From a final resting place for the dead to a gnarly way to land a trick; a Thai coffin-maker is affixing Buddhist emblems to the dismantled walls of his caskets, and transforming them into skateboards.
As the popularity of board sports exploded in Thailand, and the price of a skateboard skyrocketed, Anusorn Yungyearn decided to breathe new life into some of the wooden caskets he had lying around his Bangkok workshop.
“I want to give the kids who don’t really have much chance in life an opportunity to skate,” said the 30-year-old.
Photo: AFP
“I also don’t want them to ask their parents to buy one for them since the cost of it is really high.”
In the past year hordes of young Thais have taken up skateboarding and surf-skating — likely a consequence of most social spaces like bars and gyms being closed for months at a time because of pandemic restrictions.
Today, bands of young skaters can be seen cruising through Bangkok’s historic quarter and its universities’ open spaces.
Photo: AFP
Anusorn’s warehouse has coffins with brocade designs, golden lattice work and even holographic stick-ons. But for his boards, he has decided to keep it comparatively simple — gleaming white with golden trimming on the bottom.
“The procedure of making these boards is almost exactly like making the coffins,” he said, adding that he sticks a signature twist to the boards.
“We put the Thai angel emblem and the Thai traditional border on the board’s edge.” The first 10 he flips from coffins to skateboards will be donated to lower-income families — though he admitted getting them right will be tough.
Photo: AFP
“Some kids have never ever heard of a skateboard before so we want to make these casket skateboards as close to the real boards as possible.
“That way they could play and smile a little bit from all the fun.”
JUNE 30 to JULY 6 After being routed by the Japanese in the bloody battle of Baguashan (八卦山), Hsu Hsiang (徐驤) and a handful of surviving Hakka fighters sped toward Tainan. There, he would meet with Liu Yung-fu (劉永福), leader of the Black Flag Army who had assumed control of the resisting Republic of Formosa after its president and vice-president fled to China. Hsu, who had been fighting non-stop for over two months from Taoyuan to Changhua, was reportedly injured and exhausted. As the story goes, Liu advised that Hsu take shelter in China to recover and regroup, but Hsu steadfastly
Taiwan’s politics is mystifying to many foreign observers. Gosh, that is strange, considering just how logical and straightforward it all is. Let us take a step back and review. Thanks to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), starting this year people will once again have Christmas Day off work. In 2002, the Scrooges in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said “bah, humbug” to that. The holiday is not actually Christmas, but rather Constitution Day, celebrating the enactment of the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC) on December 25, 1947. The DPP and the then pan-blue dominated legislature
Focus Taiwan reported last week that government figures showed unemployment in Taiwan is at historic lows: “The local unemployment rate fell 0.02 percentage points from a month earlier to 3.30 percent in May, the lowest level for the month in 25 years.” Historical lows in joblessness occurred earlier this year as well. The context? Labor shortages. The National Development Council (NDC) expects that Taiwan will be short 400,000 workers by 2030, now just five years away. The depth of the labor crisis is masked by the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers which the economy absolutely depends on, and the
If you’ve lately been feeling that the “Jurassic Park” franchise has jumped an even more ancient creature — the shark — hold off any thoughts of extinction. Judging from the latest entry, there’s still life in this old dino series. Jurassic World Rebirth captures the awe and majesty of the overgrown lizards that’s been lacking for so many of the movies, which became just an endless cat-and-mouse in the dark between scared humans against T-Rexes or raptors. Jurassic World Rebirth lets in the daylight. Credit goes to screenwriter David Koepp, who penned the original Jurassic Park, and director Gareth Edwards, who knows
RSS