Lady Gaga, the American reigning pop diva who has conquered with world with infectious electronica anthems such as Bad Romance and her provocative fashion sense, will visit Taiwan for the first time on a five-day promotional junket. Gaga, whose second album, Born This Way, topped the charts worldwide last month, will greet Taiwanese fans in a free album premier session with performances of her new songs in Taichung on July 3. Gaga will also attend the Mercedes-Benz Born This Way creative costume competition and pick out the winner on the afternoon of July 3 in Taichung. In tribute to Gaga’s visit, Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) will name July 3 Taichung’s “Lady Gaga Day.” The pop queen has sold 15 million albums and 51 singles globally.
■ Lady Gaga Taiwan album premier session, Taichung City Fulfillment Amphitheatre (台中市文心圓滿戶外劇場), 289, Wensin Rd Sec 1, Greater Taichung (台中市南屯區文心路一段289號)
■ July 3. As of press time, the organizer had yet to announce times for the events
Photo: AFP
■ Tickets are free for those who have purchased the Born This Way album. Entry is limited to 4,000 people. Exchange details to be announced
on Thursday next week
■ On the Net: www.umusic.com.
Feb. 9 to Feb.15 Growing up in the 1980s, Pan Wen-li (潘文立) was repeatedly told in elementary school that his family could not have originated in Taipei. At the time, there was a lack of understanding of Pingpu (plains Indigenous) peoples, who had mostly assimilated to Han-Taiwanese society and had no official recognition. Students were required to list their ancestral homes then, and when Pan wrote “Taipei,” his teacher rejected it as impossible. His father, an elder of the Ketagalan-founded Independence Presbyterian Church in Xinbeitou (自立長老會新北投教會), insisted that their family had always lived in the area. But under postwar
In 2012, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) heroically seized residences belonging to the family of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “purchased with the proceeds of alleged bribes,” the DOJ announcement said. “Alleged” was enough. Strangely, the DOJ remains unmoved by the any of the extensive illegality of the two Leninist authoritarian parties that held power in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. If only Chen had run a one-party state that imprisoned, tortured and murdered its opponents, his property would have been completely safe from DOJ action. I must also note two things in the interests of completeness.
Taiwan is especially vulnerable to climate change. The surrounding seas are rising at twice the global rate, extreme heat is becoming a serious problem in the country’s cities, and typhoons are growing less frequent (resulting in droughts) but more destructive. Yet young Taiwanese, according to interviewees who often discuss such issues with this demographic, seldom show signs of climate anxiety, despite their teachers being convinced that humanity has a great deal to worry about. Climate anxiety or eco-anxiety isn’t a psychological disorder recognized by diagnostic manuals, but that doesn’t make it any less real to those who have a chronic and
When Bilahari Kausikan defines Singapore as a small country “whose ability to influence events outside its borders is always limited but never completely non-existent,” we wish we could say the same about Taiwan. In a little book called The Myth of the Asian Century, he demolishes a number of preconceived ideas that shackle Taiwan’s self-confidence in its own agency. Kausikan worked for almost 40 years at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reaching the position of permanent secretary: saying that he knows what he is talking about is an understatement. He was in charge of foreign affairs in a pivotal place in
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