This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mex
A fat Ferrari, pickles on pedestals and two sausages in an intimate embrace — welcome to the weird world of Erwin Wurm, one of Austria’s most famous contemporary artists, who wants us to embrace the absurd.If we look at “our world from another perspective, from the perspective of the absurd, we migh
As the first visit by a German cabinet minister in 26 years, Bettina Stark-Watzinger’s trip to Taiwan in March last year, was a big deal. The German Minister for Education and Research oversaw the signing of a bilateral agreement on science and technology cooperation, which she said would enhance “c
Employers who force staff to return to the office five days a week have been called the “dinosaurs of our age” by one of the world’s leading experts who coined the term “presenteeism.”Sir Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology and health at the University of Manchester’s Alliance Manc
In the aftermath of the 2020 general elections the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had crushed them in a second landslide in a row, with their presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) winning more votes than any in Taiwan’s history. The KMT di
A global network of doctors and laboratories is working to pinpoint emerging viral threats, including many driven by climate change, in a bid to head off the world’s next pandemic.The coalition of self-described “virus hunters” has uncovered everything from an unusual tick-borne disease in Thailand
Each year the world produces around 400 million tonnes of plastic waste, much of it discarded after just a few minutes of use.Negotiators hope to reach the world’s first treaty on plastic pollution this year, but across five very different countries, single-use plastic remains hugely popular as a ch
At a dialysis center in Atlanta, Lauren Kasper tended to patients resting in hospital beds, some too sick to be transferred to a chair. Many arrived in wheelchairs or walked with canes, their bodies weakened from kidney disease.As she hooked them up to dialysis machines, Kasper, a nurse practitioner
“Shogun” had historic wins in an epic 18-Emmy first season, “Hacks” scored an upset for best comedy on what was still a four-trophy night for “The Bear,” and “Baby Reindeer” had a holiday at an Emmy Awards that had some surprising swerves.“Shogun,” the FX series about power struggles in feudal Japan
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at
Sept.16 to Sept. 22The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propagand
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses.After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb ox
Anthony Chaffee is dressed in a tight gray T-shirt that shows off his muscular physique. He works at a private medical practice in Australia that specializes in functional medicine, an umbrella term popularized in the 1990s to describe unregulated alternative medicine. He is telling me, as he tells
Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provid
Hollywood has a history of reanimating the decaying corpses of long-dead movies with belated sequels, so perhaps it was just a matter of time before somebody delved into the grave marked Beetlejuice. That someone was only ever going to be Tim Burton, director of the original 1988 film, and although
Singletons looking to shack up with their soulmates online have relied on two key routes in the past decade or so: take your chance on dating apps, or befriend as many mutuals as possible on social media, in the hope that you find the one.But some have found a third way, using services such as Goodr
“Once you get there, you think, that’s a little embarrassing or revealing or scary... but ultimately, I learned that is where the good stuff is,” says Taiwanese-American director Sean Wang about writing indie breakout Didi (弟弟), which debuted at Sundance Film Festival Asia 2024 in Taipei last month.
The night before June 6, 1944, fleets of warships moved in darkness towards the beaches of Normandy, France, for a massive strike, with Chinese naval officer Lam Ping-yu on one of the vessels.The ships were as “numerous as ants, scattered and wriggling all across the sea,” Lam wrote in his diary. “A
When he was a witch doctor, Moussa Diallo would regularly smear himself in a lotion made from a clitoris cut from a girl subjected to female genital mutilation.“I wanted to be a big chief, I wanted to dominate,” said the small but charismatic fifty-something from northwest Ivory Coast. “I put it on
What jumps to mind when you think about the impending AI apocalypse? If you’re partial to sci-fi movie cliches, you may envisage killer robots (with or without thick Austrian accents) rising up to terminate their hubristic creators. Or perhaps, a la The Matrix, you’ll go for scary machines sucking e