Apart from the 23 million human beings in Taiwan, did you know that 70 kinds of mammals are also inhabiting Taiwan island, such as Formosan leaf nose bats, Formosan clouded leopards, ferret badgers, flying squirrels, Formosan serows and civets?
Typhoon Island (台灣生態探索), the first documentary film to discover the ecology of Taiwan, provides vivid images of these rare species.
PHOTO COURTESY OF PTS
The film marks the first co-production among four public TV channels -- the BBC, German WDR, Austrian ORF and Taiwan Public Television Services (公視, PTS). And it is the first English-speaking film introducing the animals of Taiwan to the world. The documentary will be premiered on PTS channel, prime time. on Sept. 6. The Austrian premiere will be Sept. 28 on ORF and Britain's premiere is scheduled some time in October.
In a sense, Typhoon Island resembles a Discovery-channel film, but with an extra focus on the unique landscape and ecology of Taiwan. The shots in the film portray the island's beauty and largely reveal how so many intriguing animals have survived Taiwan's violent winds of change.
Naturally, animals are the lead characters and the main perspective of the film. Human beings take the minor roles. In fact, the only long sequences about human beings in the film are those about Aboriginal tribes and their relations with mountain animals.
As a mountainous island with steep gorges, Taiwan has become a haven for a variety of wildlife from highland animals, such as bears, monkeys and anteaters, to tropical plants and insects.
Regularly buffeted by typhoons and shaken by earthquakes, animals in Taiwan must find shelter and ways of survival in spite of natural disasters and human invasions.
The film crew has taken some vivid pictures that were previously unseen, such as tree frogs mating and laying eggs inside a bamboo tube, Taiwan macaques playing and finding shelters in lotus ponds and the hunting habits of pangolins.
In the last 20 years, though, new hope for many creatures has arisen as a fifth of the island has received some protection. Tens of thousands of migrant raptors, and hundreds of thousands of butterflies now visit protected sanctuaries. Captive-bred Formosan landlocked salmon and sika deer have been released to replenish wild populations.
Scientists have recently discovered a number of previous unknown species in the mountains, including a weasel, a mole and several kinds of bats, along with countless smaller creatures. The Formosan clouded leopard, though, has not been seen for the last 10 years. The fate of this beautiful big cat remains shrouded in mystery. It may have gone forever, but many believe it's still lurking in Taiwan's remote forests. With Formosan macaques and other prey species now recovering, this elusive big cat may yet return to its former haunts and show its face once more.
One-and-half-years ago, London-based producer Nicholas Upton was amazed by the landscape of Taiwan and proposed to produce an documentary about Taiwan. It took the crew five months to shoot, going around Yushan, Kenting and Taroko national parks. During filming, the crew also survived three typhoons, two earthquakes and a SARS outbreak.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby