Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (李安) is back in Taiwan to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday, and also received the Order of the Brilliant Star Second Class from president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). His reception during this visit has marked him out as a local hero and virtual superstar, and although notoriously shy and soft-spoken, he has been quick to capitalize on his prestige with people in high places.
At a conference on Taiwan's movie industry, Premiere Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) felt that he was no more than a warm up act for the director, and was even the victim of a little good natured reprimand, when Lee took him to task on the government's cultural development policies.
At a talk given at his alma mater, Lee called on students to enjoy "their age of innocence," to enjoy life and not take their studies too seriously. At the same time, he issued a call to arms, saying that "culture is a competition," and that Taiwan's students must not loose their educational advantage over students in China. The man seems a little conflicted; is this the result of too much attention?
With the imminent release of Jasmine Women (茉莉花開), leading actress Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) has found yet another podium from which gripe -- the cause, the fact that she didn't get a cuddle from Ang Lee despite all her hard work in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ( 臥虎藏龍). She criticized Lee for being stingy with his praise on set, and said that Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) would often get a hug of encouragement. Poor neglected darling, and after all these years as well.
Lee responded by saying that he had simply been too embarrassed to show such a young starlet.
Boyband F4 were interviewed on the CNN program Talk Asia last month. On the program, which aired last week, the group revealed a level of vacuousness in conversation with host Lorraine Hahn that needed to be seen to be believed. When asked about future prospects, band member Vanness (吳建豪), who was brought up in the US, said the band hoped to break into the US market. Good luck to them, but good looks, a floppy hairdo and boyish charm can only achieve so much.
Speaking of talent, or the lack thereof, singer Wang Lee-hom (王力宏) got a rather backhanded compliment when his two albums failed to make it into the top 10 Chinese-language albums this year. He didn't make it last year either, but he was hanging tough, saying that as long as his fans continued to support him, rankings such as this one hardly mattered. Well that's one way of saying he's not too fazed that critics think he lacks talent.
David Tao, who has had four albums in the top 10, was rather prissy when he said that he was happy to be selected again, and how glad he was to be selected on talent alone, as he was not entangled in many steamy scandals.
May Day's (五月天) Asian tour came to an end earlier this week at Hong Kong's Colosseum (香港紅勘體育館). There was no doubt that they were hugely popular with the crowd, whose repeated calls of "encore" dragged the concert out for three hours, with the result that the band were fined NT$60,000 by the Hong Kong police for exceeding the scheduled concert time.
Amid all this excitement, it has emerged that May Day's drummer Ming (冠佑) went off the rails when the group was in Shanghai late last month. Ming has made a statement to the effect that he is still faithful to his fiancee Wang Hsing-chi (王行芝), but comments by the woman in question have done nothing to douse the gossip.
"You marry a man to stop people talking," she is quoted as having said, "but you take a lover to give life a bit of flavor." We might be hearing more about Ming before too long.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated