Technology-savvy entrepreneurs from Taiwan help not only strengthen Taiwan’s economic power with their endeavors, but also flank the nation’s diplomatic thrust and enhance the reservoir of sympathies for it. The recently held Concordia Summit 2022 in New York, with the participation of many high-profiled international figures from politics to finance, culture to environmental protection and human rights, was attended by a number of Taiwanese officials and businesspeople. Indeed, the summit, timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly, is being touted as a “mini United Nations.” Taiwan’s uncontested global leadership in the electronics field, particularly in chip manufacturing, was noted at the summit where President Tsai, Ing-wen (蔡英文), in a recorded message, thanked organizers for staging the summit, and discussed Taiwan’s development. A striking feature about Tsai’s virtual presence was that she was listed as President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), in contrast to certain UN-affiliated organizations, which usually describe Taiwan as “Chinese Taipei.” HUMANITARIAN AID Alex Shyy (史立軍), Deputy Secretary General of Taiwan’s International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF), said that Taiwan provides a wide range of technological assistance to developing countries, though “it is driven mainly by humanitarian considerations.” “We provide soft loans, technology, education, vocational training, humanitarian aid … these are the key elements of our aid program,” he told the Taipei Times. Extending such assistance poses a sharp contrast to China’s commercial loans for projects in developing countries that get caught in Beijing’s debt trap and end up mortgaging their strategic assets as a surety for their inability to repay the loans, which recently happened in Sri Lanka. The ICDF is active in Central and South America, the Caribbean and Pacific islands, Southeast Asia and West Asia Africa. This form of assistance is welcomed by many countries that are known to have disappointing experiences with China. Shyy said
Something is rotten in the state of manhood. Guilty of the crime of patriarchy, it is also tainted by toxic masculinity, the belief that most social ills — everything from murder and rape to online abuse — stem from men being men. Not only are men seen as (and too often are) violent and dangerous, in advanced economies men are three times more likely than women to take their own lives. According to research cited in thinktank research fellow Richard Reeves’s new book, Of Boys and Men, males are much more likely to feel socially excluded, and far less likely to thrive after divorce (if they don’t remarry). At the same time, girls are outperforming boys in most academic disciplines, and rapidly closing the gap in those in which boys lead, not just in schools but in universities across the western world. In the US, 57 percent of bachelor degrees are now awarded to women. The same can be said for many areas of the workforce too, where, in spite of the gender gap in pay — largely attributable to the burden of childcare placed on women — men are increasingly second best. What’s more, men are literally losing their grip. In 1985, writes Reeves, “the average man in his early 30s could squeeze your hand with about 30 pounds more force than a similarly aged woman. Today, their grip strength is about the same.” And there are plenty more alarming statistics where those come from. Was the American feminist writer Hanna Rosin on to something when she published a book a decade ago entitled The End of Men? Reeves cites Rosin as a supporting witness to his case, though the woman herself has backtracked on what she has called, in the light of continuing male dominance in the upper reaches of the
Human rights activist Charles remembers a time when civil society was blossoming in China, and he could dedicate his time to helping improve the lives of people struggling in blue-collar jobs. Now, 10 years into President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) rule, community organizations such as Charles’s have been dismantled and hopes of a rebirth crushed. Charles has fled China and several of his activist friends are in jail. “After 2015, the whole of civil society began to collapse and become fragmented,” he said, using a pseudonym for safety reasons. Xi, on the brink of securing a third term at the apex of the world’s most populous country, has overseen a decade in which civil society movements, an emergent independent media and academic freedoms have been all but destroyed. As Xi sought to eliminate any threats to the Communist Party, many non-governmental organization workers, rights lawyers and activists were threatened, jailed or exiled. AFP interviewed eight Chinese activists and intellectuals who described the collapse of civil society under Xi, though a few remain determined to keep working despite the risks. Some face harassment from security officers who summon them weekly for questioning, while others cannot publish under their own names. “My colleagues and I have frequently experienced interrogations lasting over 24 hours,” an LGBTQ rights NGO worker told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that psychological trauma from the repeated questioning has compounded his woes. “We’ve become more and more incapable, regardless of whether it’s from a financial or operational perspective, or on a personal level.” ‘709 CRACKDOWN’ The collapse of China’s civil society has been a long process riddled with obstacles for activists. In 2015, more than 300 lawyers and rights defenders were arrested in a sweep named the “709 crackdown” after the date it was launched — July 9. Many lawyers remained behind bars or under surveillance for years, while others were disbarred,
The biggest software upgrade in the short history of crypto has fulfilled its promise to wipe out more than 99 percent of the electricity used by the second-biggest cryptocurrency, experts have said. That is no mean feat, given that the Ethereum blockchain was burning through about as much electricity as New Zealand. Sceptics had expected glitches with the upgrade, known as “the merge,” but it ended up being a “rather boring event,” according to Alex de Vries of the Free University in Amsterdam. De Vries, whose Digiconomist Web site models the energy use of Bitcoin and Ethereum, said consumption had indeed plummeted by more than 99 percent on Ethereum. Moritz Platt, a researcher specializing in crypto at King’s College London, said the 99 percent estimates were realistic and heralded a positive step towards “cryptocurrency sustainability.” So the Ethereum blockchain, which supports billions of dollars of trading in games, tokens, art and the ether currency, has cleaned up its act. But there are complications. Ethereum faces bitter opposition from those who lost out from the merge and it could also get greater scrutiny from regulators. ‘ASTRONOMICAL GROWTH’ The old system, known as “proof of work,” relied on people and firms to “mine” new coins — an industry worth US$22 million daily before the merge, according to de Vries. The miners used vast power-guzzling computer rigs to compete with each other to solve complex equations, and the winner was awarded the prize of adding entries to the blockchain and generating coins. The merge wiped out their business model overnight. “Those rigs do not magically turn back into invested capital,” said a crypto-miner known only as “J” who operates between Singapore and Hong Kong. He said it was costing him between US$30,000 and US$40,000 a month to keep his staff and equipment idling while he thinks about his next move. Plenty
Like fearsome dictators throughout history, Xi Jinping (習近平) has a tender side. He loves his mum. In a touching puff piece on Mother’s Day this year, state TV showed China’s strongman president strolling hand in hand with 96-year-old Qi Xin (齊心), a Communist party veteran and proud mother of the paramount leader. Many mums read fairy stories or sing nursery rhymes to their young children. Not so Qi. She taught five-year-old Xi about Yue Fei (岳飛), a famously hawkish Southern Song dynasty general who had “Serve the country with utmost loyalty” tattooed on his back. This uplifting slogan had inspired his life’s work, Xi claimed. XI FAILS UPWARD Xi’s mum did more than fortify his moral fiber. She also privately lobbied the party hierarchy to advance his lackluster early career. According to Cai Xia (蔡霞), a retired professor of the CCP Central Party School now living in exile, the formidable Qi wrote to Hebei province’s party chief in the 1980s, asking him to give her son a leg up the ladder. Despite her string-pulling, Xi’s fortunes continued to languish “on account of his middling performance,” Cai noted. But his mum persisted. “In 1992, after [she] wrote a plea to the new party leader in Fujian… Xi was transferred. At that point, his career took off.” Other influential family members also helped Xi overcome his apparent lack of talent. “He benefited immensely from the connections of his father, Xi Zhongxun (習仲勛), a CCP leader with impeccable revolutionary credentials,” Cai wrote. Xi’s thus became the classic trajectory of a party princeling, ever failing upwards. A series of senior positions followed, culminating in 2012-13 with the top party, military and government jobs. Now, having abolished term limits, Xi looks set to be crowned de facto president-for-life at this month’s party congress. This extraordinary accretion of personal power has already made Xi
One afternoon in early lockdown I led my two small children into the garden and told them to scream. “Go on,” I said, setting a timer. “Scream as loud as you want. I’ll join you.” We’d been in the house, socially distanced for more than a month by then. The children’s routine had been completely disrupted and they were confused and restless; my husband and I were managing full-time jobs along with full-time childcare. I was juggling grief, trauma, housework, childcare, writing. I was tired of keeping all the stress bubbling inside and weary of telling the children to stop being noisy. I was also conscious of how, even in the most gender-equitable households, parents are more likely to ask girls to be quiet than boys. What if we released it all at once? What if we just let it all out? The children looked at each other, confused, wondering whether I was being sarcastic. But then they started. It came less easily for me. After decades of telling myself that screaming was unseemly, I could only really do a feeble imitation of someone letting out a scream. I felt tongue-tied, too conscious of how I looked or what I sounded like, what the neighbors might think of me. “Are you all OK?” one asked with a nervous laugh from over the fence. Within a day or two of garden screaming it felt like a valve had burst and all the frustrations and stress came whooshing out with an unexpected force. We were soon running around the garden with our arms flailing until we collapsed in a heap together on the ground laughing, our legs entwined. Slowly we found that the children were also calmer and less likely to erupt into meltdowns and tantrums. There was a distinct feeling of elation that
“Your absence has gone through me/Like thread through a needle” wrote W.S. Merwin in “Separation,” finishing: “Everything I do is stitched with its color.” The same could be said of the nation’s diplomatic relations, in which our “Republic of China (ROC)” identity colors everything, yet is best for Taiwan when it is absent. As September waned into October, media reports said that Paraguay had sent word that it wanted another billion US dollars in investments. Big agriculture producers there wanted a crack at the China market, which that nation gave up to accommodate relations with Taiwan. According to the Financial Times report, Paraguay said the ROC gives US$6 billion in aid to its “diplomatic allies,” and it wanted a bigger taste. Fortunately, Paraguay’s president was later quoted as saying that there were no conditions for a continued relationship. Still, commentators were almost unanimous in remarking “good riddance” to the thought of Paraguay going. PAY-FOR-PLAY DIPLOMACY What do we get for our money? Eswatini, the Vatican, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, Belize, and island states in the Caribbean and Pacific, including St. Christopher and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Marshall Islands, Palau, Tuvalu and Nauru. Imagine what that money would do if spent on less grandiose, more normal relations. Critics have long targeted Taiwan’s ROC-flavored diplomacy. The pay-for-play diplomacy that Taiwan is forced to engage in simply means that our relations last as long as the money does. It also breeds corruption at both ends of the relationship. It means these relationships are inherently unstable, vulnerable whenever China decides to spend the resources to displace Taiwan. This means that every few years, whenever China wants to stir up local politics, it can poach a “diplomatic ally.” It has other negative consequences for Taiwan. The diplomatic corps appears to have transmitted downward
Oct. 3 to Oct. 9 Wang Shih-chieh (王世傑) could not forget the fertile plains he saw on his trip north. He first passed by in 1682 while delivering food supplies to Kingdom of Tungning troops, who were suppressing indigenous unrest in northern Taiwan. More than a decade later, the Kinmen native returned with over 180 settlers from his home village, establishing a prosperous settlement that became today’s Hsinchu City. The place they first set up camp is at Lane 36 Dongqian Street (東前街), which is designated Hsinchu’s first street and the birthplace of the city. The sign says they arrived in either 1691, 1701, 1711 or 1718. Wang constructed the Longen Canal (隆恩圳), one of three ancient waterways in town, and several temples that still stand today. Many sources state that he died on Oct. 5, 1721 during a trip home, but some maintain that he was beheaded by an indigenous robber on the same date while inspecting the canal. In any event, his relatives were said to have made a head from gold, attached it to the body and sent it back home to rest in the ancestral grave. Obviously there were indigenous people living in this area already, but the sign doesn’t mention them at all. A Hsinchu Bureau of Cultural Affairs document notes that Wang traded with them and established boundaries between the two groups, and farmed initially on abandoned indigenous land. Who were these original inhabitants, what happened to them and how exactly did Wang die? Taiwan in Time investigates. STRONGMAN An 1995 article in Hsinchu Journal of History (竹塹文獻) by Wang’s ninth-generation descendent Wang Chia-tsan (王家燦) confirms that Wang was born in 1624 in Jincheng (金城) in today’s Kinmen. The warlord and Ming loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, or Koxinga) was based in Kinmen before dislodging the Dutch from Taiwan,
Whether it’s a tricky maths problem or an unexpected bill, daily life is full of stressful experiences. Now researchers have found that humans produce a different odor when under pressure — and dogs can sniff it out. While previous studies have suggested canines might pick up on human emotions, possibly through smell, questions remained over whether they could detect stress and if this could be done through scent. “This study has definitively proven that people, when they have a stress response, their odor profile changes,” said Clara Wilson, a PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast, and first author of the research. Wilson added the findings could prove useful when training service dogs, such as those that support people with post-raumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “They’re often trained to look at someone either crouching down on the floor, or starting to do self-injurious behaviors,” said Wilson. The latest study, she said, offers another potential cue. “There is definitely a smell component, and that might be valuable in the training of these dogs in addition to all of the visual stuff,” said Wilson. Writing in the journal Plos One, Wilson and colleagues report how they first constructed a stand bearing three containers, each topped by a perforated lid. The researchers report they were able to train four dogs to indicate the container holding a particular breath and sweat sample, even when the line-up included unused gauze, samples from another person, or samples from the same person taken at a different time of day. With the team confident the dogs understood the approach, they turned to breath and sweat samples collected from 36 people asked to count backwards from 9,000 in units of 17. The participants reported feeling stressed by the task and, for the 27 who carried it out in the laboratory, their blood pressure and heart rate rose. The dogs were taught
Taking place once every three years, the Murder by Numbers Film Festival will kick off next week to highlight issues surrounding the death penalty. “In a country with frequent mistrials, and where people have low confidence in the law, why do we let the unreliable judicial system wield the power to decide life and death? Why do we think that the death penalty can upend justice and guarantee social stability?” organizer Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty asks in the introduction. Themed “The State vs You and Me,” the selection of 16 films from across the world presents the topic through different perspectives and invites the audience to think about possibilities for the future. The four themes are: State Violence, Waiting for Death in Prison, The Evil is You, The Evil is Me and Rescue of Unjust Cases. The festival approaches the issue from a variety of angles, such as the background of the perpetrator and causes for the crime, how public opinion presents the case, the judicial process, state power, prison politics and the state of death row prisoners and other related people such as the victims, relatives and jailers.” The opening film, Free Men, looks at the youngest death row prisoner in the US state of Arkansas. Dubiously convicted when he was 18, he has spent the past 25 years in solitary confinement, but in the meantime has become a poet, non-profit founder and art event organizer and continues to fight against the system. Oct. 7 to Oct. 9 at Spot Huashan Cinema (光點華山電影館), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市八德路一段1號), Oct. 15 to Oct. 16 at Wonderful Theater Tainan, 4F, 120, Ximen Rd Sec 2, Tainan City (台南市西門路二段120號4F) Tickets are available 30 minutes before the movie starts, two tickets per person For full schedule, visit (Chinese): www.taedp.org.tw/story/11121
The real-life model for Vesper Lynd, the alluring spy who so entranced James Bond in Casino Royale, has a new mission. Secret agent Krystyna Skarbek, who was fictionalized as 007’s lover in Ian Fleming’s novel, is now to be the figurehead of a campaign to remind Britain of its strong cultural ties with Poland. Skarbek, who was Winston Churchill’s favorite secret agent, received the George Medal for her second world war bravery and went under the name Christine Granville in Britain. Courageous and daring, her under-recognized legacy is now to spearhead a fresh mission, officially announced next week. The Granville-Skarbek Anglo-Polish cultural exchange will begin as an online museum and research site, run in tandem with a series of public events and exhibitions. After that, a move into a permanent physical home at the Polish Social and Cultural Association (Posk) in west London is planned. “Skarbek was a Polish aristocrat of Jewish descent and not only the first British female agent but the longest serving of any agent,” said Julia Griffin, curator of the new project. “She and her first husband, a Polish diplomat, were in Africa when war broke out. They immediately took a ship to Southampton, and Krystyna was accepted as an SOE [Special Operations Executive] agent.” Fleming, a former naval intelligence officer, had a short romance with Skarbek and was clearly beguiled when they met, telling a mutual friend, “she literally shines with all the splendors of a fictitious character. How rarely one finds such types.” His character Lynd, who was played by Ursula Andress and then Eva Green on screen, battled the villain Le Chiffre and was honored by Bond in the creation of the Vesper, the famous “shaken not stirred” cocktail. But Skarbek’s real-life antics were, if anything, more dazzling. As well as skiing out of occupied Poland with evidence
Of all the cities in Taiwan few have undergone such a major transformation as Kaohsiung and there is no better place to witness this than on Chijin Island (旗津). From gritty to groovy, Chijin is an oasis just 30 minutes from central Kaohsiung. The reopening of the Chihou Lighthouse (旗後砲臺) this month, after substantial renovation, is just the latest attraction. In the 1990’s Chijin would have been best described as the armpit of the city. A quirky docklands area that I would visit from time to time, after spending a few hours there I would wonder why I bothered. Even in those days it was obvious that it had the potential to be a tourist hot spot. All it needed was a little imagination and investment to turn it into something worthwhile. One big draw for locals is the seafood, which is outstanding. Back in 2008, the city government planned to upgrade transportation to Chijin with an electric cable car, a second underwater car tunnel and a subway link. None of that has transpired, but it hasn’t stopped it from becoming a must-visit location in Kaohsiung. A BEACH FOR ALL SEASONS Fast forward to this year and I’ve already been to the island three times. In the past, the only time my attention would be drawn to Chijin would be news reports of drownings in the notorious surf. Breakers in the form of tetrapods now line the coast, which has created a safe swimming area, and families with kids of all ages can now be seen frolicking in the water. During the summer there was quite a festive atmosphere with massive inflatable pools, beach furniture and slides set up beside the beach. Chijin boasts an excellent bike path that runs the length of the island, with numerous art installations adorning what was
Bros, the latest romantic comedy to hit theaters, is absolutely revolutionary. And totally conventional. It’s a film where both extremes can be true at the same time. The revolutionary part comes from it being the first gay rom-com produced and distributed by a major American studio. And yet it hews very closely to the classic rom-com formula, right down to one of the star-crossed lovers suddenly realizing he’s in love and sprinting to reunite with the other as music swells. That’s the genius of Bros — telling LGBTQ stories and wrapping it in a familiar storyline that everyone can relate to. At one point, we see our hero watching When Harry Met Sally and we quietly cheer as the universe of rom-coms just got another satellite. Some people may complain that it fits too neatly into the straight-people film formula, but revolutions weren’t built in a movie. Billy Eichner stars as Bobby Lieber, a slightly nerdy gay podcaster-turned-museum executive who has hit the age of 40 without having had a serious romantic relationship. The script by Nicholas Stoller and Eichner leans into the schtick Eichner has built as a loud, opinionated comic on Billy on the Street but creates room for a wounded, insecure hero. Eichner is navigating the fraught world of modern dating in the New York City gay community, which includes graceless app hookups, steroid use, dance-club ogling, legions of commitment-phobes and an emphasis on the physical and superficial — so just like straights! When sparks fly between him and a hunky meathead — played understated and soulfully by Luke Macfarlane — it’s clear that opposites attract. Our hero has a sunken chest, an unwavering belief that Abraham Lincoln was a closeted gay man and a high voice; the muscly hunk is a fan of Garth Brooks, hockey and The Office. Yet he
Even though Daniel Pearl World Music Day is held in hundreds of countries, the late journalist’s father Judea Pearl remembered to give a shout out to Taiwan. “Don’t be intimidated by military exercises and other dark clouds over Taiwan,” he tweeted last week. “If you find yourself strolling in Taipei on October 1, drop in to enjoy some good music and press freedom.” Now in its 21st year, the nation was among the first to hold the event to commemorate the life of Daniel Pearl, who was abducted and killed by terrorists in 2002 while working for the Wall Street Journal in Pakistan. He was also an avid musician. Sponsored by Reporters Without Borders, the event features its usual program of eclectic music, food and drink selections at no cost. Reporters without Borders East Asia Bureau Head Cedric Alviani says that it’s an important event that celebrates the values of democracy, human rights and freedom, ideas that were embodied by Daniel Pearl’s commitment as a reporter. “It’s very important that we carry high these values of friendship, peace and mutual understanding, and the best way to share these values is to have fun together and have a festival,” he says. Over the past decade, more than 1,500 journalists were killed on assignment, with more than 500 detained, Alviani says. “Hatred against journalists is not something you only find in authoritarian countries, but also in democracies where more and more politicians are very aggressive against journalists,” he says. “We know that the media system is not perfect, but democracy cannot work without a third party scrutinizing it from the outside.” Taiwan is a good example, because even though it’s free, the media needs to be more effective and not just focus on entertainment and sensationalism, Alviani says. “Unfortunately, Taiwanese journalists aren’t given sufficient protection
Three decades ago, finding opportunities to learn Cantonese in San Francisco wasn’t hard. But today in the city that’s drawn Cantonese speakers from South China for over 150 years, there’s fear that political and social upheaval are diminishing a language that is a cultural touchstone. The Chinese government’s push for wider use of Mandarin — already the national language, spoken by one billion people — along with the country’s changing migration patterns have contributed to an undeniable shift away from Cantonese. It’s a change that has reverberated from East to West. From the US to the UK and beyond, there’s worry among native and second-generation Cantonese speakers about preserving the language, spoken by some 85 million people worldwide. They fear their children can’t communicate with elderly relatives. Or worse, the Cantonese language and culture won’t survive another generation. Ceci Pang, a former kindergarten teacher, runs classes for children at Rainbow Seeds Cantonese school in London. Most of her students are from families with mixed heritage. “Many (parents) want their kids to be able to communicate with their grandparents,” she said. “It’s just so hard here, there are so few learning resources and lots of parents get frustrated and give up. That’s usually the point the parents come to me.” CULTURAL HERITAGE In the UK, as in the US, most primary and secondary schools offering Chinese teach Mandarin. That’s left many migrant families struggling to find ways to pass on their heritage. Some turn to social media for advice and camaraderie — a Facebook group called “Cantonese Parents” has thousands of members sharing tips on everything from Cantonese books to YouTube videos. Some organize local Cantonese family meet-ups, while others seek out Cantonese tutors. Pang said she hasn’t noticed many explicit concerns about Cantonese dying as a language. But, she said, that may change as more Hong Kong migrants
Women who identify as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are more likely to face barriers in investment management than their white or male counterparts, a new study shows — and several people interviewed by Bloomberg echoed those findings. Eight in 10 AAPI women surveyed see various individual, cultural, and organizational challenges — commonly referred to as the “bamboo ceiling” — as potential impediments to rising through the management ranks, according to an Association of Asian American Investment Managers report released Tuesday. Of the 608 people who responded to the survey, 174 identified themselves as AAPI women, and 57 percent of that cohort said they were personally affected by the bamboo ceiling. Many also reported having to assert themselves more than their male peers in order to be recognized, promoted or credited for their work. “Especially when trying to move up in the ranks, the onus was on women to prove themselves,” Melissa Maquilan Radic, a former BlackRock Inc executive whose parents immigrated to the US from the Philippines, said in a phone interview, speaking generally about her experiences in the corporate world. “I would look at women who had similar job titles to men, and their qualifications were twice as robust.” The work of her parents, both practicing physicians, taught her the importance of establishing credibility as a woman by comparing her mother’s career with that of her father’s. Maquilan Radic, 40, was one of several AAPI women who shared similar experiences of having to meld their identities and communication styles to get ahead. “You’ve got to be so much better that there is really no question you are the best one and there is no alternative to you,” said Dynex Capital Co-Chief Investment Officer Smriti Popenoe, a native of India with three-decades of experience in finance. ‘GUY TALK’ Popenoe, who was schooled across three continents during her
Growing up, Fumina Oka knew little about the mysterious university her Taiwanese grandfather attended in northern China’s Manchuria during Japan’s occupation in the early 20th century. But as the 28-year-old journalist studied the little-known Kenkoku University, she became fascinated about a place that started out as a grand piece of imperial propaganda meant to celebrate Japan’s prewar colonization of large swaths of Asia. In recent years, the dwindling number of surviving students, their families and those who have researched its history have come to share a sense of cross-national unity. It is built on sometimes surprising friendships forged at the Japan-run university, which glorified official notions of pan-Asian harmony even as imperial troops brutalized much of the region. The university is a unique footnote in the rocky relationship between Japan and China, which are celebrating their 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations this week. Kenkoku University operated from 1938 to 1945. It selected elite male students from Japan, China, Korea, the then-Soviet Union and Mongolia, according to a book by Hideyuki Miura, a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. The students lived and studied together in Manchuria under the banner of “the harmony of five ethnicities.” Among the university’s 1,400 or so graduates were some who played major roles in Asia’s rise over the last 80 years, including former South Korean Prime Minister Kang Young-hoon. Eager to learn more about her late grandfather, Qiu Laizhuan, Oka began a documentary project aimed at finding alumni now in their 90s and 100s in Japan. Through a graduate-list book and a pile of letters Qiu exchanged with his classmates, she managed to find and meet seven alumni living in Japan. Her work has encouraged growing friendships between Japanese and Chinese family members of the graduates. Among them is Shigeru Imaizumi, 96, who entered the university the same year as Oka’s grandfather, in 1944. Imaizumi
A few years ago, I attended a Shakespeare workshop in Taipei. As someone who only began to appreciate the Bard outside the classroom, I was excited. Several Taiwanese were participating in the four-week course, and I was curious to see what they would make of it. In the event, one quit after the first week, and others struggled with the language and, I suspect, the historical and cultural background to the soliloquies they chose. The experience got me wondering about Shakespeare\'s supposed universality. In this collection, Alexa Alice Joubin asserts a “deep connection among Asian and Anglophone performances” of Shakespeare. As her research interests included race, gender and identity, it is unsurprising to find these themes featuring prominently. With women excluded from performing in the early modern era, gender fluidity was built into Shakespeare from the get-go. Prepubescent boys played the female roles, with Shakespeare even cunningly alluding to this through Cleopatra’s lament that future dramatizations of her life will see “Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness/In the posture of a whore.” Aside from young men “boying” female characters, several plays famously feature gender swapping — Viola as Cesario in Twelfth Night and Rosalind as the shepherd Ganymede, for example — a device that allowed the male actors to dispense with the “squeaking” while the character remained in disguise. So, analysis of Shakespeare through the lens of gender are hardly new or controversial. What makes Joubin’s critiques interesting are the elements that she draws in. A section on representations of the character of Ophelia in South Korean theater and film, for example, looks at shamanism as conferring “greater agency” on women because “female shamans exist outside the Confucian social structure” and K-pop “flower boys” as a model for trans characters. IMPROVING LOCAL ART FORMS For Taiwan-focused readers, chapter two will be of interest.
Danny Wen (溫士凱) had an eye-opening homecoming experience. First it was the township chief who went to school with his uncle. Then it was the trail builder who knew his mother. There was even a connection with an indigenous Saisiyat elder, who spoke Wen’s Hakka dialect fluently and once stayed at his grandfather’s hotel in Hsinchu County’s Jhudong Township (竹東). “That hotel closed in the 1970s and I can’t even find old photos of it,” Wen says. “I felt goosebumps all over when he told me that.” The travel writer and television host didn’t expect his journey through the 270km Raknus Selu trail, which runs through Hakka country from Taoyuan to Taichung, to end up like this. His role as co-host was as a cultural guide and interpreter for British photographer Chris Stowers in AXN channel’s latest documentary, Secrets of the Raknus Selu Trail, but he says he ended up learning just as much. Stowers is based in Taiwan and has traveled the island extensively, but he knew little about Hakka culture besides dishes commonly found in restaurants. Stowers is also not used to being in front of the camera, and he’s never narrated a film before. But the production team’s casual, unscripted shooting style quickly put him and Wen at ease. For 20 days, the two bantered and discussed local culture, met up with locals with different expertise along the trail and encountered many unexpected adventures. The documentary premiered yesterday and will be shown on the channel until the middle of next month, and it can be seen on YouTube starting today. Stowers’ photographs have been made into a book, and they also recorded a four-part podcast that’s available on Spotify and other platforms. INDUSTRY ROADS Raknus means camphor in the indigenous Atayal language, while Selu means small road in Hakka. It
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