After winning three awards at the closing ceremony of the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday, filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang (
Miao died Saturday evening of lymph cancer at Taipei's Veteran's Hospital (
The actor gained fame for his role as the villain in the martial-arts classic Dragon Inn (
Before dying, Miao wrote a note to his wife saying: "I will be strong. I'm always a tough guy," his wife Liu Mei-lin (
Miao's last film was Tsai's Goodbye Dragon Inn (不散). In the film, Miao sits in the movie theater watching himself in Dragon Inn. In the last scene he holds his grandson as he walks down the hallway of the theater in one of the most classic shots of all his movies.
Miao's original name is Miao Yen-lin (
Miao retired in 1987 and rejected numerous offers until Tsai convinced him to play the father in Rebels of the Neon God (
Off-screen, Miao was affectionately called Papa Miao (苗爸) or Uncle Miao (苗叔) by Tsai, who considered him a father not only in his films, but also in real life.
"I felt that he had silently given me a blessing from heaven, helping me to win the awards," Tsai said upon his arrival yesterday at CKS International Airport from Berlin.
Taiwan is one of the world’s greatest per-capita consumers of seafood. Whereas the average human is thought to eat around 20kg of seafood per year, each Taiwanese gets through 27kg to 35kg of ocean delicacies annually, depending on which source you find most credible. Given the ubiquity of dishes like oyster omelet (蚵仔煎) and milkfish soup (虱目魚湯), the higher estimate may well be correct. By global standards, let alone local consumption patterns, I’m not much of a seafood fan. It’s not just a matter of taste, although that’s part of it. What I’ve read about the environmental impact of the
It is jarring how differently Taiwan’s politics is portrayed in the international press compared to the local Chinese-language press. Viewed from abroad, Taiwan is seen as a geopolitical hotspot, or “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” as the Economist once blazoned across their cover. Meanwhile, tasked with facing down those existential threats, Taiwan’s leaders are dying their hair pink. These include former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), among others. They are demonstrating what big fans they are of South Korean K-pop sensations Blackpink ahead of their concerts this weekend in Kaohsiung.
Oct 20 to Oct 26 After a day of fighting, the Japanese Army’s Second Division was resting when a curious delegation of two Scotsmen and 19 Taiwanese approached their camp. It was Oct. 20, 1895, and the troops had reached Taiye Village (太爺庄) in today’s Hunei District (湖內), Kaohsiung, just 10km away from their final target of Tainan. Led by Presbyterian missionaries Thomas Barclay and Duncan Ferguson, the group informed the Japanese that resistance leader Liu Yung-fu (劉永福) had fled to China the previous night, leaving his Black Flag Army fighters behind and the city in chaos. On behalf of the
The captain of the giant Royal Navy battleship called his officers together to give them a first morsel of one of World War II’s most closely guarded secrets: Prepare yourselves, he said, for “an extremely important task.” “Speculations abound,” one of the officers wrote in his diary that day — June 2, 1944. “Some say a second front, some say we are to escort the Soviets, or doing something else around Iceland. No one is allowed ashore.” The secret was D-Day — the June 6, 1944, invasion of Nazi-occupied France with the world’s largest-ever sea, land and air armada. It punctured Adolf
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