After debuting at the Expo 2010 Shanghai China (2010上海世界博覽會) and traveling to Hong Kong and Macau, an animated version of the Song Dynasty painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival (清明上河圖), by 12th-century artist Zhang Zeduan (張澤端), is on show in Taipei. The 25cm by 529cm original is a panoramic portrayal of everyday life in Bianjing (汴京), today’s Kaifeng (開封), the capital of China during the Song Dynasty. Despite its name, the scroll depicts the architecture and scenery of the period and the apparel and activities of the rich and poor, not the rituals of the Qingming Festival (清明節), otherwise known as Tomb Sweeping Festival. Thirty times larger than the original painting, the animated version, which is titled River of Wisdom, is beamed onto a 6m by 110m screen by 12 projectors. The entire work was digitalized by Crystal CG (水晶石數字科技公司) and its subjects and backdrops move and make sounds. There are two versions of the animation that alternate every two minutes: day (691 animated people) and night (377 animated people). Also on display are life-size replicas of the original painting, a Ming Dynasty copy by Qiu Ying (仇英), and a more extravagant 1736 version known as the Qingyuan copy (清院本), commissioned by the Qing court. The original work is stored at the Palace Museum in Beijing.
■ River of Wisdom, 9am to 9pm Mondays to Saturdays, 9am to 6pm on Sundays at Taipei International Flora Exposition EXPO Dome (台北花博爭艷館), 1 Yumen St, Taipei City (台北市玉門街1號) until Sept. 4
■ Tickets are NT$220, available at convenience stores through 7-Eleven ibon, FamilyMart (全家) FamiPort, Hi-Life (萊爾富) Life-ET, and OK Mart OK go kiosks and online at tickets.books.com.tw
Photo Courtesy of Lin King
■ On the Web: river.ishow.gmg.tw
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
The March/April volume of Foreign Affairs, long a purveyor of pro-China pablum, offered up another irksome Beijing-speak on the issues and solutions for the problems vexing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US: “America and China at the Edge of Ruin: A Last Chance to Step Back From the Brink” rang the provocative title, by David M. Lampton and Wang Jisi (王緝思). If one ever wants to describe what went wrong with US-PRC relations, the career of Wang Jisi is a good place to start. Wang has extensive experience in the US and the West. He was a visiting
RSS