Rated: PG, directed by Brett Ratner with Chris Tucker (Carter), Jackie Chan (
It's vacation time for Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker). Looking for excitement, he visits his buddy Detective Lee (Jackie Chan,
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATA
Earlier this month Economic Affairs Minister Kuo Jyh-huei (郭智輝) proposed buying green power from the Philippines and shipping it to Taiwan, in remarks made during a legislative hearing. Because this is an eminently reasonable and useful proposal, it was immediately criticized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). KMT Legislator Chang Chia-chun (張嘉郡) said that Taiwan pays NT$40 billion annually to fix cables, while TPP heavyweight Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) complained that Kuo wanted to draw public attention away from Taiwan’s renewable energy ratio. Considering the legal troubles currently inundating the TPP, one would think Huang would
Last week two magnificent exhibitions opened in London. Both have as their theme the idea of the Silk Road, an-overland trade route said to stretch ever since antiquity all the way across Asia from China to Turkey and hence to Mediterranean Europe. The show at the British Library is entitled A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang and focuses on the extraordinary haul of ancient documents found in the Mogao Buddhist cave temples by a Chinese Daoist priest and sold by him to the explorer and archaeologist Aurel Stein in 1907. Its treasures include the celebrated ninth-century Diamond Sutra, the earliest
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) last week told residents to avoid wearing scary Halloween costumes on the MRT so as not to alarm other passengers. Well, I thought, so much for my plan to visit Taipei dressed as the National Development Council’s (NDC) biennial population report “Population Projections for the Republic of China (Taiwan): 2024-2070,” which came out last week. Terms like “low birth rate” and “demographic decline” do not cut it — the report is nothing short of a demographic disaster. Yet, in Taiwan, as in other countries, it is solvable. It simply requires a change in mindset. As it
One of BaLiwakes’ best known songs, Penanwang (Puyuma King), contains Puyuma-language lyrics written in Japanese syllabaries, set to the tune of Stephen Foster’s Old Black Joe. Penned around 1964, the words praise the Qing Dynasty-era indigenous leader Paliday not for his heroic deeds, but his willingness to adopt higher-yield Han farming practices and build new roads connecting to the outside world. “BaLiwakes lived through several upheavals in regime, language and environment. It truly required the courage and wisdom of the Puyuma King in order to maintain his ties to his traditions while facing the future,” writes Tsai Pei-han (蔡佩含) in
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