If spring-cleaning has extended as far as your bookshelf, this weekend offers a great chance to get rid of those dusty volumes you’ve already read and replace them with some new material. The Whose Travel Annual Charity Book Exchange, which takes place tomorrow in Taichung, is now in its eighth year and has grown into a mini-festival.
The event is moving from its usual location at the Frog restaurant and bar, to the greener pastures of Chungming Park (忠明公園).
“It is a beautiful park surrounded by trees and it has a nice stage for the bands,” said one of the organizers, Patrick Byrne. “The turnout last year was incredible. We decided to move the event to … accommodate more people.”
Photo Courtesy of Henry Westheim
Dale Mackie, ward of the Canadian Trade Office in Taichung, came up with the idea of a charity book sale to raise funds for victims of the 2004 tsunami. He joined forces with Byrne, a Taichung-based musician and promoter, to make the event something more.
There will be two stages, one for live music, the other for children’s entertainment, including a ventriloquist act by entertainer Matt Bronsil, and an interactive kid’s show by members of Taichung Improv group.
“We will adapt our usual improv games to entertain the little ones,” said Josh Myers, the troupe’s founder. “We did it last year and it was a big hit.”
Musicians have donated their time and talents to the event, with bands playing from 2:30pm to 9pm. The lineup includes Nick Fothergill, The Ever So Friendlies, Reid and headliner Three Day Bender.
Food booths will be set up by the Frog, Londoner, Soho7 and Nunchuck, and there will be arts and crafts activities, and hundreds of books in both English and Chinese.
Throughout the day, raffle draws will be held. Prizes include a weekend getaway, an alto saxophone, three one-year memberships to World Gym, chiropractic sessions, yoga lessons, a dive session on Green Island, a month’s tuition at Best Language Center, and meals at various Taichung restaurants, not forgetting a six-pack of beer.
Though a book drive has been ongoing, people are welcome to drop off books on the day of the event, where they will be sold for a minimum donation of NT$50, with hardcover and art books priced higher.
This year, proceeds from the event will go to the Maria Social Welfare Foundation (瑪利亞社會福利基金會), which supports orphans and children and young adults living with disabilities.
Last year’s book exchange raised almost NT$170,500 for the Childhood Burn Foundation of the ROC (中華民國兒童燙傷基金會).
“It would be great for us to achieve the goal of raising NT200,000 this year for the Maria Foundation,” said Byrne. “The highlight for me is seeing so many people come out to support charity while having a great time.”
On the Net: www.maria.org.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
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