Taiwan's off-road racing enthusiasts have started a new season of mud-splattered mayhem with the first leg of the National Off-Road Championship taking place yesterday and continuing today in Nantou County
By Gavin Phipps
Taiwan's four-wheel drive off-roaders are getting off to the start of a new season this weekend in the remote village of Wujie (武界), Nantou County, as Taiwan's multitude of off-road racing fanatics do battle in the opening leg of this year's National Off-Road Championship (全國越野吉普車障礙挑戰賽).

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The international star is in the Thai capital to promote her latest film
By Yu Sen-lun
Wearing a white, linen Armani dress and Fendi sandals, Michelle Yeoh looked poised and elegant arriving at the Bangkok International Film Festival in the second week.

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By Yu Sen-lun
In its second year, the Bangkok International Film Festival is taking strides to present itself as a major film festival-to-be, with a stronger line-up of movies, especially Thai films, and a newly launched domestic market for films to oil the wheels of movie businesses at the festival.

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Mary Leu is an uncompromising multimedia artist with a fast-growing reputation
By Derek Lee
Mary Leu's (呂美麗) style of art is perhaps as unconventional as the location of her art gallery. Situated in the remote town of Sanhsing (三星鄉) in Ilan County (宜蘭縣) the gallery is an approximately 45 minutes' drive south along the eastern coast from Ilan City (宜蘭市). Inside the gallery, her collection of art and crafts varies from fine wood carvings, to exquisite work in gold and elegant lost-wax cast glassware. All are made by Leu personally.

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One of the `three swordsman' of Taiwanese photography makes a bold statement with his posthumous exhibition
By Vico Lee
"I am not highly educated. I just use my camera to observe people and things. It doesn't have to appear `artistic,'" was Chang Tsai's (張才) best-known quote. Before his death in 1994 at the age of 79, Chang was known as having the most down-to-earth approach to photography among the "Three Swordsmen of Taiwanese Photography," which also includes Deng Nan-guang (鄧南光) and Lee Ming-diao (李鳴鵰).

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Ye Ting-ying's sixth book is `Throwaway Daughter' and talks about a young girl born in China who was adopted while still an infant by her Canadian parents
By Bradley Winterton
Some friends of mine recently returned from Guangzhou in China. They described the extraordinary phenomenon, observable there on a daily basis, of Western couples, mostly from North America, in town to collect their adopted Chinese baby daughters. They were everywhere, they said -- pushing their strollers along the sidewalks, crowding the lobby and corridors of the White Swan Hotel, and a visible presence at the

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By Bradley Winterton
I spent much of the Lunar New Year watching again the incomparable DVDs of Wagner's Ring operas from the 1976 Bayreuth production by Patrice Chereau and Pierre Boulez (Philips DVD 070 401 to 404). The feeling became irresistible that these DVDs, opening with only mixed success in Rheingold, increasingly found their imaginative world dominated by Wagner's original vision. The director's political program seemed to melt away and be taken over by the power of the music itself and of the lead singers. What was so remarkable was that all the main singers acted so imaginatively. The end result is a 14-hour experience that, at some NT$2,500, remains the best value for money currently available in Wagnerian opera on DVD. Try Gotterdammerung, the finest of the four, and you'll soon be running out to get your hands on the other three.

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