Get ready for a beat down.
Martial artists from various backgrounds will bash the bejesus out of each other tonight for a prize purse at the Taipei Youth Activity Center (青少年育樂中心Y17) near Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
Organized by the Mingwu Mixed Martial Arts Club (名武會館綜合武術), the tournament consists of eight matches. Among the fighters are guests invited from Brazil who are trained in Brazilian jujitsu, a style of martial arts that specializes in full-body takedowns and grappling on the mat and was made famous by Joyce Gracie in the first series of Ultimate Fighting Championships back in the 1990s.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MINGWU MIXED MARTIAL ARTS CLUB
Between the bouts, Cristiane Santiago’s CapoArte school will stage demonstrations of capoeira, another Brazilian martial art characterized by drumming and dancing.
Teachers and organizers of the fight night say they want to educate Taiwan’s mixed martial arts scene about the importance of solid mat work, which is particularly useful in mixed martial arts fights.
“Not enough people know how to grapple in Taiwan. We want to show people how this technique can be effective,” says Lalin Youming (喇藺猶命), a Mingwu instructor.
The Mingwu club was organized by three martial arts teachers in Hsinchu. Song Mingyan (宋明諺) quit college to train full-time in wushu 10 years ago. Shortly after he began his training, he teamed up Chen Yihong (陳奕宏) to explore other styles such as karate, Shaolin kung fu and taekwondo. Joining later was Lalin, of the Taiya Aboriginal tribe, who brought his knowledge of tai chi to the club.
They now teach 90 students, one-fifth of whom are foreigners, Lalin says.
Tonight’s tournament runs from 7:30pm to 10:30pm on the 10th floor of the Taipei Youth Activity Center, at 17, Renai Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (北市仁愛路二段17號). For more information visit www.mingwu.com.tw.
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist