Earth Day takes place on April 22 each year, but people in Taipei City can start celebrating today with a two-day festival at the National Taiwan Museum (國立台灣博物館) in Taipei City.
Free events that will take place at the museum today and tomorrow include an outdoor artists’ market, live acoustic music performances and a screening of Six Degrees Could Change the World, a documentary about the devastation global warming could potentially cause. The museum will also offer free admittance during the festival.
Music performances start today at 5pm. Tonight’s lineup includes singer-songwriters Wang Chao-hua (王昭華) and Huang Pei-yu (黃培育), who are known for performing Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) folk rock. Multitalented singer, songwriter, musician, composer and producer Wang Jun-Jieh (王俊傑) will also perform, backed by an acoustic string quartet. Pingtung-born Aboriginal folk singer Dakanow (達卡鬧) takes the stage tomorrow at 2pm, followed at 4pm by indie band The Gleams (林中光樂團).
Photo courtesy of the National Taiwan Museum
The nearly 60 vendors selling handmade goods and snacks include Joy Huang Glass Studio (矽玻璃, tw.streetvoice.com/users/lian0930), graphic T-shirt designer Wildgreen Studio (冶綠, www.wildgreen.com.tw), fair-trade good store Earth Tree (地球樹, www.earthtree.com.tw) and sorbet maker Midori (蜜朵麗, w.myblog.yahoo.com/midori_green0709). The artists’ market will be open from noon to 8pm today and from 10am to 5pm tomorrow. It will also include a farmers’ market, a place to exchange secondhand items and a do-it-yourself section for crafters.
Discussions hosted by several NGOs, including the Society of Wilderness (荒野保護協會), the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance (台灣綠色公民行動聯盟), Green Formosa Front Association (綠色陣線協會) and the Taiwan Environmental Information Center, will take place throughout the event. Topics will include nuclear power, nature, poverty and how living an environmentally sustainable lifestyle can save money.
Films that tackle environmental issues from several angles will screen at the museum until the beginning of June, starting with Six Degrees Could Change the World during the festival. The National Geographic documentary is a warning about the potential effects of global warming and cautions that even a change of two degrees Celsius could be a tipping point that will lead to deadly heat waves, drought and melting glaciers. Canadian documentary Aftermath: Population Zero, which screens on May 13, speculates what life on Earth would be like if humankind was suddenly wiped out.
Lighter fare includes an April 29 showing of 2007 animated comedy Bee Movie, about how one bee’s encounter with humans sets off a chain reaction that nearly leads to the destruction of the world’s food chain. Blockbuster Wall-E is on the schedule for May 27. Japanese film Gabai Granny, a dramatization of novelist Shimada Yohici’s novel, concludes the series on June 17. Each film will be followed by a discussion. For show times and to make reservations, visit www.earthday.org.tw/node/5382.
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
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s