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.
Jan. 5 to Jan. 11 Of the more than 3,000km of sugar railway that once criss-crossed central and southern Taiwan, just 16.1km remain in operation today. By the time Dafydd Fell began photographing the network in earnest in 1994, it was already well past its heyday. The system had been significantly cut back, leaving behind abandoned stations, rusting rolling stock and crumbling facilities. This reduction continued during the five years of his documentation, adding urgency to his task. As passenger services had already ceased by then, Fell had to wait for the sugarcane harvest season each year, which typically ran from
It’s a good thing that 2025 is over. Yes, I fully expect we will look back on the year with nostalgia, once we have experienced this year and 2027. Traditionally at New Years much discourse is devoted to discussing what happened the previous year. Let’s have a look at what didn’t happen. Many bad things did not happen. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) did not attack Taiwan. We didn’t have a massive, destructive earthquake or drought. We didn’t have a major human pandemic. No widespread unemployment or other destructive social events. Nothing serious was done about Taiwan’s swelling birth rate catastrophe.
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