This weekend we give a metaphorical kick up the backside to the year of the hound, while welcoming in the year of the swine by planting a loving kiss on its warm, wet, piggy, little snout. Yes, it's the time of year when our local readers scatter to the four corners of the island to be with their families and throw fireworks at each other until the early hours to frighten away the mythical monster Nian.
New Year's Eve itself falls tomorrow, although you wouldn't know this if you checked the Taipei Government's English Web site which, in their usual slapdash way of imparting important information to the foreign community, would have us believe that Chinese New Year's Eve is on Dec. 30 — yes, that's three-zero — and Chinese New Year's Day is Jan. 1. Sigh. One has to wonder how hard they must try to actually stuff up at stuffing up. (english.taipei.gov.tw/web/upload/117039964885700.doc)
So expect a quiet Saturday night around town as apart from Champagne Thr3e located at B1, 171 Songde Rd, Taipei (台北市松德路171號B1), which is throwing a party for the desperate and the outcast with yet another glamour model DJ bird gimmick, this time by the name of HeavyGrinder (wink, wink, nudge, yawn), and the odd bar or two, many places will be closed.
PHOTO COURTESY OF C3
But, that may be a good thing as it gives everyone the chance to cultivate a frankly terrifying and Saturday-ruining hangover tonight. Freak out Beast has had a well-attended and well-received bands-based festival at various city venues over the last two weeks, and tonight they round the whole thing off on an electronic tip with a drum'n'bass party at VT Art Salon with Rex vs. Sandoz, Elvis, Point, Tyson, Code, Elmo and Muse Whisper. The party begins at 9pm and admission is free.
Tomorrow's hiatus in the city's nightlife is only short-lived, as by the end of the weekend everyone's had quite enough family and are in the mood to party. Tuesday is the real fun one, as Wednesday's a holiday. Luxy is serving up a double whammy as they host Irish Balearic house (new genre, anyone?) duo Agnelli and Nelson in the main room, with local lads A-Dao (who, as anyone with a vinyl habit to feed knows, runs Species Records in Ximending) and Kaoru amongst others in the Onyx Room. MoS hosts Caspar, again.
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