The Islamic Cultural and Halal Food Festival may not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of festive year-end events in Taipei. But the open-air festival at Daan Forest Park promises to have something for the entire family.
This weekend, more than 70 vendors offering Islamic food, crafts and cultural experiences will set up shop along the park’s pathways. Visitors can try out Arabic calligraphy and henna and shop for wares drawn from around the Muslim world.
It will be a rare opportunity to catch many of Taiwan’s small, online businesses in the flesh: La Femme Dromadaire stocks lamps, figurines and burnous (Berber tunics) hand-made in Tunisia; Camel Hump Stay will bring Moroccan leather bags and shoes; and From Syria offers up delicate woven earrings and pouches made by female refugees from the war-torn country.
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
Visitors can also look forward to a picnic with freshly-served food and drink from a range of Indian, Turkish and Moroccan vendors. Some unusual treats to look out for include food from North Africa, intense brews from Saturn Landing Turkish Coffee and baklava from the Taiwan outpost of Zalatimo Sweets, a 159-year-old Jordanian sweetsmaker.
The festival is co-organized by the Chinese Muslim Association (中國回教協會) and Taipei City Government.
■ The Islamic Cultural and Halal Food Festival takes place tomorrow and Sunday, 10am to 5pm
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
■ Daan Forest Park (大安森林公園), 1, Xinsheng S Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市新生南路二段1號)
From the last quarter of 2001, research shows that real housing prices nearly tripled (before a 2012 law to enforce housing price registration, researchers tracked a few large real estate firms to estimate housing price behavior). Incomes have not kept pace, though this has not yet led to defaults. Instead, an increasing chunk of household income goes to mortgage payments. This suggests that even if incomes grow, the mortgage squeeze will still make voters feel like their paychecks won’t stretch to cover expenses. The housing price rises in the last two decades are now driving higher rents. The rental market
July 21 to July 27 If the “Taiwan Independence Association” (TIA) incident had happened four years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have caused much of an uproar. But the arrest of four young suspected independence activists in the early hours of May 9, 1991, sparked outrage, with many denouncing it as a return to the White Terror — a time when anyone could be detained for suspected seditious activity. Not only had martial law been lifted in 1987, just days earlier on May 1, the government had abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist
When life gives you trees, make paper. That was one of the first thoughts to cross my mind as I explored what’s now called Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park (中興文化創意園區, CHCCP) in Yilan County’s Wujie Township (五結). Northeast Taiwan boasts an abundance of forest resources. Yilan County is home to both Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area (太平山國家森林遊樂區) — by far the largest reserve of its kind in the country — and Makauy Ecological Park (馬告生態園區, see “Towering trees and a tranquil lake” in the May 13, 2022 edition of this newspaper). So it was inevitable that industrial-scale paper making would
Hualien lawmaker Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) is the prime target of the recall campaigns. They want to bring him and everything he represents crashing down. This is an existential test for Fu and a critical symbolic test for the campaigners. It is also a crucial test for both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a personal one for party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫). Why is Fu such a lightning rod? LOCAL LORD At the dawn of the 2020s, Fu, running as an independent candidate, beat incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and a KMT candidate to return to the legislature representing
RSS