The Yellow Crane Tower (黃鶴樓) of Wuhan, in China's Hubei Province, is the stuff of legend. First built during the Three Kingdoms (三國) period, over the centuries poets have waxed philosophical about it, architects have pondered its various styles, and historians have used it as a point of departure to discuss China's many dynasties.
Under the witty pen of Taiwanese comedian Wu Jau-nan (吳兆南), however, the Tower serves as part of a joke that a teacher is trying to convey to two dim-witted pupils. The dialogue is one of six taking place between a teacher and his students in Spring Sun Performing Arts Troupe's (春禾劇團) latest cross-talk performance called Wujiandao (吳間道), beginning tonight at Novel Hall.
Cross talk (相聲) is a style of Chinese comedy that employs complex wordplay in monologues or dialogues to mock a particular person or the preoccupations of society.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SUMMIT BRAIN NEW PRODUCTION AGENCY
With Wujiandao, Spring Sun takes aim at Taiwan's obsession with fame, money and the Chinese classics.
In one dialogue, the teacher uses the popular television series One Million Star (星光大道) as an example to teach students how to become famous. Another discusses how classical Chinese forms are used in modern writing.
Wujiandao will be performed at Novel Hall (新舞臺), 3-1 Songshou S Rd, Taipei City (台北市松壽路3-1號), today and tomorrow at 7:30pm and tomorrow and Sunday at 2:30pm. NT$400 to NT$1,200 tickets are available through NTCH ticketing.
Jan. 5 to Jan. 11 Of the more than 3,000km of sugar railway that once criss-crossed central and southern Taiwan, just 16.1km remain in operation today. By the time Dafydd Fell began photographing the network in earnest in 1994, it was already well past its heyday. The system had been significantly cut back, leaving behind abandoned stations, rusting rolling stock and crumbling facilities. This reduction continued during the five years of his documentation, adding urgency to his task. As passenger services had already ceased by then, Fell had to wait for the sugarcane harvest season each year, which typically ran from
It’s a good thing that 2025 is over. Yes, I fully expect we will look back on the year with nostalgia, once we have experienced this year and 2027. Traditionally at New Years much discourse is devoted to discussing what happened the previous year. Let’s have a look at what didn’t happen. Many bad things did not happen. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) did not attack Taiwan. We didn’t have a massive, destructive earthquake or drought. We didn’t have a major human pandemic. No widespread unemployment or other destructive social events. Nothing serious was done about Taiwan’s swelling birth rate catastrophe.
Words of the Year are not just interesting, they are telling. They are language and attitude barometers that measure what a country sees as important. The trending vocabulary around AI last year reveals a stark divergence in what each society notices and responds to the technological shift. For the Anglosphere it’s fatigue. For China it’s ambition. For Taiwan, it’s pragmatic vigilance. In Taiwan’s annual “representative character” vote, “recall” (罷) took the top spot with over 15,000 votes, followed closely by “scam” (詐). While “recall” speaks to the island’s partisan deadlock — a year defined by legislative recall campaigns and a public exhausted
In the 2010s, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began cracking down on Christian churches. Media reports said at the time that various versions of Protestant Christianity were likely the fastest growing religions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The crackdown was part of a campaign that in turn was part of a larger movement to bring religion under party control. For the Protestant churches, “the government’s aim has been to force all churches into the state-controlled organization,” according to a 2023 article in Christianity Today. That piece was centered on Wang Yi (王怡), the fiery, charismatic pastor of the
RSS