He arrives on a bike, looks up at the sky and finds a place to lay down his mat. He then spreads out an assortment of colored stones and waits like a fisherman for a bite.
Locals and tourists wander past, glance at the collection, do a double take and often walk back to have a closer look, attracted by the lure of the brightly painted stones.
Wandering artist Wu Rong-bi (
PHOTOS: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
He tells them that he finds the stones in Keelung, where there is a plentiful source of the flattened circular pebbles (about 3cm to 5cm in diameter) he prefers.
He says that some of the stones' designs are inspired by dreams, or are the product of his calligraphy studies. He uses bright acrylic paints. Some of them have African or Asian geometric patterns, others are figurative, with simplified forms such as an elephant or a leaf.
"Most paintings only have one plane or face," he says, "But these stones are three-dimensional art and are therefore that much more special."
Wu has been a Taipei City Government approved artist since last year, when he was given a pass that he hangs around his neck. It allows him to sell his wares on the street, in the Shida area off Hoping East Road most afternoons, or outside the Eslite store on Dunhua South Road in the evenings.
He teaches social studies to kids part time but his main income is from selling the stones, which retail from NT$300 to NT$200. He gives bonafide students 50 percent discount.
Erica Chen, a student from Texas, thought the stones were "pretty interesting. ... They're good value and great souvenirs that I can give friends when I get back home."
In the next few months tough decisions will need to be made by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and their pan-blue allies in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It will reveal just how real their alliance is with actual power at stake. Party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) faced these tough questions, which we explored in part one of this series, “Ko Wen-je, the KMT’s prickly ally,” (Aug. 16, page 12). Ko was open to cooperation, but on his terms. He openly fretted about being “swallowed up” by the KMT, and was keenly aware of the experience of the People’s First Party
Aug. 25 to Aug. 31 Although Mr. Lin (林) had been married to his Japanese wife for a decade, their union was never legally recognized — and even their daughter was officially deemed illegitimate. During the first half of Japanese rule in Taiwan, only marriages between Japanese men and Taiwanese women were valid, unless the Taiwanese husband formally joined a Japanese household. In 1920, Lin took his frustrations directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs: “Since Japan took possession of Taiwan, we have obeyed the government’s directives and committed ourselves to breaking old Qing-era customs. Yet ... our marriages remain unrecognized,
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
During the Metal Ages, prior to the arrival of the Dutch and Chinese, a great shift took place in indigenous material culture. Glass and agate beads, introduced after 400BC, completely replaced Taiwanese nephrite (jade) as the ornamental materials of choice, anthropologist Liu Jiun-Yu (劉俊昱) of the University of Washington wrote in a 2023 article. He added of the island’s modern indigenous peoples: “They are the descendants of prehistoric Formosans but have no nephrite-using cultures.” Moderns squint at that dynamic era of trade and cultural change through the mutually supporting lenses of later settler-colonialism and imperial power, which treated the indigenous as
RSS