The endless and alternately lurid and fawning coverage of the suicide of comedian Ni Min-jan (
Before the memorial, on Wednesday, Ni's clique, now expanded to include all the new hangers-on, was on hand to record a heart-rending paeon to the man himself. It looked a bit like a Taiwanese version of LiveAid, except instead of raising money for impoverished, dying children in Africa, the benefactor in this case was to be Ni's surviving family members who could be seen wiping tears from behind their designer sunglasses all week. The whole affair was touching evidence that in Taiwan's clan-like, hyper-exclusive entertainment circles, people will certainly look after their own.
Having outdone even the pope in garnering saturation media coverage of the funerary buildup in Taiwan, Ni's death triggered worries among "experts" that the sustained cluster wail over the past week would tip fragile souls pondering the great leap to take that final step. If anyone wanted to commit a copy-cat suicide, however, they'll need to find another tree, as locals in Ilan County cut down the tree from which Ni hanged himself.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
The Chinese diaspora's ultimate vixen Bai Ling (
In Hong Kong, Leon Lai (
In more cinema news, Asian films are making a strong showing at the Cannes Film Festival this year with five taking part in the festival's competition section. Hou Hsiao-hsien's (侯孝賢) The Best of Our Times (最好的時光), Wang Xiaoshuai's (王小帥) Shanghai Dreams (青紅) and Johnnie To's (杜琪峰) Election (黑社會) represent Chinese-speaking cinema, while Kobayash Masahiro's Bashing and Hong Sangsoo's Tale of Cinema round out the Asian competitors. Last year, Wong Kar Wai's (王家衛) 2046 stirred up a lot of and anticipation, but the buzz this year is tending more toward American Jim Jarmusch and his Broken Flowers.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
PHOTO: AP
On Facebook a friend posted a dashcam video of a vehicle driving through the ash-colored wasteland of what was once Taroko Gorge. A crane appears in the video, and suddenly it becomes clear: the video is in color, not black and white. The magnitude 7.2 earthquake’s destruction on April 3 around and above Taroko and its reverberations across an area heavily dependent on tourism have largely vanished from the international press discussions as the news cycle moves on, but local residents still live with its consequences every day. For example, with the damage to the road corridors between Yilan and
May 13 to May 19 While Taiwanese were eligible to take the Qing Dynasty imperial exams starting from 1686, it took more than a century for a locally-registered scholar to pass the highest levels and become a jinshi (進士). In 1823, Hsinchu City resident Cheng Yung-hsi (鄭用錫) traveled to Beijing and accomplished the feat, returning home in great glory. There were technically three Taiwan residents who did it before Cheng, but two were born in China and remained registered in their birthplaces, while historians generally discount the third as he changed his residency back to Fujian Province right after the exams.
With William Lai’s (賴清德) presidential inauguration coming up on May 20, both sides of the Taiwan Strait have been signaling each other, possibly about re-opening lines of communication. For that to happen, there are two ways this could happen, one very difficult to achieve and the other dangerous. During his presidential campaign and since Lai has repeatedly expressed his hope to re-establish communication based on equality and mutual respect, and even said he hoped to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) over beef noodles and bubble tea. More dramatically, as explored in the May 2 edition of this column,
Tiffany Chang (張芳瑜) is a force to be reckoned with. Crowned Miss Taiwanese American in 2022, she made history last year as the first Taiwanese winner of Miss Asia USA. She’s also a STEM student at Stanford and an aspiring philanthropist — the kind of impressive accolades that has earned her the moniker “light of Taiwan.” At the end of March, Chang returned to Taipei, to “see the people that support me because ultimately that’s what made me win.” She says her Taiwanese supporters shower her with praise: “you inspire us, and you make us feel proud of our Taiwanese heritage,”