VIEW THIS PAGE Generations of KTV crooners and TV talent show aspirants have tried their hands at renditions of New Endless Love (新不了情). But no one sings it better than the song’s original interpreter, Wan Fang (萬芳), who tonight embarks on a tour of Taiwan. “Composer Chris Bao (鮑比達) wrote the song as a tribute to his recently deceased father. The lyricist went through a low phase before he wrote the lyrics. I went through a low phase too before I was chosen to sing this song,” Wan Fang said in an interview earlier this week. “This song is the accumulation of a lot of tears. That might explain why it has such power to move people.” After building a successful singing career, Wan Fang turned her back on music eight years ago and took up acting, earning two Golden Bell Awards, and much acclaim for her 2007 one-woman musical drama Wan Fang’s Solo in My Room (萬芳的房間劇場), in the process. Wan Fang, who has 15 albums under her belt and turns 43 on Tuesday, returned to music last week with the release of Let’s Not Grieve Anymore (我們不傷心了), her first full-length studio album since 2002. “It wasn’t intentional that I took such a long hiatus. I simply fell into acting and ended up spending a lot of time there,” Wan Fang said. The album, a folksy opus for which Wan Fang co-wrote five tracks, explores emotions. The singer learns to accept death as a necessary fact of life (in the title track Let’s Not Grieve Anymore), comes to terms with depression (in Seeing Happiness Smiling at Me (看見快樂對我笑)), and makes peace with her own vulnerability (in Not Always That Brave (我們不是永遠都那麼勇敢)). In Solitude (孤單), the album’s only love song, she puts a 10-year-long relationship behind her and embraces the sobriety of solitude. “Some of these songs are simply the accumulation of life,” she said. “I wrote the sentences ‘I see happiness smiling at me’ and ‘we are not always that brave’ a few years back. Then I expanded the sentences into full lyrics and made this album.” Tonight, Wan Fang kicks off her Let’s Not Grieve Anymore Wandering Concert (我們不要傷心了散漫音樂會) tour at Riverside Live House in Taipei, and over the next two weeks has dates in Kaohsiung, Taitung, Hualien and Taichung. Backed by Smile Bus Band (微笑巴士樂團), she will perform songs from her new album, classic hits and covers. Stadium concerts are scheduled for Oct. 30 and Oct. 31 at the Taipei International Convention Center. VIEW THIS PAGE 
For your information
PERFORMANCE NOTES
WHAT: Wan Fang, Let’s Not Grieve Anymore Wandering Concert (萬芳「我們不要傷心了散漫音樂會」)
WHEN: Tonight at 9pm
WHERE: Riverside Live House (西門紅樓展演館), 177 Xining S Rd, Taipei City (台北市西寧南路177號)
ADMISSION: NT$500 in advance or NT$600 at the door, call (02) 2368-7310 or visit www.riverside.com.tw
DETAILS: For information on Wan Fang’s Kaohsiung, Taitung, Hualien and Taichung concerts, visit one-fang.com/livehouse.htm
WHAT: Wan Fang, The Nights You Didn’t Know (萬芳「你所不知道的那些夜晚」)
WHEN: Oct. 30 and Oct. 31
WHERE:Taipei International Convention Center (台北國際會議中心大會堂), 1, Xinyi Rd Sec 5, Taipei City (台北市信義路五段1號)
ADMISSION: To be announced. Tickets go on sale on Thursday through ERA ticketing at www.ticket.com.tw
ON THE NET: wanfang2008.pixnet.net/blog, www.one-fang.com
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
“Taiwan’s Opposition Leader Comes to US With a Message Straight Out of Beijing” read a May 31 headline in the Wall Street Journal. Top US administration officials and members of Congress almost certainly read the WSJ, and if there was a bullet point takeaway that people in Washington should absorb ahead of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) arrival in DC on June 9, that headline is it. The last few columns have discussed this very topic, and the timing is not coincidental. While those top officials likely do not read the Taipei Times, judging by the number
As someone who normally steers clear of books with “transcendence” or “metaphysics” in their subtitles, this reviewer — a casual observer of local belief systems since the 1990s — found Fabian Graham’s Money God Temples in Taiwan a challenging read. Those who’ve only dipped their toes into temple culture will likely need to parse several sections with special care if they’re to keep up with the author, a British ethnographic researcher whose previous books have investigated religious practices among ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. This scholarly volume examines a facet of Taiwan’s religious landscape that didn’t exist a century ago, and
RSS