The common knowledge that Taiwan's music and film industries have been nosediving toward insignificance has so alarmed bureaucrats at the Council for Cultural Affairs that they have now laid out a bold plan to reverse the trend.
Without elaborating how or stating a time frame, a report about the revitalizing action released by the Government Information Office on Friday says the government will inject US$270 million into the country's music industry to "rebuild Taiwan's status as an important center for Chinese pop music." According to the report, "[Council for Cultural Affairs Chairwoman] Tchen [Yu-Chiou (
Building upon the theme of cultural superiority, but in a manner that acknowledged a problem, Tchen said "We will soon lose our global competitiveness if we fail to make good use of our cultural advantages."
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
What these advantages are exactly is an open question, as is how they can be termed as such when Taiwan's cultural industries have reached such a low point that the government needs to intervene with an emergency rescue plan. The signs on this one don't appear promising.
Taiwanese TV's bad boy Jacky Wu (
The sister duo TV personalities Big S (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
The paper later reported it was swamped with angry letters from kids who spend their weekends there and Internet chat rooms were reportedly abuzz with talk of boycotting everything the two girls produce in revenge for the dissing of their stomping grounds. Hsiao, meanwhile, was racked by feelings of guilt over having smeared her friends in the papers and, according to Wednesday's China Times (
Stephanie Hsiao (
Harvey Weinstein, the autocratic owner of Miramax Films, has come under withering fire recently from fans of Asian cinema who feel that the company is engaged in a nefarious and possibly racially-tinged plot to suppress the release of hot films emanating from the region. The Web Alliance for the Respectful Treatment of Hong Kong Films has posted a Web petition that currently has over 12,000 signatures objecting to the following: the exclusion of original dialog and score, the removal of original footage, the changing of the name and dialog of films and the renaming of films. Timeout New York and the Houston Press both added their voices in the US for the unadulterated release of movies like Shaolin Soccer (
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