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 (
William Liu (劉家君) moved to Kaohsiung from Nantou to live with his boyfriend Reg Hong (洪嘉佑). “In Nantou, people do not support gay rights at all and never even talk about it. Living here made me optimistic and made me realize how much I can express myself,” Liu tells the Taipei Times. Hong and his friend Cony Hsieh (謝昀希) are both active in several LGBT groups and organizations in Kaohsiung. They were among the people behind the city’s 16th Pride event in November last year, which gathered over 35,000 people. Along with others, they clearly see Kaohsiung as the nexus of LGBT rights.
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s (艾未未) famous return to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been overshadowed by the astonishing news of the latest arrests of senior military figures for “corruption,” but it is an interesting piece of news in its own right, though more for what Ai does not understand than for what he does. Ai simply lacks the reflective understanding that the loneliness and isolation he imagines are “European” are simply the joys of life as an expat. That goes both ways: “I love Taiwan!” say many still wet-behind-the-ears expats here, not realizing what they love is being an
In the American west, “it is said, water flows upwards towards money,” wrote Marc Reisner in one of the most compelling books on public policy ever written, Cadillac Desert. As Americans failed to overcome the West’s water scarcity with hard work and private capital, the Federal government came to the rescue. As Reisner describes: “the American West quietly became the first and most durable example of the modern welfare state.” In Taiwan, the money toward which water flows upwards is the high tech industry, particularly the chip powerhouse Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). Typically articles on TSMC’s water demand
Every now and then, even hardcore hikers like to sleep in, leave the heavy gear at home and just enjoy a relaxed half-day stroll in the mountains: no cold, no steep uphills, no pressure to walk a certain distance in a day. In the winter, the mild climate and lower elevations of the forests in Taiwan’s far south offer a number of easy escapes like this. A prime example is the river above Mudan Reservoir (牡丹水庫): with shallow water, gentle current, abundant wildlife and a complete lack of tourists, this walk is accessible to nearly everyone but still feels quite remote.
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