A group of puppeteers in Yunlin County is using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to help bring their traditional art form into the modern era and keep it relevant to new generations.
NFTs are cryptoassets representing a digital item such as an image, video or virtual object, with prices of some rising so fast last year that speculators around the world sometimes “flipped” them within days for profit.
Pili International Multimedia, whose puppet show produced in Yunlin is Taiwan’s longest-running TV program, says it is starting to use NFTs as a new source of revenue.
Photo: Ann Wang, REUTERS
“The sort of imagination everyone nowadays has for the online world is developing so fast that we are almost unable to grasp it,” Pili brand director Seika Huang (黃政嘉) said.
“Instead of sitting on the sidelines, the best approach is to go ahead and understand fully what’s going on. This is the fastest way to catch up,” she said.
Pili has thousands of glove puppet characters, a traditional part of Taiwanese street entertainment culture that spins colorful and highly stylized stories of heroic courage and romance, often with martial arts.
The puppets are painstakingly created and expertly maneuvered during the filming of the shows, with costumes that are sewn on and strands of hair meticulously put in place.
Pili said that four of its puppet characters were made into digital versions, and 30,000 sets have been sold as NFTs.
The company declined to reveal its NFT profit on the market platform, but said prices for each set started at US$40, translating to generated revenue of at least US$1.2 million since listing in early February.
The stories of the puppet heroes resonate with young audiences and could draw in foreign fans of superhero films, such as those based on characters from the Marvel cinematic universe, said marketing technology company VeVe, which is in charge of selling the NFTs.
“Westerners actually really like our martial arts heroes and kung fu,” VeVe brand manager Raymond Chou (周銘志) said.
Huang, who said that the company’s initial listings sold out seconds after launching on VeVe, is working on transforming up to 50 other puppet characters into NFTs, potentially adding another million-dollar revenue stream for the studio.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS