The winners of the prestigious annual Global Chinese Culture and Arts Award (
PHOTO: VICO LEE, TAIPEI TIMES:
Summer isn’t the best time of year for high-altitude treks. At lower altitudes, however, there’s no shortage of short leg-stretchers that’ll get you immersed in nature without leaving you prostrate with heat exhaustion. Here are three in the south. THE SIRAYA HEARTLAND If this set of trails has an official name, I’ve not been able to discover it. But it seems that this patch of woodland, 14 km inland from central Tainan, is supervised by Sinhua Forest Area (新化林場), which itself belongs to National Chung Hsing University (國立中興大學). I associate the area with the Siraya people, an indigenous ethnic group still fighting
It can take ice cream maker Miky Wu (吳書瑀) months to create a new flavor. In addition to using only eco-friendly and organic ingredients, her brand 1982 de glacee also eschews artificial additives, replacing emulsifiers and stabilizers with Taiwanese rice and wood ear derivatives. Wu’s non-traditional methods and dedication to capturing the essence of the main ingredient can lead to hours and hours tinkering in her “research office” in Tainan, even referencing academic papers to get the science correct. Her efforts were recently recognized for the third year in a row by the prestigious A. A. Taste Awards run by the
June 29 to July 5 With women gathering rocks and men hurling them at thousands of rivaling neighbors, ritualistic stone battles were regular affairs for people living in Pingtung during the 1800s. Direct combat and use of weapons were prohibited to avoid serious injury, with the losers hosting the winners for dinner. These “guests” often acted rudely, and faced no repercussions for smashing windows or snatching their hosts’ possessions. These battles usually took place yearly, with a significant number happening every Dragon Boat Festival. The winners had rights to the losers’ banquet prepared for the festivities. Sometimes things would get out of
Certain historical statues have been disappearing in Thailand, but they are not effigies of colonialists or slave owners torn down by protesters. Instead, Thailand’s vanishing monuments celebrated leaders of the 1932 revolution that ended absolute monarchy in Thailand, who were once officially honored as national heroes and symbols of democracy. Reuters has identified at least six sites memorializing the People’s Party that led the revolution which have been removed or renamed in the past year. In most cases it is not known who took the statues down, although a military official said one was removed for new landscaping. Two army camps named after 1932
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