In his tracksuit, silver chain and sparkling trainers, MC Tenzin would look like any other rapper if not for the backdrop of towering Himalayan peaks in his videos and rhyme-dropping about karma. The self-described “Godfather” of Tibetan rap is a leading light of the region’s hip-hop scene, where tight social constraints are at odds with the in-your-face art form. Tibetan rappers walk a tightrope unfamiliar to their peers overseas, with some cautiously exploring local pride and Buddhist identity in coded lyrics to avoid the unwanted attention of Chinese authorities. Most, however — MC Tenzin included — give politics a wide berth to be able to continue creating their music. “I am a little bit different (from Western rappers). I do my best to create a positive experience,” says the 36-year-old, whose real name is Tenzin Dhondup. He discovered hip-hop listening to American giants like Eminem and 50 Cent in his home village of Pasum near the foot of Mount Everest, connecting so much with the music that it felt like “home.” “I listened to them so much sometimes my ears hurt,” he said during an interview at a bar in the Tibetan capital Lhasa’s nightlife district. TIBETAN IDENTITY In the decade since, a home-grown Tibetan scene has emerged, with Tenzin among the early pioneers. Chinese hip-hop got a huge boost with the 2017 launch of the wildly popular TV talent contest The Rap of China, which helped bring the genre into the mainstream, and Tibetan fans say the lyrical flow of Buddhist chants fits rap’s rhythms. Some younger rappers with Tibetan roots are nudging boundaries by expressing cultural pride, “challenging the stereotype of underdeveloped Tibetans [and] advocating for inter-ethnic equality,” according to one researcher’s 2019 study at Georgetown University, based on interviews with dozens of Tibetan musicians. Tibet has alternated over the centuries between independence and control by China, which says
The obsessiveness — the downright creepiness — of the collector is amusingly skewered in this memoir of rueful self-absorption. In the 1980s, long before selfies, autographs were the accepted means of stealing a celebrity’s soul and hunters seldom came more tenacious than young Adam Andrusier. A nice Jewish boy from Pinner, he first catches the scent of his habit on learning that his best friend’s neighbor is actor Ronnie Barker. Knocking at his door, they are answered by a lady who turns them away, though Adam spots the man himself in the hallway before the door closes: “He didn’t look famous at all.” He has better luck when, on holiday in France, he spots Big Daddy in the hotel swimming pool; after careful stalking, he nabs his prey with paper and pen: who cares if the wrestler’s real name is Shirley Crabtree? “I’d managed to puncture a hole between our universe and the parallel one where all the celebrities lived.” From that moment, there’s no stopping him. In a way he was born to it. His father, Adrian, sold life insurance, but his passions were collecting books on the Holocaust and rare postcards of lost synagogues. He takes Adam to his first ever dealers’ fair, where a jaded old pro tells the boy that most of his present collection is “secretarial,” ie, not signed by the stars themselves. A hard lesson for the fledgling collector, but he learns from it and by the time he’s trading autographs professionally he has an eye for spotting fakes (“if the writing was too slow, if it looked flat or lifeless”). The strange and elusive world of collecting is the engine of Two Hitlers and a Marilyn, but its mystery plot is going on elsewhere and revolves around the figure of the author’s father. A strong
Buses are an unloved yet essential part of the transportation mix. Even in cities with well-developed metro systems, there are numerous places where taking a bus is the only alternative to using a private vehicle, walking or hailing a taxi. The London Underground serves 270 stations, yet bus ridership in the UK capital exceeds metro ridership by over 50 percent. If Taiwan is going to significantly reduce its dependence on cars and motorcycles — which it should try very hard to do, so as to reduce carbon emissions, air pollution, congestion and road accidents — buses will be the largest part of the solution. According to 2019 figures from the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the carbon footprint per kilometer of a person traveling in a gasoline-burning car is almost double that of a bus passenger. Other sources suggest the environmental advantage of buses is much greater. Electric buses are also more energy efficient than electric or hybrid cars. Like people throughout the richer part of the world, Taiwanese aren’t willing to cycle or walk significant distances to get to work. MRT (mass rapid transit) or LRT (light rail transit) systems offer speedy journeys, but along narrow corridors and at great expense. What’s more, completion often comes years behind schedule. To be fair, bus services in some parts of Taiwan are better now than they were a decade or more ago. In Tainan, where public transportation has long lagged behind other major cities, expanding bus routes and service frequency helped drive ridership from barely 7.5 million in 2011 to about 23 million per year before the pandemic. Tainan’s buses are cleaner and more comfortable than they used to be. Dozens of “intelligent stops” now display estimated (and usually quite accurate) arrival times for buses, removing at a stroke
British-American John Oliver roasted Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) in 2018 and slammed China’s treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang last year. Now some want him to do a segment on Taiwan. More than 500 people have signed a petition launched last week asking Oliver to discuss Taiwan’s complex political situation and its international significance on his HBO show Last Week Tonight. Jenna Cody, an American teacher-trainer and prolific blogger who has lived in Taiwan for 15 years, says she created the petition during a night of insomnia. Cody’s blog is quick to dispel one-sided or misinformed Western reports of the country, but she says the issue remains widely misunderstood. “For a lot of us who write about Taiwan, I feel that our audience is just people who care about Taiwan,” Cody says. “It doesn’t feel like we’re getting any sort of general viewership. Taiwan makes it into the mainstream media, but it’s always through the China lens.” Along with items such as unlimited term limits and detained activists, Oliver panned Chinese media censorship during his segment on Xi (where he also joked about comparisons with Winnie the Pooh). As expected, China reacted by blocking HBO and erasing Oliver from microblogging Web site Sina Weibo. “Of all the late night comedy news shows, I feel that [Oliver] is probably the best person to take this on,” Cody says. “He’s willing to criticize China … a lot of those news guys don’t do that. He also tends to do in-depth things and I think Taiwan really needs an in-depth look. So I was up late and I thought, ‘Why don’t I pull a stunt and see if I can get something to happen?’” Oliver typically spends 20 to 30 minutes doing a deep dive on a single topic in a sharply critical yet informative and humorous
Nearly half a century after he sowed fear along the 1970s “hippie trail” French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, the “Serpent” of the hit TV drama series, still haunts the lives of those who crossed his path. Now 77 and jailed in solitary confinement in Nepal since 2003, Sobhraj is suspected of involvement in at least a dozen murders around Asia in the 1970s. His modus operandi was to charm and befriend his victims — many of them starry-eyed Western backpackers on a quest for spirituality — before drugging, robbing and murdering them. The TV series, made jointly by the BBC and Netflix, conjures the seedy, steamy Bangkok of the 1970s with sepia tones, flared trousers and traffic-clogged streets. French star Tahar Rahim plays Sobhraj, oozing mesmerizing, manipulative menace — in a frighteningly familiar way for one of those who knew him. THE NEIGHBOR When Nadine Gires visited the set of the series in 2019, seeing Rahim in character as Sobhraj brought the past flooding back. “I was terrified. I thought he had escaped from prison, that he was coming back to do evil,” she said. “Everything came back: anger, fear.” Sobhraj — a Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian parentage — arrived in Bangkok in October 1975 with his Canadian girlfriend and an Indian associate. They moved into a flat in the same building as Gires, near Bangkok’s notorious Patpong red light district. What became the Serpent’s lair was demolished years ago, but the disused apartment block that stood in for it in the TV series has become a minor tourist attraction. Gires, aged 22 at the time, was impressed by Sobhraj — not least when he told her he was a gemstone trader, a tactic he used to lure cash-strapped backpackers. “He was cultured, courteous. As neighbors, it didn’t take long for us to get to know each other,” she said.
It’s a day ending in -y in Taiwan, so we all know what President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) satisfaction ratings must be doing: falling. Is that I Got You Babe playing on the radio? Another round of polls has triggered a furious outbreak of stenography in the local and international media. The Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) brought out a poll at the end of May which had Tsai’s satisfaction ratings hitting a 21-month low of 45.7 percent. This finding and its framing were widely reported in the media. Foundation Chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said that such a large change — an 8.7 percent drop — in a short time was rare, but a glance back through the TPOF’s own polls shows such “large” changes are common. For example, in May of 2019, TPOF released a poll showing Tsai’s approval ratings had risen 8.5 percent in a month. Similarly in June of last year Tsai’s approval rating fell 8.9 percent, driven down by public dissatisfaction with the COVID-19 stimulus. A TPOF poll in September last year had Tsai’s approval falling over 11 percent. Rapid changes reflect the public’s response to whatever issue has seized the public’s attention, and are hardly abnormal. What is normal about the TPOF poll was its framing. In its presentation of TPOF polls, both foreign and local media typically omit mention of You’s longstanding beef with Tsai, and his support of presidential candidate William Lai (賴清德), who is currently vice president, in the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) primary before last year’s election. You’s animus towards Tsai may not affect the numbers, but it does appear to affect the framing of TPOF presentations. The TPOF described the May poll number as a “21-month low,” but the Foundation had Tsai at 56 percent in October, 52 percent in December, and 51 percent
Warsaw’s Jewish history museum opened an exhibition Thursday featuring works by a renowned Polish artist that confront the lingering and melancholy presence of the Holocaust in Poland, where Nazi German forces carried out their destruction of Europe’s Jews and other atrocities. “Wilhem Sasnal: Such a Landscape” opened Thursday at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The dozens of paintings and drawings on display confront the Holocaust in the nation’s physical and mental landscape and the difficulty in addressing an unsettled past. Sasnal, who is not Jewish, has for two decades been grappling with this history. The 48-year-old described a generational need to confront the past, also because parts of Polish society refuse to acknowledge that while Poland was victimized by Nazi Germany, there were also some Poles who joined in the despoliation and murder of the nation’s Jews. For decades after World War II, such discussions were taboo, with the themes of Polish sacrifice and honor dominating historical memory. But with the new openness that came with the fall of communism in 1989, scholars and artists began studying and speaking openly of anti-Semitism and the participation by some Poles in the German crimes. Each new book or film has touched a raw nerve. “The history of the Second World War was obscured until 1989,” Sasnal said. It was then “extremely shocking,” he said, when scholars began to reveal wartime wrongdoing by Poles, including the 1941 killing of hundreds of Jews by Poles in the town of Jedwabne. “At the beginning I felt anger and shame,” he said. “And it’s still so difficult to see that people don’t want to acknowledge it. People totally refuse, and this is the mainstream Polish government attitude.” Sasnal is one of Poland’s most prominent living artists. His works are included in collections at the Museum of Modern
June 21 to June 27 Taichung’s Qiaoshengxianshi Temple (巧聖先師廟) was halfway through completing the longest religious procession in Taiwan’s history when the outbreak struck. The 60-day procession through 17 counties and municipalities would have concluded last Monday on principal deity Lu Ban’s (魯班) birthday. They had just entered Hualien when they received instructions through divination blocks to head home. Lu Ban, the god of craftspeople, had apparently appeared in the temple director’s dreams last year and expressed his desire to travel across Taiwan, which led to him organizing the pilgrimage through 172 temples. Lu Ban was a famous carpenter during China’s Spring and Autumn Period, who is popularly credited (often incorrectly) for inventing countless items, including the saw and a glider used to attack enemy fortresses. His mother reportedly invented a chalk line tool commonly used in carpentry, and his wife devised China’s first umbrella. There are at least 30 temples worshipping Lu Ban in Taiwan, and carpentry associations still pay special homage to him today. The Taipei Carpenter Vocational Association Web page states, “The tools that Lu Ban is credited for inventing are still used today, and therefore he is worshipped as the ancestor of all craftspeople.” CLASHES WITH ABORIGINES Lu Ban was worshipped in China as early as the Tang Dynasty, but the first temple dedicated to him as the god of craftspeople didn’t appear in Taiwan until the Qing Dynasty. Chiang Ming-hsiung writes in “The Qiaoshengxianshi Temple and Dongshi’s society during the Qing Dynasty” (巧聖仙師廟與清代東勢地方社會) that Lu Ban was previously worshipped in some places in Taiwan as the god of water who protects sailors at sea. Since several of Lu Ban’s legendary feats include helping soldiers survive disasters at sea during wartime, and some Han settlers from China brought effigies on their ships to ensure a safe journey. By the Qing Dynasty,
David Eagleman, 50, is an American neuroscientist, bestselling author and presenter of the BBC series The Brain, as well as co-founder and chief executive officer of Neosensory, which develops devices for sensory substitution. His area of specialty is brain plasticity, and that is the subject of his new book, Livewired, which examines how experience refashions the brain, and shows that it is a much more adaptable organ than previously thought. Andrew Anthony: For the past half-century or more the brain has been spoken of in terms of a computer. What are the biggest flaws with that particular model? David Eagleman: It’s a very seductive comparison. But in fact, what we’re looking at is three pounds of material in our skulls that is essentially a very alien kind of material to us. It doesn’t write down memories, the way we think of a computer doing it. And it is capable of figuring out its own culture and identity and making leaps into the unknown. I’m here in Silicon Valley. Everything we talk about is hardware and software. But what’s happening in the brain is what I call livewire, where you have 86 billion neurons, each with 10,000 connections, and they are constantly reconfiguring every second of your life. Even by the time you get to the end of this paragraph, you’ll be a slightly different person than you were at the beginning. AA: In what way does the working of the brain resemble drug dealers in Albuquerque? DE: It’s that the brain can accomplish remarkable things without any top-down control. If a child has half their brain removed in surgery, the functions of the brain will rewire themselves on to the remaining real estate. And so I use this example of drug dealers to point out that if suddenly in Albuquerque, where I happened to
Returning to Ciliwa (唭哩瓦) a couple of weeks ago, it took me a few minutes to get my bearings. This time, I’d approached by a different route. It bypassed the village’s so-called “new community” (新社) and brought me direct to the “old community” (舊社). Outsiders won’t notice many differences between these two settlements in an inland and ruggedly hilly corner of Tainan. Both are a mix of traditional single-story homes and more recent reinforced concrete structures. In the “newer” part of the village as in the “older,” several houses are empty, and it’s obvious nobody is trying to maintain them. The “old community” doesn’t have a single shop, yet at its heart there’s a sizable hall of worship. Considering how few people live in the area, Shende Temple (慎德堂) looks surprisingly new and well-funded. Does it enjoy the support of Ciliwa natives who have prospered elsewhere? A quick look at a list of donors engraved on a wall panel inside suggests that question should be answered in the affirmative. I first visited Ciliwa more than two decades ago. It’s where my mother-in-law grew up. This spring, we drove there to reacquaint ourselves with the place On arriving, I told my son that, if he has any indigenous blood, it’s most likely from here. Ciliwa is part of Danei District (大內), where Pingpu Austronesian culture never completely disappeared, despite gradual assimilation during the Qing, Japanese and postwar eras. THE TAIVOAN AND SIRAYA Danei was originally the territory of the Taivoan people (大滿族, sometimes spelled Tevorangh). The language they spoke is thought to have been closely related to those spoken by the neighboring Siraya (西拉雅族) and Makatao communities (馬卡道族). At some point in the 17th or 18th centuries, the Siraya pushed the Taivoan deeper into the hills. The intruders established the community now known as Toushe (頭社),
Public sentiment in Japan has been generally opposed to holding the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, partly based on fears the coronavirus will spike as almost 100,000 people — athletes and others — enter for both events. The Japanese medical community is largely against it. The government’s main medical adviser Shigeru Omi has said it’s “abnormal” to hold the Olympics during a pandemic. So far, only 5 percent of Japanese are fully vaccinated. The medical journal The Lancet has raised questions about the health risks and criticized the World Health Organization and other health bodies for not taking a clear stand. The New England Journal of Medicine has said the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision to proceed “is not informed by the best scientific evidence.” The second-largest selling newspaper in Japan, the Asahi Shimbun, has called for the Olympics to be canceled. So have other regional newspapers. Still, they are going ahead. How have the IOC and the Japanese government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga been able to bypass strong opposition? At the core is the Host City Contract that gives the IOC the sole authority to cancel. If Japan cancels, it would have to compensate the IOC. Of course, the IOC is unlikely to sue a host city. So any deal would be worked out behind the scenes. And there are billions at stake. Japan has officially spent US$15.4 billion but government audits suggest it’s twice that much. Japanese advertising giant Dentsu Inc, a key player in landing the corruption-tainted bid in 2013, has raised more than US$3 billion from local sponsors. Estimates suggest a cancellation could cost the IOC US$3 billion to US$4 billion in lost broadcast rights income. Broadcast income and sponsors account for 91 percent of the IOC income, and American network NBCUniversal provides about 40 percent of the IOC’s total income. Fans from abroad
While Shigeru Omi may invite comparisons to Anthony Fauci, Japan’s top COVID-19 adviser has shown little of his American counterpart’s flair for challenging politicians. That is, until he started suggesting banning spectators from the Tokyo Olympics. Omi, the government’s top adviser on COVID-19, is a mild-mannered 72-year-old public health expert often seen by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s side. But his concern over the health risks seems to have prompted him to question the government’s plans to allow domestic fans at the Olympics. Omi appeared to open a gap with Suga, who has pressed ahead with holding the Olympics as planned, when he told a parliamentary committee on June 2 that “it’s not normal” to be staging the global sports spectacle in the middle of a pandemic. The organizers needed to make a stronger case for holding the event in order to gain people’s necessary cooperation, he said. “Why on earth are we doing this in the current circumstances?” Omi said. “The purpose hasn’t quite been made clear.” Such public questioning of the official position is unusual in Japan’s hierarchical political culture and has boosted his already considerable public profile. Like Fauci when Donald Trump was US president, Omi’s views have given voice to a segment of the Japanese public dismayed with the government’s direction. While the tenor is far lower than the fever pitch of American politics, Omi’s remarks have also invited a swift backlash, just as Fauci is now a lightning rod figure in the prolonged debate over virus policy and health measures in the US. Former Internal Affairs Minister Heizo Takenaka told a TV talk show that Omi had exceeded his authority with the remarks. Now Omi and other experts are set to release a proposal on the Olympics, which Health Minister Norihisa Tamura has already indicated he won’t be treating as official
Kimiko Hirata has spent nearly half her life fighting to wean Japan off its dependence on coal, and now isn’t the time to slow down, the award-winning activist warns. “I’m hopeful, but we have no time to waste,” said Hirata, the international director of Japan’s Kiko Network NGO. “Our future will be gone if we don’t act now,” she said. It’s a message that Hirata, 50, has long worked to drive home in the world’s third-largest economy, which upped its reliance on coal after the 2011 Fukushima disaster took its nuclear plants offline. On Tuesday, the soft-spoken activist was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work, particularly on blocking new coal-fired power plants in Japan. The country’s 140 coal plants generate nearly a third of its electricity, second only to liquid natural gas-fired plants. A signatory to the Paris climate deal, Japan was the sixth-biggest contributor to global greenhouse emissions in 2017, and last year the government set a new 2050 goal for carbon neutrality. That significantly firmed up Tokyo’s climate commitments and was a “major step forward,” Hirata said. It comes after years of efforts by the Kiko Network — kiko is Japanese for climate. The Goldman prize awarders said the Kiko Network’s “sophisticated, multi-pronged, national anti-coal campaign,” launched in 2011, helped block a third of 50 new coal projects. The work Hirata spearheaded prevented “the emission of 42 million tons of CO2 per year,” they added. ‘HIT BY LIGHTNING’ Hirata is modest about her achievements, citing efforts at a local level, and warning more is needed. “I think (our work) helped put the brakes on to a certain extent,” she said at her office in Tokyo. “But there are more coal plants than before, so in the broader sense we still face challenges and haven’t won a victory yet.” Despite having devoted her adult life to tackling climate
Harboring an unrequited love for someone is one thing; following them, secretly taking pictures of them and visiting them at work every day is stalking. Chasing down and confronting their new boyfriend (even though he is a horrible person) in the name of justice, is stalking. There’s not really an excuse, no matter how well-intentioned one is. Such behavior features heavily in My Missing Valentine (消失的情人節), which is available on Netflix after bagging five trophies during last year’s Golden Horse awards, including best feature and best director. It’s a skillfully edited and philosophical tale with a sweet and endearing protagonist portrayed by Patty Lee (李霈瑜). But what happens to her just doesn’t feel right. An interesting device is that characters in the film each experience time differently. Lee’s character, Hsiao-chi, has been a step faster than others since birth. For example, she starts running in a race before the whistle is blown, and laughs during a movie before the punchline. The film begins with Hsiao-chi reporting to the police that she had lost a day — Valentine’s Day — with no memories of what happened. Hsiao-chi is a shy yet personable 30-year-old post office worker who has never celebrated Valentine’s Day. She is cheerful and imaginative, and her quirky mannerisms and expressions grow on the audience and eventually carry the film. Opposite Hsiao-chi is A-tai (Liu Kuan-ting, 劉冠廷), who is also shy and is always a step slower. Liu’s childlike and whimsical personality may serve to soften his otherwise creepy behavior. Of course, he’s a good person who doesn’t actually do Hsiao-chi any harm, but what’s shown is uncomfortable enough. Without revealing the plot, the story becomes increasingly disturbing after the second half, and this reviewer cringed throughout the unsettling “romantic moments.” Yes, the film is meant to be surreal
South Korea is trying to increase its future working population by making it easier for children of foreign residents to become citizens, but its plans have run into trouble in the face of rising anti-China sentiment. A measure proposed by the Ministry of Justice — first made public in April — called for easing the pathway to citizenship for children born to long-term foreign residents, by simply notifying the ministry. A presidential petition opposing the revision has gathered over 300,000 signatures. The chatroom of an online hearing held to discuss the proposal in May was overwhelmed with expletive-laced complaints by the tens of thousands of viewers. The justice ministry has said it is still taking into account public opinion and the advice of experts before submitting the proposal to the Ministry of Government Legislation. “Given the strong backlash, I would say the ministry has already lost much of the momentum to push ahead with the proposal,” said Jang Yun-mi, an attorney who specializes in issues related to children. The controversy highlights the challenges South Korea faces as it seeks to ensure a robust future population in the face of declining birthrates and rapidly aging workers, and the potential policy implications of increasingly negative views of China, its biggest trading partner. Data from last year suggests only about 3,930 people would be eligible under the rule change, but the fact that 3,725 of them were of Chinese heritage prompted much of the criticism. South Korean views have been colored by what some see as economic bullying by Beijing, its poor handling of the COVID-19 crisis, and the assertion by some Chinese that dearly held aspects of Korean food and culture, such as kimchi and the traditional hanbok dress, have roots in China. Among immigrant communities, the proposed measures are not seen as worth the backlash, said Kim Yong-phil, editor-in-chief
This book details the experiences of four would-be escapees fleeing Shanghai in advance of the arrival there of the Chinese Communist Party-controlled People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1949. One of them is headed for Taiwan, but even at the start of the book Taiwan has more attention than this might suggest. There are no records in China of any exodus, for example, only accounts published in Taiwan. On the pier prior to embarkation, one character, destined for the US, meets someone in a hurry to get a car onboard a ship heading for Taiwan for the benefit of his brother, who is there already. And lastly it’s recorded how the Jiangya, a ship packed with escapees bound for Taiwan, exploded and sunk in December 1948 in a heavily mined stretch of the Huangpu River connecting Shanghai to the sea. Fatalities had been far in excess of those on the Titanic. Another Taiwan-bound vessel, the Taiping, was sunk a few weeks later. On May 25, 1949 the PLA takes Shanghai. Prior to this, between 1.3 million and two million “mainlanders” descend on Taiwan’s nine million population. The author begins her main narrative by introducing us to three children, Benny, Ho and Bing, the first two from prosperous families, the last from a less prosperous one, but all living in Shanghai in the 1930s. Bing is the young woman who is first seen at the start of the story as she boards a liner for America. The narration of their young lives gives the author an opportunity to fill us in on a swathe of Chinese history of the period. But there’s a fourth child, Annuo, younger than the others. Two of the others make it to the US, though Benny remains in China. Annuo, by contrast, is eventually all set to
With no way to make money during the outbreak and a developmentally delayed third-grader to raise alone, the only thing Mr Lin (林) can do is pray for vaccines. “I just hope that people can get vaccinated and life can go back to usual soon,” Lin says during a Line interview. “It’s unfortunate that Taiwan’s awkward international status prevents us from getting vaccines.” A foot masseuse catering to tourists in Taipei, Lin’s income already took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year. With the latest outbreak shuttering massage parlors across the nation, he is now out of a job. Lin can no longer afford his son Hsiao-feng’s (小峰) daycare service, but he needs it more than ever as in-person classes are suspended. Since he has to watch Hsiao-feng during the day, it is hard for him to look for work. And few are hiring. Lin is also unsure what else he can do, as he’s in his 50s and has been at his current profession for 15 years. “I’ve been doing this for so long, I’m good at it and I’ve developed an interest in it,” he says. More than 1,000 families served by the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families are facing a similar predicament since the nationwide level three alert was announced last month. About 38 percent of the families were earning less than NT$20,000 per month, and 46 percent held temporary or service industry jobs that were the first to be hit by the outbreak. About 68 percent of the non-profit organization’s households are single-parent, which makes it even harder to cope as the children are now all taking classes from home. Hsiao-mei’s (小玫) mother, for example, had to take unpaid leave from her job at a printing factory to take care of her three kids. Hsiao-hua’s (小華)
Vaccines are the latest flashpoint inflaming cross-strait tensions between China and Taiwan, as the latter tries to fend off its worst coronavirus outbreak since the pandemic began with a mostly unvaccinated population and the former rails against outside assistance from Taipei’s allies. Global vaccination drives are widely seen as the only way out of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in Taiwan, just 3 percent of the population has received at least one dose. Now it is battling hundreds of cases a day and does not have enough vaccines for its 23.5 million people. Affected by global shortages, low initial orders and accusations of geopolitical interference, it has received only a few million doses, and international allies are stepping up to help. On 4 June, Japan sent a plane carrying 1.24 million AstraZeneca doses and days later a delegation of US senators flew to Taipei to announce a donation of 750,000 doses. Both countries cited their close friendship with Taiwan and noted, respectively, Taiwan’s assistance to Japan after the 2011 tsunami and to the US early in the pandemic. The donations were enthusiastically welcomed by Taipei, with huge messages of thanks projected on to buildings in the city. Beijing strongly objected. China’s foreign ministry suggested Japan was exploiting the pandemic “to put on political shows,” and accused the US of breaching the “one-China” principle, which asserts that Taiwan is a part of China. Both donations showed how much less Tokyo and Washington worry about aggravating Beijing, amid deteriorating relations. Drew Thompson, a former US defense department official responsible for managing bilateral relations with China and Taiwan, said it was probably a logistical coincidence that Japan’s vaccines arrived on the hypersensitive anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and that the US senators flew in on a military plane. But previous administrations in Tokyo and Washington might have ensured they
With a growing body of research backing the idea that gardening can have measurable benefits to both mental and physical health, barely a week goes by in the horticultural press without a story on the positive impact it can have. As a geeky scientist, however, I wanted to know what it is specifically about growing plants that has this effect — and if we can answer this question could we make gardening an even more effective therapeutic exercise? Put people on treadmills in front of screens projecting different views and those looking at green environments felt the exercise to be easier, had improved mood and better self-esteem than those without a view. However, when similar exercise experiments were run showing the same view either in black and white or with a red filter, they did not show the same benefits as those with the predominantly green view. In theory this could mean simply that growing more evergreen plants could help boost the therapeutic efficacy of gardening. Does it have to be plants at all? Could just painting fences green have this effect? Or — dare I say it — would plastic plants trigger a similar response? Well, research has shown that mindfulness exercises that focus one’s attention on the here and now and stop our minds wandering to the past or worrying about the future are an important therapeutic tool. Gardening is a classic example of such a mindfulness exercise, where you clear out extraneous thoughts and focus on what is in front of you, especially given the seasonal nature of gardening. In fact, many Eastern cultures that have a long tradition of mindfulness are fixated on the beauty of seasonal plants, such as cherry blossom, precisely because of their transience, not in spite of it. So fake plants and a green fence are
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