The Taichung Jazz Festival is the latest casualty of COVID-19.
City officials announced the cancelation of this year’s festival, which typically attracts upwards of 1 million spectators over a 10-day period each October.
“It’s impossible this year,” said Hsiao Jing-ping (蕭靜萍), head of performing arts for the city’s Cultural Affairs Bureau. “We just didn’t have a choice.”
Photo courtesy of Taichung City Government
Difficulty getting overseas jazz musicians into the country coupled with concerns over large crowd size, forced organizers to cancel the festival, Hsiao said. The decision was made earlier this summer, she added.
The festival, which would have celebrated its 18th year, has grown into one of Asia’s largest. Last year’s event brought together more than 50 jazz groups performing throughout Taichung.
Hordes of spectators typically pack Civic Square (市民廣場主舞臺) to see local and international jazz groups, including Grammy and Golden Melody Award winning artists.
With the festival’s cancelation, organizers said they hoped others would help give local jazz musicians a venue to perform.
In order to further help promote jazz in the city, the city’s Cultural Affairs Bureau is cooperating with Compass Magazine, which hosts an annual weekend music festival.
This year’s Compass festival is set to take place in mid October. While jazz fans might be disappointed, Hsiao said she was optimistic that the Taichung Jazz Festival would return for 2021.
Water management is one of the most powerful forces shaping modern Taiwan’s landscapes and politics. Many of Taiwan’s township and county boundaries are defined by watersheds. The current course of the mighty Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) was largely established by Japanese embankment building during the 1918-1923 period. Taoyuan is dotted with ponds constructed by settlers from China during the Qing period. Countless local civic actions have been driven by opposition to water projects. Last week something like 2,600mm of rain fell on southern Taiwan in seven days, peaking at over 2,800mm in Duona (多納) in Kaohsiung’s Maolin District (茂林), according to
Aug. 11 to Aug. 17 Those who never heard of architect Hsiu Tse-lan (修澤蘭) must have seen her work — on the reverse of the NT$100 bill is the Yangmingshan Zhongshan Hall (陽明山中山樓). Then-president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) reportedly hand-picked her for the job and gave her just 13 months to complete it in time for the centennial of Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen’s birth on Nov. 12, 1966. Another landmark project is Garden City (花園新城) in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) — Taiwan’s first mountainside planned community, which Hsiu initiated in 1968. She was involved in every stage, from selecting
The latest edition of the Japan-Taiwan Fruit Festival took place in Kaohsiung on July 26 and 27. During the weekend, the dockside in front of the iconic Music Center was full of food stalls, and a stage welcomed performers. After the French-themed festival earlier in the summer, this is another example of Kaohsiung’s efforts to make the city more international. The event was originally initiated by the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association in 2022. The goal was “to commemorate [the association’s] 50th anniversary and further strengthen the longstanding friendship between Japan and Taiwan,” says Kaohsiung Director-General of International Affairs Chang Yen-ching (張硯卿). “The first two editions
It was Christmas Eve 2024 and 19-year-old Chloe Cheung was lying in bed at home in Leeds when she found out the Chinese authorities had put a bounty on her head. As she scrolled through Instagram looking at festive songs, a stream of messages from old school friends started coming into her phone. Look at the news, they told her. Media outlets across east Asia were reporting that Cheung, who had just finished her A-levels, had been declared a threat to national security by officials in Hong Kong. There was an offer of HK$1m (NT$3.81 million) to anyone who could assist
RSS