Last Saturday’s Reggae Beachfest at Cianshui Bay (淺水灣) marked an impressive beginning to the summer outdoor party season. With a turnout exceeding 600, it was a big thumbs-up to Island Jam, a group that’s been striving to make all things reggae-related happen for the last five years. Hopefully there will be more fantastic outdoor events like this to come — especially the ones with venues as sweet as (if not sweeter than) this one.
This weekend, if you are a sunshine-lover who fancies making a splash, be sure to check out this season’s first Oasis Pool Party at Taipei Country Club, a beautiful hillside spot that’s easily accessible from the city. Their spring-water swimming pool is just simply amazing, and the music is going to be more on the hip-hop side of the dance music spectrum.
When: Tomorrow from 1pm to 9pm
Where: Taipei Country Club (台北鄉村俱樂部), 1 Qingyun Rd, Taipei City (台北市青雲街1號).
Admission: NT$350<
Tonight, A State of Sound at Luxy is bringing Manchester’s Tribal Session DJ Iain Taylor for a spin. Taylor is a renowned specialist in break beat, techno, house, hip-hop and funk, and he’s no stranger to the Taipei scene — he played at MoS four years ago on the Tribal Session tour with Yoda. After the success of the last A State of Sound, Hooker, the event’s organizer, says that “the party is more of a cutting-edge take on music and less dependent on sticking to the tried and true classics.”
When: Tonight from 10pm to 4am.
Where: Luxy, 5F, 201 Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市忠孝東路四段201號5樓).
Admission: Free before 11pm, NT$600 after<
Dance Rock Taipei is celebrating its first anniversary today. Having hosted and co-hosted 10 indie-dance events — including last year’s memorable gig with Steve Aoki and Uffie at The Wall — Spykee says he’s excited that the scene is finally coming together. “The Wall is really a great venue — the decor is minimal with no frills and it definitely has a unique kind of vibe. Most of our following are hipsters who are open to new music but frustrated with the music at the ordinary dance clubs.” Besides residents Spykee and F Dragon, this bash features Clash The Disko Kids (Singapore), as well as Taiwan’s very own veteran indie-dance turntablist Mykal (林哲儀).
When: Tonight from 11:30pm to 4:30am.
Where: The Wall (這牆), B1, 200, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段200號B1).
Admission: NT$800.
Tomorrow evening, there will be a small outdoor party named Sunset at Siam House in Ximending. It’s a free event, but it’ll have all the essentials and even a VJ. The lineup: Shelter, 5on (Revox Records) and A-Tao (Species Records) playing progressive and minimal techno.
When: Tomorrow from 6pm to 11pm.
Where: Siam House (暹邏紅樓), 179 Xining S Rd, Taipei City (台北市西寧南路179號).
Admission: free
And lastly, if you’d like to learn more about Latin music and culture, don’t miss out on the Latin Festival that’s going down at Riverside Live House tomorrow. What exactly is this party about musically? There will be a live Latin band, Mandinga (曼丁家拉丁團), and dance music from Zulu, who says they “will try to offer a different view of Latin music in order to cover a wide spectrum of what ‘Latin music’ really means all over the world.” Expect to hear “Latin-jazz, boogaloo, salsa vieja, nuyorican roots, Afro, Caribbean, Brazilian, Latin hip-hop, Latin house and good fusion.”
When: Tomorrow from 7:30pm.
Where: Riverside Live House (河岸留言西門紅樓展演館), 177 Xining S Rd, Taipei City (台北市西寧南路177號).
Admission: NT$750.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless