A musical titled Jian Ji: A Just Life (簡吉奏鳴曲) portrays the life and times of Chien Chi (簡吉), a Taiwanese anti-colonialist and farmers’ rights advocate, the Kaohsiung Cultural Affairs Bureau said.
In the 1920s, Chien founded a leftist agrarian collective called the Taiwan Farmers’ Union and organized by bicycle across Kaohsiung from Fongshan District (鳳山), recruiting members — eventually more than 20,000 people — to resist exploitation by the Japanese colonial government and the sugar companies, the bureau said.
Chien continued his struggle for equality in subsequent decades, but was executed in 1951 at the beginning of the White Terror era by the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime, the bureau said.
The play, to be performed at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts’ (衛武營國家藝術文化中心, also known as Weiwuying) Playhouse on Nov. 24 and 25, received support from the city government and the Kaohsiung Philharmonic Cultural and Arts Foundation, it said.
Director Lee Hsiao-ping (李小平) is best known for a stage adaptation of novelist Eileen Chang’s (張愛玲) The Golden Cangue (Jin Suo Ji, 金鎖記), for which he received a 2011 National Arts and Culture Foundation award, it said.
Lee Che-yi (李哲藝), a Kaohsiung native who won the 2012 Golden Melody Award for Best Producer, is the musical director for the play and oversaw the composition of seven original songs in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), it said.
Half of the artists and performers participating in the project hail from Kaohsiung, including singing director Chan Je-jiung (詹喆君), costume designer Lee Yu-ling (李鈺玲) and visual designer Lin Chung-sheng (林忠聖), it added.
Kaohsiung-based actors and theater students from Shu-Te University and National Sun Yat-sen University are to star in a cast accompanied by the Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra, it said.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard