The town of Jhihben (知本) in Taitung County is most well-known for its hot springs, but if you’re looking for an interesting nearby daytime excursion to complement an evening soak at your hotel, don’t miss the Jhihben National Forest Recreation Area (知本國家森林遊樂區).From the resort area, simply take Bus 8
On July 8, 1989, a young music fan named Aadam Jacobs, with a compact Sony cassette recorder in his pocket, went to see an up-and-coming rock band from Washington for their debut show in Chicago.After a blast of guitar feedback, 20-year-old Kurt Cobain politely announced to the crowd at the small cl
Hallways, generally speaking, are not places you want to be in the movies. You can be just strolling down one when, all of a sudden, elevator doors open up and a river of blood comes flowing out.They are often corridors of violence — the site of the hammer rampage of Oldboy or the rotating fisticuff
Sunflower movement superstar Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) once quipped that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could nominate a watermelon to run for Tainan mayor and win. Conversely, the DPP could run a living saint for mayor in Taipei and still lose. In 2022, the DPP ran with the closest thing to a livin
The problem with Marx’s famous remark that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce, is that the first time is usually farce as well. This week Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made a pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “to confer, con
People Concerto (眾人協奏曲) began with a simple idea: take a step and hear a sound. Composer Chang Shiuan (張玹) then wondered what kind of music would emerge if a group of people moved together. But turning that notion into reality was much more complicated than Chang had expected, requiring collaborator
Afforestation and reforestation have long been central to Taiwan’s environmental and climate policy. If the goals set under the “Afforestation 2.0” program launched late last year are met, the central government will spend at least NT$7.5 billion to incentivize tree-planting over the next half decad
For generations, human beings have wondered: What would alien life from another planet be like? But we rarely ask the opposite: What would they think of us?It’s a question that can produce some, well, uncomfortable answers if you happen to be an earthling.“If I were looking at Earth from a distance,
The US war on Iran has illuminated the deep interdependence of Asia on flows of oil and related items as raw materials that become the basis of modern human civilization. Australians and New Zealanders had a wake up call. The crisis also emphasizes how the Philippines is a swatch of islands linked b
April 6 to April 13 Few expected a Japanese manga adaptation featuring four tall, long-haired heartthrobs and a plucky heroine to transform Taiwan’s television industry. But Meteor Garden (流星花園) took the nation by storm after premiering on April 12, 2001, single-handedly creating the “idol dra
Polling data often confirms what we expect, but sometimes it throws up surprises. When examined over time, some patterns appear that speak to something bigger going on. In this column, whenever possible, Formosa’s polls are used. Despite the sometimes cringeworthy antics of Formosa’s Chairman, Wu Tz
It’s only half the size of its more famous counterpart in Taipei, but the Botanical Garden of the National Museum of Nature Science (NMNS, 國立自然科學博物館植物園) is surely one of urban Taiwan’s most inviting green spaces. Covering 4.5 hectares immediately northeast of the government-run museum in Taichung’s
If you’re looking for some killer real estate, might we suggest The Virgil, an exclusive, well-appointed building in New York City? It’s one of those century-old hotel-condos with great bones and spacious apartments, fully furnished. One drawback they might not mention on Zillow is all the murderous
Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors is a nightmare of government corruption so perfectly composed that, by the time it reaches its chilling conclusion, you feel nearly as entrapped as its young protagonist.Alexander Kornyev (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) is a fresh-faced prosecutor who arrives at the Soviet pr
Last week saw Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), former Taipei mayor and founder of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), receive a 17-year sentence for crimes involving political corruption. This was only the opening round: the case is likely to drag on for several more years in appeals.Both the TPP and the Chinese Natio
On Monday morning, in quick succession, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) released statements announcing “that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) have invited KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to lead a
They’re missing a trick here, I thought, when the staff brought out the Minced Century Egg with Tender Tofu (馬告松花皮蛋豆腐, NT$360). Then I said it out loud. Unlike the original bill of fare, Chiou Hwa Restaurant’s English-language menu — which otherwise can’t be faulted — fails to mention the dish’s mos
In the classic history of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) covert military operations in Thailand, Laos and Burma (now Myanmar) during the Cold War, The Secret Army, authors Richard Gibson and Wen H. Chen (陳文華) include an anecdote on KMT intelligence operative Yang Eng-tsai. Yang started out in
The scene is right out of the 1950s with students pecking away at manual typewriters, the machines dinging at the end of each line.Once each semester, Grit Matthias Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell University, introduces her students to the raw feeling of typing without online assista
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