Held for more than 100 years in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華) and featuring up to 200 religious troupes from various temples, the Monga Offering Ceremony (艋舺大拜拜) will be rocking this year — literally.
To attract more young people to the festivities, which will be held all over the area to celebrate the birthday of Qingshan Temple’s (青山宮) patron deity, Qingshanwang (青山王; Green Mountain King), the organizers are kicking things off with a music festival tomorrow at a nearby park.
To say the Tshing Shan Fest’s (青山祭) lineup is eclectic is an understatement — eight-year-old oldies crooner Liu Hung-lin (柳宏霖) is followed by melodic death metal outfit Infernal Chaos, and heavy metal vocalist-turned-legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) is coming out of musical retirement to play a special set backed by grindcore mainstays Flesh Juicer (血肉果汁機). Even veteran entertainer He Yi-hang (賀一航) will join the party, while DJ Mykal (林哲儀) caps the evening.
Photo: Yeh Kuan-yu, Taipei Times
■ The Monga Offering Ceremony will feature “night patrols” (暗訪) tomorrow and Sunday beginning at 3pm to banish evil spirits, and the main processions will take place Monday all over Wanhua District.
■ Tshing Shan Fest is tomorrow from 1pm to 10pm at Heping Herbal Park (和平青山公園) at the intersection of Monga Blvd. (艋舺大道) and Xiyuan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市西園路二段).
■ Both events are free. On the Net (Chinese): www.facebook.com/tshingsan
The US war on Iran has illuminated the deep interdependence of Asia on flows of oil and related items as raw materials that become the basis of modern human civilization. Australians and New Zealanders had a wake up call. The crisis also emphasizes how the Philippines is a swatch of islands linked by jet fuel. These revelations have deep implications for an invasion of Taiwan. Much of the commentary on the Taiwan scenario has looked at the disruptions to world trade, which will be in the trillions. However, the Iran war offers additional specific lessons for a Taiwan scenario. An insightful
The problem with Marx’s famous remark that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce, is that the first time is usually farce as well. This week Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made a pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “to confer, converse and otherwise hob-nob” with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. The visit was an instant international media hit, with major media reporting almost entirely shorn of context. “Taiwan’s main opposition leader landed in China Tuesday for a rare visit aimed at cross-strait ‘peace’”, crowed Agence-France Presse (AFP) from Shanghai. Rare!
April 6 to April 13 Few expected a Japanese manga adaptation featuring four tall, long-haired heartthrobs and a plucky heroine to transform Taiwan’s television industry. But Meteor Garden (流星花園) took the nation by storm after premiering on April 12, 2001, single-handedly creating the “idol drama” (偶像劇) craze that captivated young viewers across Asia. The show was so successful that Japan produced its own remake in 2005, followed by South Korea, China and Thailand. Other channels quickly followed suit, with more than 50 such shows appearing over the following two years. Departing from the melodramatic
Sunflower movement superstar Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) once quipped that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could nominate a watermelon to run for Tainan mayor and win. Conversely, the DPP could run a living saint for mayor in Taipei and still lose. In 2022, the DPP ran with the closest thing to a living saint they could find: former Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中). During the pandemic, his polling was astronomically high, with the approval of his performance reaching as high as 91 percent in one TVBS poll. He was such a phenomenon that people printed out pop-up cartoon
RSS