Some theaters in Taiwan are complaining that they are barely selling a handful of tickets each day. Some are calling on the government to order all theaters to suspend operations, because they would then qualify for immediate economic relief.
Yet is that the only way out?
Consider how citizens’ action is working in Germany to rescue small local theaters.
Following German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s national television address about the COVID-19 crisis on March 18, the German authorities immediately imposed restrictions on social interaction and the extent of people’s daily movements.
Apart from supermarkets, pharmacies, post offices and fuel stations, all shops have closed for business.
HELPING HAND
As soon as that happened, my German husband decided to pay the equivalent of NT$200,000 to a family hotel that we often visit, so that it could use the money as a contingency fund to be deducted from our future bills.
Numerous similar calls to action have been posted on Facebook to rescue small local and community businesses, be they theaters, corner cafes, restaurants or independent bookshops.
As it turns out, being shut away at home has not prevented Germans from keeping themselves busy.
One of the ways to rescue local theaters is to find an online interactive map of Germany and click on a little theater near where you live, or one that you want to help, and then spend 10 minutes patiently watching the kind of commercials or movie previews that used to be shown before films, so that the theater can earn some revenue from the ads.
Another way is to make small online donations or buy vouchers for future showings.
CHILDREN’S CHANNELS
When Germans do these things to give small businesses a helping hand, it is not just because of a national culture of kindness or human sympathy. A key factor is that children’s channels play their role as social instruments by tailoring their content to their target audience to give children equal access to information and shape their civic capacity for autonomous action.
As Merkel said in her national address: “We are a democracy. We do not live by constraint, but by shared knowledge and participation.”
This notion of shared knowledge includes giving children equal access to information by putting it in language that they can understand.
The day after Merkel’s address, children’s news programs used animations and illustrations to teach them about the virus, the workings of democracy and economic relief plans.
Daily children’s news programs have broadcast a series of special reports about what actions can be taken to assist small businesses.
For example, people can help by clicking on ads, buying vouchers for future consumption or making online purchases of goods and food deliveries from local shops and restaurants.
CLEARLY EXPLAINED
As well as telling viewers how to do these things, these reports also explain precisely how they can have the desired effect, as well as the positive impact they can have on the employment market, social stability and government finances.
The machinery of state is abstract. Government would be ineffective if there is no consensus among citizens about fulfilling their obligations and acting autonomously.
Even if the lights have gone off at movie theaters, the radiance of citizens’ awakening can still cast a glimmer of hope.
Barbara Kern is a freelance writer.
Translated by Julian Clegg
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS