Love Changes Everything, a concert. 7:30pm. The show features Taiwanese-American Broadway singer Welly Yang (楊呈偉), vocalist Fu Shang-jen (傅珍), and local trumpeter Yeh Shu-han (葉樹涵). National Concert Hall, 21 Chungshan S. Rd., Taipei (中山南路21號).
Taipei Philharmonic Pops Orchestra hosts two concerts honoring Louis Armstrong. See story, page 8.
Street Dance for Chinese Valentines Day, sponsored by HBO and Power989 (HBO情人 你好跳!全台街舞瘋). 3pm to 10:30pm. DJs David Wu and Lily Chen will host street dancers from around the island. Street dance performance goes from 3pm to 7pm. From 7pm to 10:30pm: live concert features Julia Peng (彭佳慧), Luantan (亂彈) and Sticky Rice (糯米團)
A 19th Century French Romance (千禧情人節,重回19世紀左岸咖啡館). Saturday, Sunday; 2:30pm to 6pm. Couples are invited to enjoy a slice of 19th century French living. Pre-registered couples will be given period dress and French
speaking waiters will offer French coffee and snacks. There will also be music from the period as well as a palace clown to amuse and a classical pantomime show. Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (高雄市立美術館) 20 Mei Shu Kuan Rd., Kushan area, Kaohsiung City (高雄市鼓山區美術館路20號), tel (07) 556-8081 or (02) 2454-2121.
Free hot-air balloon rides. Sunday, 10am. Any couple dressed alike will get a free ride for celebrating Chinese Valentine's Day (熱空氣球:凡當天著同色同款情人裝者,可排隊免費搭乘熱氣球). Formosan Aboriginal Culture
Village (南投九族文化村), 45 Chin-tien Lane, Ta-lin village, Yu-chih area, Nantou County (南投縣魚池鄉大林村金天巷45號); tel (049) 895-361 or (049) 896-233.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby