Keith Richburg, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong, and former Africa Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, will give a lecture, “Dragon Among the Lions: What Does China Really Want From Africa?” in Taipei on Sept. 9. The lecture will be moderated by Lung Yingtai (龍應台), writer and former Taiwan Minister of Culture. China has surpassed the US as Africa’s largest trading partner, investing some US$7 billion each year in infrastructure projects around the continent. Is China really looking for a long-term relationship of “equality and mutual respect,” or does it want to be merely a “friend with benefits,” like so many of the Western colonial powers that came before? How much do ordinary Africans really benefit from China’s economic largesse? Richburg will discuss his perspective on China-Africa relations, their economic partnership and the geopolitical implications of the country and continent drawing ever closer.
■ Taiwan Academy of Banking and Finance (台灣金融研訓院), 2F, 62 Roosevelt Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路三段62號2樓)
■ Sunday from 2pm to 3:30pm; free admission, but those wanting to attend must pre-register at www.civictaipei.org/registration.php (English and Chinese). For more information, call Yuan Ti at (02) 3322-4907, Ext. 14. The lecture will be held in English.
Photo courtesy of Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation
Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire, says our gut is a “complex machine.” “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” Verma says. “In a general gastroenterology clinic, the most common conditions we see are irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation,” says Nisha
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May 25 to May 31 Few believed that apples could be cultivated on a commercial scale in Taiwan’s high mountains. When horticulturalist Cheng Chao-hsiung (程兆熊) first proposed the idea in 1955, both American and Taiwanese colleagues dismissed it as implausible, arguing that temperate fruit could not be reliably grown on a subtropical island, especially on rugged terrain. However, it was this terrain in the Central Mountain Range where many Chinese Civil War veterans were resettled in the late 1950s. With limited job prospects and no family in Taiwan, they were placed on cooperative farms aimed toward self-sufficiency. Some say the conditions
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