Opera can be a moving art form.
Chen Sheng-fu (
The activity, starting on Saturday, is the first of its kind in Taiwanese Opera's 100-year history and comes some 120 years after Taiwan's first locomotive train began operations.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MING HUA YUAN
The National Center for Traditional Arts (國立傳統藝術中心) in Lo-Tong (羅東), Ilan County (宜蘭縣), will launch a year-end Taiwanese Opera Gala that commences tonight and features daily opera shows until New Year's Day to coincide with the train ride activity.
The first of the three trains will leave Taipei Train Station at 10am tomorrow for Lo-Tong, where the center is located. During the two-hour train ride, opera fans will have the opportunity of meeting some of the troupe's opera singers in the five train carriages reserved for the journey.
Superstars such as Sun Cui-feng (
Travelers on the first train, named the "Merry Christmas Express," will be entertained by popular actress Sun and her Ming Hua Yuan crew members.
The second train, named the "New Year's Eve Express," is scheduled to leave Taipei at 2pm on Dec. 31 and is slated to arrive in Lo-Tong in time for the year-end Taiwanese Opera Gala.
Opera stars from the troupe will present a series of performances and participate in the New Year's Eve party in the evening.
The third train, named the "Happy and Fortunate Express," will leave Taipei at 10am on Jan. 21.
Participants may submit requests for his or her favorite singer to attend.
A round-trip train ticket, which includes insurance and transportation to and from the center, costs NT$1,250.
For more information visit www.ncfta.gov.tw or call (02) 2772 7863.
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