The taike (台客) brigade was out in force at last weekend's TK Rock Concert (2007台客搖滾嘉年華) in Taichung as local popsters, rappers and rockers vied for a piece of grassroots vogue. Despite intermittent showers, a crowd of around 30,000 bopped to Aboriginal diva A-mei (阿妹) who demonstrated a taike square dance (方塊舞), Bobby Chen (陳昇), who wore a boy-scout outfit and The Chairman (董事長樂團) who were accompanied by the divine dancing Eight Generals (八家將).
Hailed as taike ambassadors, foul-mouth rapper duo MC Hotdog and Chang Chen-yue (張震嶽) won rounds of applause with their obscene version of Chairman Chou's (周董) lyrics. Indie outfit Soda Green (蘇打綠) were on top form after having garnered seven nominations for this year's Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎), scheduled to take place next month.
Outside the main stage, poll-dancing girls fired up the dampened taike crowd with their exposed buttocks and tricks that included rubbing their mammalian protuberances on a male audience member's face. Not before long, the slightly X-rated show caught the attention of local police who issued a warning against the indecent public acts. The resourceful girls upped the ante with a three-way wrestling bout. A happy ending for everyone, except, perhaps, taimei feminists, if that's not an oxymoron, and taike gays.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Whereas the festival embraced a Taiwanese identity loudly and proudly, local girl outfit S.H.E and their record company HIM (華研唱片) were labeled turncoats by our sister paper Liberty Times (自由時報) as their new song Mandarin (中國話) lavishes praise on the Chinese. The company struck back by denying the paper's reporters access to the band's press conferences.
A media war soon broke out when the Apple Daily (蘋果日報) trumpeted its pro-Mandarin opinions while the Liberty Times circulated an online adaptation of the song called Taiwanese (台灣話).
Nationalism was the last thing on VIP shoppers' minds last Friday at the Breeze Center's (微風廣場) exclusive shop-till-you-drop evening that excludes ordinary members of the public. Thousands of honored clients and their platinum credit cards were invited. Starlets and models strutted through the mall and within six hours, NT$260 million had been spent. How the other half lives.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Chinese-language media have been speculating on the possibility of a rekindled romance between old flames Maggie Cheung (張曼玉) and her rumored former lover Tony Leung (梁朝偉) as the pair was spotted dinning together in Hong Kong last week. Obviously having dinner together, in the eyes of the Chinese-language media can never be an innocent affair. Returning to her hometown to attend a local bank's celebration feast as an honored guest, the star tried to dodge questions about the supposed love square between Leung, Carina Lau (劉嘉玲), Terry Gou (郭台銘) and Leung. She decided to play dumb when asked about the dinner date by reporters.
Nov. 11 to Nov. 17 People may call Taipei a “living hell for pedestrians,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were even discouraged from crossing major roads on foot. And there weren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals at busy intersections. A 1978 editorial in the China Times (中國時報) reflected the government’s car-centric attitude: “Pedestrians too often risk their lives to compete with vehicles over road use instead of using an overpass. If they get hit by a car, who can they blame?” Taipei’s car traffic was growing exponentially during the 1960s, and along with it the frequency of accidents. The policy
While Americans face the upcoming second Donald Trump presidency with bright optimism/existential dread in Taiwan there are also varying opinions on what the impact will be here. Regardless of what one thinks of Trump personally and his first administration, US-Taiwan relations blossomed. Relative to the previous Obama administration, arms sales rocketed from US$14 billion during Obama’s eight years to US$18 billion in four years under Trump. High-profile visits by administration officials, bipartisan Congressional delegations, more and higher-level government-to-government direct contacts were all increased under Trump, setting the stage and example for the Biden administration to follow. However, Trump administration secretary
In mid-1949 George Kennan, the famed geopolitical thinker and analyst, wrote a memorandum on US policy towards Taiwan and Penghu, then known as, respectively, Formosa and the Pescadores. In it he argued that Formosa and Pescadores would be lost to the Chine communists in a few years, or even months, because of the deteriorating situation on the islands, defeating the US goal of keeping them out of Communist Chinese hands. Kennan contended that “the only reasonably sure chance of denying Formosa and the Pescadores to the Communists” would be to remove the current Chinese administration, establish a neutral administration and
A “meta” detective series in which a struggling Asian waiter becomes the unlikely hero of a police procedural-style criminal conspiracy, Interior Chinatown satirizes Hollywood’s stereotypical treatment of minorities — while also nodding to the progress the industry has belatedly made. The new show, out on Disney-owned Hulu next Tuesday, is based on the critically adored novel by US author Charles Yu (游朝凱), who is of Taiwanese descent. Yu’s 2020 bestseller delivered a humorous takedown of racism in US society through the adventures of Willis Wu, a Hollywood extra reduced to playing roles like “Background Oriental Male” but who dreams of one day
RSS