Migration Music Festival
A fascinating mix of music groups from the four corners of the globe gave Da'an Forest Park an eclectic and festive atmosphere over two weekends in October. After last year, when the festival didn't take place, organizers went all out for a special series of shows complemented by well-attended seminars and workshops by the visiting musicians.
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Liang Shan-po and Chu Ying-tai (The Love Eterne)
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The craze for huang-mei musicals has not dimmed in the past 40 years, partly because of the classic movie The Love Eterne (
Wedding Memories
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With Wedding Memories (女兒紅), Hugh Lee (李國修) and the Ping Fong Acting Troupe managed to prove themselves wrong about the demise of Taiwanese drama. (Lee had even thought about closing up shop because of poor ticket sales.) To sell-out crowds, he presented his new show, which premiered on Nov. 3 this year and had audiences of all ages in tears and earned standing ovations from emotional crowds that must truly have warmed his heart. Wedding Memories follows in a line of semi-autobiographical works, in this case dealing with his family's relocation to Taiwan and his mother's nervous breakdown, all handled in a fine melodramatic tradition that touched a nerve among many Taiwanese. The work, which spans over two decades and switches between Shantung dialect, Mandarin, Taiwanese and Hakka, and deals with complex political and emotional issues, tries to encompass a uniquely Taiwanese experience and is a worthy successor to Beijing Opera: The Revelation.
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Tibetan Freedom Concert
Taiwan hosts some grand outdoor music festivals, but few concerts boast international names as big as the Beastie Boys. While their performance would have faired better in a smaller venue (minus a few thousand drunk and aggressive foreigners), an important cause, great sound quality and a highly charged atmosphere helped the occasion.
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Matsu Procession Festival
No event can unveil the genuine colors of Taiwan's religious culture better than the yearly procession of Matsu, a sea-goddess worshipped by fishermen, in central Taiwan. The event, which falls on the third month of the lunar calendar, lasts seven nights and eight days and goes from Dajia, Taichung County, to Hsingang, Chiayi County, covering a distance of more than 280km. To show their belief in the goddess, thousands of followers each year make the trip on foot and sleep in temples along the way to practice the virtue of thrift. Many residents on the procession route offer free drinks and food to the adherents to display their appreciation for the goddess' blessings.
National Symphony Orchestra: Tosca
The best show we saw in 2003 took place in the early hours of the year when Chien Wen-pin (
Cat Power gig at Taipei's Zeitgeist
The New York-based indi-rocker Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall) performed live in Taiwan for the first time, after establishing a small but avid fan base here with her 1998 album Moon Pix, a collection of poignant songs. After one hour of warm-up by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Sandy Chen (
Beneath the Red Banner
A dramatic work will occasionally gain importance for its place in history and occasionally for its exceptional literary value. Rarely will it be endowed with both. Beneath the Red Banner (
Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival in Taipei County
What a great idea: music, sun, sea and sand at a location conveniently close to Taipei. The Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival proved to be a big hit with little trouble and plenty to be happy about. One of the best things about the event -- apart from the perfect weather -- was the number of families that took part. Children played, adults watched and teens danced all day long. The main event for domestic bands was the Taiwan Indie Music Award, with NT$200,000 up for grabs, which was won by XL. One of the highlights of the show was a performance of the traditional Eight Generals, with Huang Yi-chin (黃一晉) of downtempo group 78Bpm, drum n' bass by DJ Ty and hip hop by DJ J4. On the Sunday, Magic Tribe, an Atayal Aboriginal rock band from Wulai, Taipei County, Junk Band from Hong Kong and Macau, and finally Jaurim and the Perishers, from Sweden, hit the stage. The outstanding performance, however, came from local stars Sticky Rice, who pretty much capped off a great weekend.
The Wedding Banquet
A combination of memorable performances by Welly Yang, Dina Lynne Morishita and Tyley Ross, a catchy score by Woody Pak and Jim Noone's creative and slick set design that made insightful use of projections saw John Tillinger's musical production of Ang Lee's (
Taiwanese chip-making giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) plans to invest a whopping US$100 billion in the US, after US President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on overseas-made chips. TSMC is the world’s biggest maker of the critical technology that has become the lifeblood of the global economy. This week’s announcement takes the total amount TSMC has pledged to invest in the US to US$165 billion, which the company says is the “largest single foreign direct investment in US history.” It follows Trump’s accusations that Taiwan stole the US chip industry and his threats to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent
From censoring “poisonous books” to banning “poisonous languages,” the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) tried hard to stamp out anything that might conflict with its agenda during its almost 40 years of martial law. To mark 228 Peace Memorial Day, which commemorates the anti-government uprising in 1947, which was violently suppressed, I visited two exhibitions detailing censorship in Taiwan: “Silenced Pages” (禁書時代) at the National 228 Memorial Museum and “Mandarin Monopoly?!” (請說國語) at the National Human Rights Museum. In both cases, the authorities framed their targets as “evils that would threaten social mores, national stability and their anti-communist cause, justifying their actions
In the run-up to World War II, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Abwehr, Nazi Germany’s military intelligence service, began to fear that Hitler would launch a war Germany could not win. Deeply disappointed by the sell-out of the Munich Agreement in 1938, Canaris conducted several clandestine operations that were aimed at getting the UK to wake up, invest in defense and actively support the nations Hitler planned to invade. For example, the “Dutch war scare” of January 1939 saw fake intelligence leaked to the British that suggested that Germany was planning to invade the Netherlands in February and acquire airfields
The launch of DeepSeek-R1 AI by Hangzhou-based High-Flyer and subsequent impact reveals a lot about the state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today, both good and bad. It touches on the state of Chinese technology, innovation, intellectual property theft, sanctions busting smuggling, propaganda, geopolitics and as with everything in China, the power politics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). PLEASING XI JINPING DeepSeek’s creation is almost certainly no accident. In 2015 CCP Secretary General Xi Jinping (習近平) launched his Made in China 2025 program intended to move China away from low-end manufacturing into an innovative technological powerhouse, with Artificial Intelligence
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