An afternoon of mellow jazz vibes is set to usher in the 2002 Disabled Arts Season (2002台灣視障藝術季) this Sunday afternoon at Taipei's Huashan Music House (華山音樂館). You Are in My Heart (你在我心 ), the inaugural event of this years' season, sees members of Taiwan's popular blind act the Touch Band (全方位盲人樂團) led by keyboard player, Wu Bo-yi (吳柏毅), performing a set of classic and contemporary jazz tunes.
Organized by the Arts Promotion Association for the Disabled (APAD,中華民國身心障礙者藝文推廣協會) and with backing of the Taipei City Cultural Bureau (台北市政府文化局), the event -- now in its sixth year -- has not only been responsible for giving blind musicians the opportunity to perform at some of the nation's larger venues, but has also broken new ground by attracting diverse and predominately non-disabled audiences. Other performances in the season, which runs until Dec. 24, include a New Age piano recital by Wang Chun-jie (王俊傑) on Dec. 11 at the Tai-Cement auditorium as well as a special performance by flutist, Sunny Lin (林景陽) and the classical Chinese combo, the Jiguo Ensemble (妙音樂集國樂團), at Taipei's Novel Hall on Dec. 22.
The opening show in this year's season begins at 3:30pm at Huashan Music House, which is located at 1 Pate Rd., Sec. 1 (台北市八德路一段一號2樓). Tickets for Sunday's concert cost NT$400 and are available at the door. Tickets for upcoming performances in the season vary depending on the venue. For further information see the APAD Web site at http://apad.yam.org.tw/apad.htm. Information is in Chinese only.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not