The 2001 Taipei Traditional Arts Festival has brought together many artists from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, providing an opportunity for Taipei's residents to fill in some gaps in their knowledge of traditional music. Following the performance of the Chinese Folk Song Chorus last week at the National Concert Hall, the festival, which runs through May 27, features a much more intimate musical event tonight -- a concert of qin music.
The qin, or seven-stringed zither, is a traditional Chinese stringed instrument closely associated with spiritual and moral cultivation. A proficiency with the qin was long considered essential for any scholar aspiring to be a "gentleman," making its status not unlike that of the lute in medieval Europe. It is differentiated from the more common zheng -- which is often also called a zither in English -- in that it does not have bridges or frets, allowing for a highly nuanced performance.
The festival has brought over Wang Ti (王迪), one of the foremost exponents of qin music in China. Wang has done important work in collecting songs for the qin. Some of these date back to the Sung dynasty. Considerable effort has been made to re-create the original sound of these ancient songs, although one major difference will be the use of modern Mandarin Chinese, which differs from ancient speech.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TMCCO
The concert will comprise four elements, including a solo recital of qin music, ancient songs with qin accompaniment, and qin performances with orchestra and with choir. The compositions and songs are the result 50 years of work by Wang, and this is the first time she will systematically presented them in concert.
What: Qin Song and Qin Nuance (琴歌琴韻)
When: Tonight, 7:30pm
Where: The Municipal Social Education Hall (社教館), 25 Pateh Rd., Sec. 3 (北市八德路三段25號)
Tickets: NT$150-NT$500
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and