VIEW THIS PAGE Fifi’s sister Lili is a classy hangout popular with expatriates from the Tianmu area and Taiwanese celebrities and socialites. Housed in an old-style three-level Taiwanese house with a small backyard, the place retains a laid-back charm and is chic, with minimalist decor and antique furniture.
Lili is a bar, a restaurant serving Szechuan and Shanghainese home-style dishes, and an art gallery. It’s something of a cultural nexus, displaying paintings by Timothy Nathan Joel and hosting DJ workshops.
Opened and designed by Lily Wen (溫慶玉), sister of fashion maven Isabelle Wen (溫慶珠), and Patrick Lee (李紹榮), an established painter and consultant for major construction projects (the firm he works for designed Taipei 101’s facade), Lili breathes new life into the Tianmu scene.
Wax Apple D is in charge of the music every Friday and Saturday from 9pm until 1am, blending everything from Latin, acid jazz and funk to house and Afrobeat.
Lili, 760, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 6, Taipei City (台北市中山北路6段760號).
On the Net: lili-arts.com/index.htm.
The scene in Tainan consists of three clubs: The Orient, La Sight and Club Fusion. With the first two favoring Top 40 hip-hop, Fusion is the only one that caters to electronic music heads. Besides, it is considered the only venue in the city that has a real club setting — decent sound and lighting systems. Fusion first opened as an electronic club about five years ago and has since struggled to balance its music policy between mainstream hip-hop and electronica. There’s a monthly night dedicated to electronic music, which tomorrow features Naked from South Africa and local DJs Mark, Ugly, Dipper and FatDirty.
Club Fusion, 483, Yonghua 2nd Rd, Tainan City (台南市永華2路483號), from 10pm to 4am. Entry to the all-you-can-drink bash is NT$450 for men and NT$300 for women.
The graffiti stencils, sculptures and video works by cutting-edge urban/street art crew Scall Art lend this party artsy kudos. DJs Chi Funk, Ripper, Renf and Dao will be in the mix, complementing the art with house, breaks and electro beats.
Scall Art Party at Liquid Lounge, 98 Chungming S Rd, Taichung City (台中市忠明南路98號). From 11pm to 6am. Entry is NT$300.
It’s about time Taipei rekindled a passion for deep house. And who could be better than Saucey and Sona to get off first base? This much-loved weekly event is back after a yearlong hiatus. Bump, tomorrow from 10pm to 2am at Opus Bar, 104, Civil Boulevard Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市市民大道四段104號). Admission is free.VIEW THIS PAGE
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