The summer rock season in East Asia has arrived, with a handful of big-name artists rolling into Taiwan this week.
Massive Attack and Pet Shop Boys are the headliners at the TWinkle Rock Festival (有象音樂祭), a four-day concert series that begins tomorrow night at Legacy Taipei with psychedelic Brit-pop band Kula Shaker. Appearing on Friday is former Stone Roses front man Ian Brown.
TWinkle, so named by organizers as a reference to both the common abbreviation for Taiwan (TW) and the star power of its lineup, is the latest attempt to establish an annual concert mecca for the nation’s music lovers.
Since the demise of the Formoz Festival (野台開唱) in 2008, Taiwan has lacked a steady festival to take advantage of the proximity of major Western artists traveling to Japan for Fuji Rock and Summer Sonic. Last year’s Music Terminals, which played host to trip-hop legend Tricky and UK glam-rockers Placebo among other indie artists from the US, Australia and the UK, is not being held this year.
One difficulty often cited by promoters and organizers in putting on a festival is the cost involved — they say the market for large-scale rock events in Taiwan has not yet matured. Formoz, which over the years has hosted a variety of crowd-drawing artists such as Megadeth, Yo La Tengo and Moby, had struggled with complaints about the ticket prices, which were NT$1,600 per day in its final year.
TWinkle’s promoter, Very Aspect Culture Group (有象文化), acknowledges the challenge of filling seats, and has taken a different approach by hosting large-scale concerts with fewer artists.
Tickets won’t be any cheaper, though. Massive Attack and Pet Shop Boys’ concerts each cost NT$2,000 for the lowest-priced seating areas and up to NT$5,000 closer to the stage.
But concertgoers will be getting value for their money, insists Fu-Fu Hsu (許維城), who runs Very Aspect. He says both Massive Attack and Pet Shop Boys will be bringing their full stage shows to the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall (台北世界貿易中心南港展覽館).
Hsu is well aware of the “narrow” tastes among Taiwanese when it comes to arena pop concerts. As a veteran promoter, the 40-year-old has organized shows by megastars such as Ricky Martin, Kenny G and South Korean singer Rain.
But he says Taiwan is ready for more “cool” concerts by “interesting” artists — another reason his company is putting on TWinkle.
With the Massive Attack and Pet Shop Boys’ shows, Hsu says he wants to show Taiwanese audiences that a stadium concert can be both entertaining and thought provoking.
He points to Massive Attack’s onstage LED signboards that flash political messages across their huge screens (which will be translated into Chinese for the group’s show on Wednesday), and Pet Shop Boys’ elaborate and artful stage design and production, which almost takes on Broadway proportions.
Even though Hsu looks like the typical rock promoter — he wears his long hair in a ponytail, dons flip-flops at the office and chain-smokes — he says he has spent much of his life working behind the scenes at theater and fine arts performances with his family’s agency, New Aspect (新象, Very Aspect’s parent company). The company has brought to Taiwan A-list performers such as cellist Mstislav Rostopovich, French actor and mime master Marcel Marceau and opera tenors Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras.
One New Aspect concert that left a deep impression on Hsu was a performance by Ravi Shankar in Taipei in the 1980s.
“Basically, a great concert will change your life,” said Hsu. He’s hoping that for some concertgoers this week, TWinkle’s program of artists will do just that.
The Lee (李) family migrated to Taiwan in trickles many decades ago. Born in Myanmar, they are ethnically Chinese and their first language is Yunnanese, from China’s Yunnan Province. Today, they run a cozy little restaurant in Taipei’s student stomping ground, near National Taiwan University (NTU), serving up a daily pre-selected menu that pays homage to their blended Yunnan-Burmese heritage, where lemongrass and curry leaves sit beside century egg and pickled woodear mushrooms. Wu Yun (巫雲) is more akin to a family home that has set up tables and chairs and welcomed strangers to cozy up and share a meal
Dec. 8 to Dec. 14 Chang-Lee Te-ho (張李德和) had her father’s words etched into stone as her personal motto: “Even as a woman, you should master at least one art.” She went on to excel in seven — classical poetry, lyrical poetry, calligraphy, painting, music, chess and embroidery — and was also a respected educator, charity organizer and provincial assemblywoman. Among her many monikers was “Poetry Mother” (詩媽). While her father Lee Chao-yuan’s (李昭元) phrasing reflected the social norms of the 1890s, it was relatively progressive for the time. He personally taught Chang-Lee the Chinese classics until she entered public
Last week writer Wei Lingling (魏玲靈) unloaded a remarkably conventional pro-China column in the Wall Street Journal (“From Bush’s Rebuke to Trump’s Whisper: Navigating a Geopolitical Flashpoint,” Dec 2, 2025). Wei alleged that in a phone call, US President Donald Trump advised Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi not to provoke the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over Taiwan. Wei’s claim was categorically denied by Japanese government sources. Trump’s call to Takaichi, Wei said, was just like the moment in 2003 when former US president George Bush stood next to former Chinese premier Wen Jia-bao (溫家寶) and criticized former president Chen
President William Lai (賴清德) has proposed a NT$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion) special eight-year budget that intends to bolster Taiwan’s national defense, with a “T-Dome” plan to create “an unassailable Taiwan, safeguarded by innovation and technology” as its centerpiece. This is an interesting test for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and how they handle it will likely provide some answers as to where the party currently stands. Naturally, the Lai administration and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are for it, as are the Americans. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not. The interests and agendas of those three are clear, but
RSS