For those who are interested in East-meets-West stories, this is one of the more amusing films of the year. But following on the success of Oscar-winner Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (
In this contemporary comedy, Donald Sutherland plays world-famous director Don Tyler who has always been fond of Chinese culture. In the fantastic Forbidden City of Beijing, Tyler is surrounded by hundreds of costumed extras, trying to make a mega-budget re-make of The Last Emperor. He suffers such a creative block on the film set that he hardly knows where to place the camera.
Yo Yo is a cynical Chinese cameraman with who was hired by Asian-born, Western-educated Lucy, Tyler's personal assistant, to shoot footage for Tyler. Yo's unlikely friendship with Tyler helps relieve the depression Tyler feels over his creative block, but not for long. Tyler falls in a coma and his last wish is that Yo Yo throw him a wacky "comedy funeral."
PHOTO COURTESY OF BUENA VISTA
The story takes a rollercoaster ride through satire and absurdity as Yo Yo turns to best friend King, who has grand business ambitions but poor taste, to help him organize the funeral. As King intends to make the funeral a world-wide televised extravaganza, the costs become uncontrollable and the only thing Yo Yo and King can do is open bids to place advertisements in the funeral. An Italian brand of furniture supplies the bed for Tyler to lay on and Cozy Cola, Obituary Bird and other of Tyler's "close friends" take part as well. But in the midst of the unbridled craze for commercial placement, Tyler wakes up.
Director Feng excels at satirizing two things, the stereotyped Chinese fantasy and the entrepreneurial zeal which has begun sweeping through China. To make these two aspects work, Feng uses non-stop jokes and self-mockery during the advertising auction, focusing on China's rampant piracy problem and the mixed feelings towards Asian Americans. Ge You and Ying Da do a good job at making the most of these jokes.
Ying Da represents the upstart businessman with nothing but self-boasting and tackiness. And Ge You represents the jobless Beijing dweller suddenly disoriented by the wave of Westernization.
Strictly speaking, the plot transitions are not quite coherent and the ending is too predictable. But this hasn't stopped Big Shot's Funeral from becoming the best-selling local-made film ever in China, with box office receipts over 35 million renminbi (US$4.2 million), a number any Taiwanese director would envy.
Whether or not the film can cross over to Western audiences remains to be seen. Although the script has a Western context and there is the huge talent of Donald Sutherland, many of the jokes are delivered in Mandarin. The Mandarin voice and expressions of the actors are part of the comedy, making it is hard for non-Chinese viewers to appreciate. Some of the jokes are even based on Chinese word play and cannot be translated. The film's foreign distributors have their work cut out for them.
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
For many people, Bilingual Nation 2030 begins and ends in the classroom. Since the policy was launched in 2018, the debate has centered on students, teachers and the pressure placed on schools. Yet the policy was never solely about English education. The government’s official plan also calls for bilingualization in Taiwan’s government services, laws and regulations, and living environment. The goal is to make Taiwan more inclusive and accessible to international enterprises and talent and better prepared for global economic and trade conditions. After eight years, that grand vision is due for a pulse check. RULES THAT CAN BE READ For Harper Chen (陳虹宇), an adviser
Traditionally, indigenous people in Taiwan’s mountains practice swidden cultivation, or “slash and burn” agriculture, a practice common in human history. According to a 2016 research article in the International Journal of Environmental Sustainability, among the Atayal people, this began with a search for suitable forested slopeland. The trees are burnt for fertilizer and the land cleared of stones. The stones and wood are then piled up to make fences, while both dead and standing trees are retained on the plot. The fences are used to grow climbing crops like squash and beans. The plot itself supports farming for three years.
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