It's official, spring is here. The Vernal Equinox which fell on Monday opened a new season of vinyl mayhem in Taiwan, and although dance music may be losing some of its former ebullience, this spring's lineup is the strongest yet.
Spring Scream, now in its 12th year, spawned many electronic off shoots. Pure Music festival (
New kid on the block Creamy had a grand opening on March 10. The club with two rooms rides the waves of both hip hop and dance music. Open every Friday, Creamy can be found at B1, 8, Keelung Rd, Sec 1 (
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
Down in Taichung, Bobo has suspended operations over problems with its license.
A post on the Revevolution Web site forum says there is a "mystery narc [who] has now struck over five times, reporting some of the best venues and parties in town to the police."
After coming under scrutiny from the boys in blue, last Friday's Swank party was moved to Liquid. Still, the cops turned up at 3am and turfed everyone out of the venue.
"Somebody has reported parties by MalFunktion, Chifunk and Swank to the police. It started last year," Ant of Chifunk said. "The police have told us they receive anonymous calls on Thursdays before big parties."
Could this be a worried parent, zealous citizen or ... ?
"We're pretty sure [we know] who is calling the police. We think it's a competitor: Who else would it be? Not many of the parties have licenses, so it's pretty easy for the cops to come in and do what they want," Ant said.
In Taipei the nightlife scene has matured with big name DJs and big, legal clubs: Outside of the capital the environment for dance music events is less refined.
"In Taipei the dance music scene has become more legitimized and has respectability," Saucey said. "There's more acceptance of parties, it's a viable business, big money."
The competition over punters in Taichung is fierce as organizers are trying to put on "big parties without big crowds," Ant said.
This weekend there's a lot to keep the police busy with, but organizers are being careful with licensing and are keen not to scare away partygoers.
Tonight in Taichung, the MalFunktion and Junkie Beats Crew plus the Dive Cafe are throwing a Beat Sessions 2 at Trendy with Marcus Aurelius, Vdub, Subtle, Zeon, Funkstar, Chin, and FatDirty.
Tomorrow, at the Wish Dance Club in Chiayi, an eclectic mix of house, electro, hip hop, and reggae is being rolled out for punters at the Go2Chaiyi bash. Declan, D'Jones, Matty D, Kriz, Gavin Chen, Vdub and LazyDaze are laying on the tunes at Wish, which is a licensed two-room dance club with indoor and outdoor swimming pools.
Chifunk is going Live and Wired tomorrow night at the Grooveyard with three turntable DJ sets, scratches, samples and experimental live jams.
Back in the capital, the United Nations of Funk is taking over Deluxe bar tomorrow. Jr and Megan, Saucey and Coffey will join K Fancy and Junior Van den Berg, who are bowing out gracefully and heading overseas, on the wheels of steel.
The recent decline in average room rates is undoubtedly bad news for Taiwan’s hoteliers and homestay operators, but this downturn shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. According to statistics published by the Tourism Administration (TA) on March 3, the average cost of a one-night stay in a hotel last year was NT$2,960, down 1.17 percent compared to 2023. (At more than three quarters of Taiwan’s hotels, the average room rate is even lower, because high-end properties charging NT$10,000-plus skew the data.) Homestay guests paid an average of NT$2,405, a 4.15-percent drop year on year. The countrywide hotel occupancy rate fell from
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
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