It's plot may be dated, but Lady Mouse Got Married (
With the Lunar New Year approaching, the timing of Shiny Shoes' reprisal isn't surprising. Parents traditionally recount the classic tale for their children on the third night of the new year, tucking them into bed early so as not to disturb the nighttime fun.
As the story goes, Daddy Mouse is concerned about finding a suitor for his beautiful young daughter, Lady Mouse. His fear is that, if he doesn't find the strongest, manliest mouse in the land, his daughter might well become the prey of Fat Cat, the ferocious predator feared by all mice. Accompanied by the outspoken Matchmaker Wang, Daddy Mouse interviews four candidates before discovering that the son-in-law he's looking for has been right under his nose all along. So what if it's about arranged marriages and a life spent in fear, the moral lessons of the cute coming-of-age story still ring true.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SHINY SHOES CHILDREN'S THEATER
Leave it to Shiny Shoes Children's Theater to turn an ages-old story into a timely tale. The troupe got their start 20 years ago at Growth Day Care Center with weekly performances that quickly became popular with parents throughout Taipei. By 1987 they had their own permanent theater in the nation's capital, before making their new home in Taichung. They have toured Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, traveled to Singapore and the US and produced two award-winning television programs.
The secret to their success lies in their formula for updating the classics. While all the troupe's actors honor the traditions of Chinese opera, they also incorporate modern acting techniques, make ample use of modern stagecraft and add melodic tunes to their productions in order to mesmerize their young audience.
Lady Mouse Got Married will be performed in Chinese, with an English-speaking narrator, tonight at 7:30 in the Experimental Theater of the National Theater (
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