Taipei City's government has hired "lighting masters" to turn Renai Road (
"Taiwanese have a habit during the long vacation of staying inside and watching TV and DVDs and eating," said Jason Yeh (
The tunnel, which will be up from Feb. 11 until the end of the month, "will express the concept of a "river of time," Yeh said.
The "river" will comprise five sections of colored Christmas lights wound into shapes suggestive of each section's theme: the history of Taipei, characters from Chinese legends, the modern economic process, environmentalism, and a light sculpture called Sunshine Dancers (陽光舞者).
Yeh chuckled as he explained why the third section was especially appropriate this year. "We called it `golden chicken' in Chinese, because the words for economy (
Yeh hopes the decorations will inspire Taipei citizens (and maybe some foreigner visitors as well) to make the 4km walk from Jing Fu Men (
During Chinese New Year, he said, huge numbers of people leave to spend the holiday with their families in other cities. Married daughters return to visit their natal families on the second day (
"Taipei is an empty city (during the New Year). We want to light up a tunnel of lights to make Taipei bright and cheery," Yeh said. And then, of course, "We want to make a romantic atmosphere for Valentine's Day."
To get to Jing Fu Men, take the Red Line to Tai Da Hospital (
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
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Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s