A nongovernment English magazine featuring Taiwan's lifestyle and culture hit bookstore shelves at home and abroad yesterday.
The biannual magazine, dubbed happening stresses "global thinking and Taiwan originating" themes and perspectives, its publisher Sarina Yeh (葉姿吟) said yesterday.
The inaugural issue features a number of themes, including fashion, photography, architecture, community and education, Yeh said.
An ardent advocate of the "nonprofit organization" (NPO) concept, Yeh said happening will be a magazine "without a single page of advertisements."
"From the moment that I started preparations for publishing this magazine six months ago till the printing of 1,600 copies of the inaugural issue Monday, I have not spent a penny," Yeh said.
A number of prominent foreign artists and celebrities, including French photographers Jeff Hargrove and Christian Chambenoit as well as Japanese fashion designer Yoshi Yamamoto, have lent their support to her brainchild, Yeh said.
Yeh, who once organized several successful photography shows in Taipei during her stint as the chief executive of the nonprofit Premier Foundation, said she originally planned to leave for Holland early this year to study the country's NPOs.
"But in the end, I changed my mind and decided to stay in Taiwan to publish an English magazine which will introduce local cultural and aesthetic trends with an international perspective," Yeh said, adding that she hopes to promote Taiwan's image in the international arena through happening.
Noting that Yamamoto is known as a Zen master in the fashion world, Yeh said she has invited Ting Nai-chu (丁乃竺), executive director of the Performance Workshop who also specializes in Tibetan Buddhism, to model Yamamoto's latest fashion designs for the cover of the inaugural issue.
"To demonstrate his support for the magazine, Yamamoto airmailed his newest creations to Taipei for Ting to wear for location shooting on Yangmingshan," Yeh said.
The inaugural issue contains portraits of singers at a nostalgic Taipei nightclub shot by Paris-based photographer Jeff Hargrove as well as artistic images of herbal medicine ingredients shot by French photographer Christian Chambenoit.
Also in the issue is an article introducing local architect Hsieh Ying-chun who has been helping Aborigines build traditional-style houses in several central mountain villages which were hit hard in the magnitude 7.3 earthquake that rattled the country Sept. 21, 1999.
Another article in the issue features a story about the 15-year-old Garden of Hope Foundation in Taipei which has recently set up a branch in New York to help abused overseas Chinese women rebuild their lives.
In addition to Taiwan's Eslite Bookstore, noted arts books distributors, including Mode Information in Paris, DAP in New York and Nijhof & Lee in Amsterdam, will help distribute the new magazine, Yeh said.
She promised that more than half of the pages of the magazine will be dedicated to cultural and humanities themes related to Taiwan. The second issue to be published late this year will include a cover story on singer Tsai Chen-nan (蔡振南) and articles on locally-grown roses and other floral species.
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