaldino has come up with what he thinks is a foolproof plan to double his wages — and his meal opportunities — but finds himself instead entangled in a web of hidden identities, star-crossed lovers and confused parents while remaining hungry because he has no time to eat. The mess is not entirely of his own making, as he does not realize that one of his new bosses, Beatrice, is a woman pretending to be her dead brother, while the other is Florinda, the man who killed Beatrice’s brother, but is also the love of her life. There is also another pair of would-be lovers, Silvio and Clarice — whose father had betrothed her to Beatrice’s brother, Federigo — and who would
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