Celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with two days of free outdoor activities by traditional performing arts troupes from around the country.
Organized by the National Center for Traditional Arts, the market takes place today and tomorrow at the open-air plaza of the Taiwan Traditional Theater Center.
A star attraction is the Kinmen Puppet Theater (金門傳統傀儡戲劇團), which will make a rare foray out of the islands’ temples to present live performances with traditional marionettes on both nights.
Photo courtesy of National Center for Traditional Arts
Tonight’s highlights also include Formosa Circus Art, which combines modern circus acts and traditional acrobatics; extracts of classic Beijing operas performed by Taoyuan’s Po You Set opera troupe; and a screening of the movie Long Time No Sea (只有大海知道), about a young boy from Orchid Island who learns the traditional dances of the Tao community.
Tomorrow, puppetry will take center-stage, with Hakka troupe Shan Wan Ran (山宛然) and Puppet Beings Theater (偶偶偶劇團) also performing. New Taipei City’s Sun Son Theater (身聲劇場) will perform a dance and theater piece on stilts entitled Wings of Hope (希望之翼). Visitors can also enjoy music from the Taiya community and Amis singer-songwriter Sonlay.
If you want to make a picnic of the traditional moon-viewing during the Mid-Autumn Festival, food stalls at the market will be selling Cuban sandwiches, crepes and egg cakes.
■ Today and tomorrow, from 4pm to 9pm
■ Outdoor plaza of the Taiwan Traditional Theater Center (台灣戲曲中心戶外廣場); 751, Wenlin Rd, Taipei City (台北市文林路751號)
■ Admission is free
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
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