Judy Chiang (
"overdue justice."
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Liao had accused Chiang and Kuang of plagiarizing a scene from his Turn Left, Turn Right (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Kuang, who won a Golden Melody Award this year for best video, has been behind a number of videos that have aroused suspicion of plagiarism because of, shall we say, references to videos by Japanese, American and Korean pop stars. Liao has said he plans to appeal the case.
Another case to come out of the courts in the past week was Takeshi Kaneshiro's (
We can probably also expect some kind of investigation and perhaps (though if the president gets shot in broad daylight and no one's caught, then it's not guaranteed) a suit in the vicious assault by baseball-bat-wielding thugs on TV personality He Yi-hang (
speculated he may have been beat en in retribution for refusing a show appearance.
There was more rage over the past week when Taiwanese rocker Chang Chen-yue (
The Great Daily News also offered an interesting article after former US president Ronald Reagan's death written by Little S (
What was the population of Taiwan when the first Negritos arrived? In 500BC? The 1st century? The 18th? These questions are important, because they can contextualize the number of babies born last month, 6,523, to all the people on Taiwan, indigenous and colonial alike. That figure represents a year on year drop of 3,884 babies, prefiguring total births under 90,000 for the year. It also represents the 26th straight month of deaths exceeding births. Why isn’t this a bigger crisis? Because we don’t experience it. Instead, what we experience is a growing and more diverse population. POPULATION What is Taiwan’s actual population?
For the past five years, Sammy Jou (周祥敏) has climbed Kinmen’s highest peak, Taiwu Mountain (太武山) at 6am before heading to work. In the winter, it’s dark when he sets out but even at this hour, other climbers are already coming down the mountain. All of this is a big change from Jou’s childhood during the Martial Law period, when the military requisitioned the mountain for strategic purposes and most of it was off-limits. Back then, only two mountain trails were open, and they were open only during special occasions, such as for prayers to one’s ancestors during Lunar New Year.
You would never believe Yancheng District (鹽埕) used to be a salt field. Today, it is a bustling, artsy, Kowloon-ish “old town” of Kaohsiung — full of neon lights, small shops, scooters and street food. Two hundred years ago, before Japanese occupiers developed a shipping powerhouse around it, Yancheng was a flat triangle where seawater was captured and dried to collect salt. This is what local art galleries are revealing during the first edition of the Yancheng Arts Festival. Shen Yu-rung (沈裕融), the main curator, says: “We chose the connection with salt as a theme. The ocean is still very near, just a
A key feature of Taiwan’s environmental impact assessments (EIA) is that they seldom stop projects, especially once the project has passed its second stage EIA review (the original Suhua Highway proposal, killed after passing the second stage review, seems to be the lone exception). Mingjian Township (名間鄉) in Nantou County has been the site of rising public anger over the proposed construction of a waste incinerator in an important agricultural area. The township is a key producer of tea (over 40 percent of the island’s production), ginger and turmeric. The incinerator project is currently in its second stage EIA. The incinerator