When Ice Monster, the famous shaved ice purveyor on Yongkang Street (永康街) shut down last winter as a result of the owners’ divorce dispute, it seemed like the entire country — if not the world — mourned. Tourists were left holding their guidebooks in confusion, including the two Japanese women I saw staring at the “closed” signs forlornly.
The space reopened last month under the name of Yongkang 15 (永康15). Some customers wondered if the mango portions, which were famed for putting the “monster” in “Ice Monster,” had shrunk under the new management, but owner FnB Gourmet Group reported that the store reached its revenue target of NT$100,000 per day less than a week after its official opening.
So how are the ices? Nearly every dish has mango in it and prices range from NT$130 to NT$160. I ordered a fantastic mix freeze (NT$160) with strawberry, kiwi and mango. The latter two were tart, juicy and sweet, but the out-of-season strawberries were lackluster. The heap of fruit, sorbet and ice was as large as I remember Ice Monster’s portions were, but overall it tasted less sweet. If you want to slip into a sugar coma, however, make sure to ask for extra condensed milk and syrup — staffers with squirt bottles are happy to oblige.
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