Nat Baimel from California is one half of The Manchild, a duo that does standup comedy in Taipei this week. The other Manchild is Ed Hill, a Taiwanese Canadian whose sweet-and-sour experience as an ethnic minority fuels his stand-up act.
“I will be talking about being a Taiwanese Canadian growing up in a North American culture,” Hill told the Taipei Times. “Some [cultural] stereotypes will definitely be discussed in my act in a subtle, personal way.”
Born in Taiwan, Hill moved to Canada at age 10 under the notion that he was on vacation. He is among a new generation of Asian stand-up comedians who have turned their experiences as a minority and their identity confusion into routines. Asian-American pop icon Margaret Cho does it bawdily and with trenchant wit. Hill is gentler but just as witty, poking fun at his status as an Taiwanese Canadian and including acerbic observations about how his parents have made peace with living in the western world.
Photo courtesy of Ed Hill
“The show ties in some societal, political and familial views,” Hill said. “Everything I talk about eventually hails back to my life story.”
Hill, a rising comedian, has performed on BiteTV, Comedy Time as well as various comedy festivals in North America. He and Baimel met in Seattle three years ago, clicked right away and decided to tour together.
At a performance in Singapore last year, Hill noticed the interest in stand-up comedy and decided to embark on an Asia tour that includes Taipei, where Hill and Baimel will take turns onstage during a 90-minute show.
William Liu (劉家君) moved to Kaohsiung from Nantou to live with his boyfriend Reg Hong (洪嘉佑). “In Nantou, people do not support gay rights at all and never even talk about it. Living here made me optimistic and made me realize how much I can express myself,” Liu tells the Taipei Times. Hong and his friend Cony Hsieh (謝昀希) are both active in several LGBT groups and organizations in Kaohsiung. They were among the people behind the city’s 16th Pride event in November last year, which gathered over 35,000 people. Along with others, they clearly see Kaohsiung as the nexus of LGBT rights.
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s (艾未未) famous return to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been overshadowed by the astonishing news of the latest arrests of senior military figures for “corruption,” but it is an interesting piece of news in its own right, though more for what Ai does not understand than for what he does. Ai simply lacks the reflective understanding that the loneliness and isolation he imagines are “European” are simply the joys of life as an expat. That goes both ways: “I love Taiwan!” say many still wet-behind-the-ears expats here, not realizing what they love is being an
In the American west, “it is said, water flows upwards towards money,” wrote Marc Reisner in one of the most compelling books on public policy ever written, Cadillac Desert. As Americans failed to overcome the West’s water scarcity with hard work and private capital, the Federal government came to the rescue. As Reisner describes: “the American West quietly became the first and most durable example of the modern welfare state.” In Taiwan, the money toward which water flows upwards is the high tech industry, particularly the chip powerhouse Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). Typically articles on TSMC’s water demand
Every now and then, even hardcore hikers like to sleep in, leave the heavy gear at home and just enjoy a relaxed half-day stroll in the mountains: no cold, no steep uphills, no pressure to walk a certain distance in a day. In the winter, the mild climate and lower elevations of the forests in Taiwan’s far south offer a number of easy escapes like this. A prime example is the river above Mudan Reservoir (牡丹水庫): with shallow water, gentle current, abundant wildlife and a complete lack of tourists, this walk is accessible to nearly everyone but still feels quite remote.
RSS