Street basketball, B-boy championships and rocking contests are the type of activities taking over Taipei Cinema Park (台北市電影主題公園) for the next six months, as the Xi-men Back Street Festival (西門町後街文化祭) opened last Friday. Funded by the Taipei City Government, the event runs through December.
Featuring an eye-dazzling variety of activities ranging from graffiti events to dance battles to an arts and crafts fair, the annual festival, now in its sixth year, serves as a platform for Taiwan’s youth culture — provided that you overlook the irony that it is part of the government’s effort to curb and regulate the nonconformist, rebellious voices of the street. For example, in Taipei, it is a crime to spray paint at places other than city-designated graffiti walls. The maximum fine for “illegal” graffiti artists is NT$6,000.
Yet, this festival is also a chance to bring visibility and a positive image to street culture, which is often percieved as juvenile mischief and vandalism. Officially organized by the management of Taipei Cinema Park and The Red House (西門紅樓), which is part of the Taipei Culture Foundation (台北文化基金會), the festival is also supported by a number of hip-hop groups, dance and graffiti crews, streetwear brands and other street culture promoters. Veteran graffiti artist Jimmy Cheng (鄭子靖), for example, is a driving force behind the event and has dedicated himself to promoting youth culture by organizing competitions, demonstrations and other events across the country.
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Culture Foundation
Some of Cheng’s events have taken place in Taipei Cinema Park, located at the eastern end of Ximending (西門町). Known to locals as the “back street,” the area used to be a lonesome, seldom-visited spot devoid of commercial activity.
On Sunday, the festival celebrates the international Go Skateboarding Day with a designated skating route, skate performances and an evening party. Next Saturday, street dancers and enthusiasts are invited to groove to the beats and rhythms of live jazz and the jams of DJ Chicano — who still uses a turntable and vinyl records — while participating in a “rocking contest” (a type of urban street dance) co-organized by Beat Square (節拍廣場), a group set up by DJ Chicano to promote hip-hop culture and music.
For wholesome family entertainment, martial arts will take the central stage in September and October. There will be a rare exhibition of original kung-fu movie posters from the 60s and 70s from the collection of martial artist Pan Ching-lung (潘靖瓏). Meanwhile, a mini retrospective will show nine kung-fu flicks directed by the late filmmaker Kuan Cheng-liang (關正良). The Shanghai-born, Hong Kong-educated martial artist is credited with bringing the genre from Hong Kong to Taiwan in the 60s.
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Culture Foundation
Who is Bboy King, a B-boy contest, will take place over the summer with regional contests in 16 cities, including Keelung, Taitung, Yunlin, Changhua and Nantou. The country’s best break dancers will then compete in the final tournament in December at Cinema Park.
The festival is set to end on a high note with a party thrown by Beat Square to celebrate the group’s fifth birthday. Featuring DJs who still use vinyl, the headliner is Skeme Richards from Rock Steady Crew, an American B-boying group, joined by Taiwanese DJs E-Dragon, Vicar and Klone as well as graffiti artists MrOgay Love and Ahdia One.
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Culture Foundation
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Culture Foundation
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Culture Foundation
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located