When Faye Wong (
Sales figures in Taiwan are unreliable because it's an open secret that labels lie through their teeth about album sales, but Next Magazine (
Nothing seems to be going quite right for Faye, who arrived in Taipei from Hong Kong on Monday for a nine-day promotional tour. The highlight of her trip, which will take her to Taichung and Kaohsiung, was intended to be a meet-and-greet the fans session at the glitzy new Taipei 101 mall, but the bumbling managers of the shopping center somehow added a zero when telling Faye's agents the number of people the space could safely hold. So, Faye's managers who had planned for 2,000 fans were belatedly informed that the space could accommodate only 200. The mix-up forced Faye to switch venues for the event to the far-less glamorous Nankang 101 for this Saturday.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Things also seem to be going from bad to worse for Momoko Tao(
TV show host and author Mickey Huang (
The pop event of the weekend, sure to be attended by every name in Mando-pop, will be David Tao's (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Taiwan’s history is full of three-digit numbers indicating the month and day of major events: there’s 228 denoting the pivotal White Terror incident in 1947 and 921 for the devastating Jiji earthquake of 1999. Not quite as well remembered are 823, which represents the start of the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958 or, 524, the date of an attack on the US Embassy in Taiwan by rioters the year before. One date that is now forgotten by all except the staunchest Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) nostalgists is the snappiest of the lot: 123. On Jan. 23, 1954,
We weave our way through an old cemetery in the dark, as the sound of our quarry gets closer. At the foot of an old tomb, beneath a pile of rubble, we find what we are looking for. Tonight we embark on the seventh and final stage of the Taipei Grand Trail (台北大縱走). Starting with an ascent up to Zhinan Temple (指南宮), on past the famous Maokong Potholes (貓空壺穴), we then meander through the tea plantations and tea houses overlooking Taipei city, finally ending the epic adventure back down at National Chengchi University (國立政治大學). This section was deliberately left until the end
In the 17th century, something like a third of the world’s population died. Geoffrey Parker, in his monumental book on that terrible century, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the 17th Century, itemizes the climate disasters that overwhelmed Europe, Asia, India and the Americas. Japan suffered in 1616 its coldest spring ever, it snowed in Fujian in 1618, and successive waves of drought and flood in India and Europe in the 1620-30s savaged harvests in many countries. One of the “years without a summer,” 1628, followed 1627, the wettest summer in Europe in 500 years. The 1640s were
The simplest theory of human nature is hedonism — we pursue pleasure and comfort. Suffering and pain are, by their very nature, to be avoided. The spirit of this view is nicely captured in The Epic of Gilgamesh: “Let your belly be full, enjoy yourself always by day and by night! Make merry each day, dance and play day and night… For such is the destiny of men.” And also by the Canadian rock band Trooper: “We’re here for a good time / Not a long time / So have a good time / The sun can’t shine every day.” Hedonists
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