Lung Ying-tai (
Since then, a conflict has been brewing between Lung and Lin Mun-lee (
Before the dispute, Iap Phok-bun (
These problems didn't surface with the Taipei City government after Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was elected as the city's mayor in December of 1998, but became media headlines after he invited Lung from her home in Germany to head the new bureau on Nov. 6 of last year.
And so it seems that politics don't exist without culture and culture is actually a response to politics.
Take Lung's "half year press conference" as an example. Held on May 4, the anniversary of the "May Fourth Movement (
When then-Taipei Mayor Chen tried to install his colleague, Lo Wen-chia (
Even if it is possible to let "culture be culture and politics be politics," Lung should be very careful to do her job, for she is the first woman to decide who can and should share more resources.
But Lung seems to not be paying attention to this. That was the reason she was criticized for not giving sufficient weight to Taiwan as having its own culture, but for being a famous writer with a "greater China complex."
Lung once penned an article criticizing President Lee Teng-hui (
On Jan. 24, this newspaper ran an editorial saying that Lung was not suitable to be a governmental official.
The editorial said that "Lung's independent working style, weak personal skills and self-centered attitude have made her hard to work with. Worse still, her pride as an intellectual and, dare we say, her perception that, as a mainlander, she is culturally superior show through her words and actions."
One example of this, Lee Min-yung (
If Eberhard Diepgen, mayor of Berlin, should be blamed for his absence at the ground-breaking ceremony of German's first national Holocaust memorial museum, then Taipei citizens should consider wether they need a new director for their Cultural Affairs Bureau or a new Taipei City mayor.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US