It is not often that Taiwanese grandmothers have the chance to outshine teenagers and twenty-somethings, but the “gray mommies,” as Gordon Tsai (蔡聰明) calls them, have definitely become one of the highlights of the Dream Community’s (夢想社區) annual Dream Parade.
The stretch of Taipei from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial to Katagalan Boulevard (凱達格蘭大道) and the Presidential Office Building is frequently filled with people taking part in political rallies, protests, marches or the annual Double Ten National Day parade/celebration, but for sheer madness and fun it is hard to beat the Dream Parade, whether one is a participant or an observer.
It is a little bit Mardi Gras, a little bit Brazilian carnival and a whole lot of Taiwanese ingenuity.
Photos: CNA
The parades feature elementary and junior-high school samba drumming corps, floats and movable sculptures created by by families, university students and community groups, stilt walkers, samba and belly dancers — whose ages can run from the single digits to octogenarians — and much, much more. The parades are extravaganzas of feathers, sequins, chiffon, beads, glitter, body paint and a whole lot of drumming.
The 14th annual parade will be held on Saturday, and Tsai, the dreamer, prime mover and chairman of the Dream Community in New Taipei City’s Shijr District (汐止) — a lifestyle “village” built on the idea of community-based celebratory art — said this year’s event is an extension of the Matzu project that the community took to the Burning Man festival in Nevada last month.
There is a slightly serious side to the parade. The 20-plus samba drumming teams in the parade come from schools in Aboriginal communities along the east coast and elsewhere around the nation — the result of a years-long project by Tsai, who has sent Brazilian drummers to teach their art as a part of community-building exercises.
Photos: CNA
To get to Taipei each of the teams had to win a local drumming contest, and on Saturday they will be trying to win the National Dream Cup Samba Drum competition, which rewards the top groups with musical instruments and other prizes for their schools. There will be about a dozen judges distributed along the parade route, ranking the youngsters on their drumming, choreography, costumes and energy.
The parade begins at 3pm at the Liberty Plaza between the National Theater and Concert Hall. The 1.2km-long route takes the participants up Zhongshan South Road (中山南路) to Renai Road (仁愛路), where they make a right turn and head toward Linsen South Road (林森南路) and a U-turn that sends them back toward Ketagalan Boulevard and the post-parade party area in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The parade is scheduled to end between 6pm and 6:30pm, with an after-party running until 8pm.
Photos: CNA
If you are looking to collect some of the Mardi Gras bead necklaces tossed from the floats, your best chance is to position yourself in front of the Chang Yung-Fa Foundation Evergreen Maritime Museum or at the beginning of Renai Road, where the crowds tend to be a bit thinner than the initial stretch of Zhongshan. Those are also the best places to be to take photographs.
As mega K-pop group BTS returns to the stage after a hiatus of more than three years, one major market is conspicuously missing from its 12-month world tour: China. The omission of one of the group’s biggest fan bases comes as no surprise. In fact, just the opposite would have been huge news. China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016 under an unofficial ban that also restricts movies and the country’s popular TV dramas. For some Chinese, that means flying to Seoul to see their favorite groups perform — as many were expected to do for three shows opening
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry consumes electricity at rates that would strain most national grids. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) alone accounted for more than 9 percent, or 2,590 megawatts (MW), of the nation’s power demand last year. The factories that produce chips for the world’s phones and servers run around the clock. They cannot tolerate blackouts. Yet Taiwan imports 97 percent of its energy, with liquefied natural gas reserves measured in days. Underground, Taiwan has options. Studies from National Taiwan University estimate recoverable geothermal resources at more than 33,000 MW. Current installed capacity stands below 10 MW. OBSTACLES Despite Taiwan’s significant geothermal potential, the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) returned from her trip to meet People’s Republic of China (PRC) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) bearing “a gift” for the people of Taiwan: 10 measures the PRC proposed to “facilitate the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.” “China on Sunday unveiled 10 new incentive measures for Taiwan,” wrote Reuters, wrongly. The PRC’s longstanding habit with Taiwan relations is to repackage already extant or once-existing policies and declare that they are “new.” The list forwarded by Cheng reflects that practice. NEW MEASURES? Note the first item: establishing regular communication mechanisms between the Chinese Communist Party
RSS