When Pearl Jam came to Taipei's International Convention Center in 1996, the staff virtually forced the rockers to get back in their theater seats and watch in relative peace. When Weezer was in town the next year, security again had to interrupt the performance and make everyone sit down. Odds are, the same will happen tomorrow night when Slash and his new band, Slash's Snakepit, show up at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall to shred their guitars for a packed house.
Slash brings his band to Taipei fresh on the heels of the release of his new album, Ain't Life Grand, and a quick promotional tour of California. Taipei will kick off the Asian leg of his tour, which will also include two shows in Korea and five more in Japan. Then it's on to New Zealand, Australia and Europe -- all before the Christmas holidays. After that, he's going to South America.
Slash's Snakepit was originally formed in 1995, one year before Slash officially quit Guns 'n Roses. Aside from its eponymous headliner, however, none of the original members are left. In fact, the band dissolved for a while before Slash reformed it earlier this year to write and record Ain't Life Grand, which was released on Oct. 10.
So far, the album has been given a high rating of four and a half stars by the die-hard fans who've bought and reviewed it on Amazon.com. The Billboard top 100 albums chart, however, tells a different story, as Ain't Life Grand has so far failed to appear.
The music itself is the same hard driving guitar rock of the 80s glam era you'd expect from Slash. It has the same gritty edge he brought to G 'N R, only the tunes don't have the same way of working their way into your head and staying there. Instead, they just kind of rock right through you, then they're gone -- which is a good indicator of how they could really bring the house down in a live show. The only question is whether the staff at the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall will allow it.
War in the Taiwan Strait is currently a sexy topic, but it is not the only potential Chinese target. Taking the Russian Far East would alleviate or even solve a lot of China’s problems, including critical dependencies on fuel, key minerals, food, and most crucially, water. In a previous column (“Targeting Russian Asia,” Dec. 28, 2024, page 12) I noted that having following this topic for years, I consistently came to this conclusion: “It would simply be easier to buy what they need from the Russians, who also are nuclear-armed and useful partners in helping destabilize the American-led world order.
Last Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) detected 41 sorties of Chinese aircraft and nine navy vessels around Taiwan over a 24-hour period. “Thirty out of 41 sorties crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern ADIZ (air defense identification zones),” it reported. Local media noted that the exercises coincided with the annual Han Kuang military exercises in Taiwan. During the visit of then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022, the largest number of sorties was on Aug. 5, “involving a total of 47 fighter aircraft and two supporting reconnaissance/patrol aircraft.
July 7 to July 13 Even though the Japanese colonizers declared Taiwan “pacified” on Nov. 18, 1895, unrest was still brewing in Pingtung County. The Japanese had completed their march of conquest down the west coast of Taiwan, stamping out local resistance. But in their haste to conquer the Republic of Formosa’s last stronghold of Tainan, they largely ignored the highly-militarized Liudui (六堆, six garrisons) Hakka living by the foothills in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. They were organized as their name suggested, and commanders such as Chiu Feng-hsiang (邱鳳祥) and Chung Fa-chun (鍾發春) still wanted to fight. Clashes broke out in today’s
Xu Pengcheng looks over his shoulder and, after confirming the coast is clear, helps his crew of urban adventurers climb through the broken window of an abandoned building. Long popular in the West, urban exploration, or “urbex” for short, sees city-dwelling thrill-seekers explore dilapidated, closed-off buildings and areas — often skirting the law in the process. And it is growing in popularity in China, where a years-long property sector crisis has left many cities dotted with empty buildings. Xu, a 29-year-old tech worker from the eastern city of Qingdao, has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers for his photos of rundown schools and
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