Language

All

Random

Future Media Arts Festival Presents Engaging Takes on Incipient Futures

·November 17, 2021·1 min read

The Future Media Arts Festival at the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, or C-Lab, offers a panoply of attempts to investigate the new, digital future that we seem to be hurtling toward. This is presented across multiple buildings and in a variety of formats, ranging from installations to video art Read More

Creating Musical Spaces of One’s Own

English Interviews Music

·November 19, 2021·24 min read

Brian Hioe spoke to Ani Hao, who DJs as Ani Phoebe, and is a writer, feminist media strategist, as well as one of the founders of Bad Times Disco and New Wave Read More

What’s in a Potato?

English Life

·May 2, 2023·2 min read

Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung was questioned last month over Taiwanese education textbooks that used 土豆, the PRC word for “potato”, to describe the vegetable instead of the more commonly used 馬鈴薯. By contrast, 土豆 refers to “peanut” in a Taiwanese context Read More

Gold Leaf Succeeds Where SEQALU and Island Nation Did Not

English Film

·November 23, 2021·4 min read

Despite no international marketing blitz comparable to Island Nation or SEQALU, Gold Leaf proves the same kind of work, in seeking to dramatize a pivotal period of Taiwanese history. Based on the memoirs of Jiang A-hsin, the founder of the Yong-guang Tea Company, Gold Leaf focuses on the Zhang family, a prominent Hakka family of tea manufacturers in Hsinchu in the 1950s. The Jiang family was once Taiwan’s largest exporter of tea Read More

The 10 Best Taiwanese Movies of 2023

English Film

·January 7, 2024·10 min read

Discover the top Taiwanese movies of 2023 across genres like comedy, romance, thriller, LGBTQ, comedy, and more—streaming links included when available Read More

“Manchurian Tiger” Paints Absurdist Picture of Working Class Life in Northern China

English Film

·August 17, 2022·3 min read

Chinese movie "Manchurian Tiger" offers a darkly comedic look at workers in China’s northeast region Read More

Even Death Is No Escape From Capitalism

English Film

·November 30, 2021·3 min read

Fruit Chan's Coffin Homes (鬼同你住) is unlikely to find success on the international film festival circuit. For one, the film is likely to be billed as a comedy horror, though it is more accurate to locate the film in the mo lei tau style of Hong Kong slapstick Read More

展覽評論：妙筆畫家──洪通

Art Chinese Events

·January 28, 2021·1 min read

台南美術館現正展覽的洪通個展：「再現傳奇 — 洪通百歲紀念展」是一個很詳盡的展覽。不只有關鍵作品，也有關於曾出現在洪通身邊的媒體狂熱。這個展覽也有比較少見的物品，比如洪通用的畫筆與他的畫簿。因此，這場展覽不只適合洪通粉絲與支持者，也可以讓其他人更加理解媒體如何創造藝術明星，以及媒體在藝術領域中扮演的角色。 Read More

Of Garbage and Redemption

English Film

·August 6, 2021·3 min read

City of Lost Things, a CGI animated film, surprises not only because of the well-scripted, tightly knit story but also because of its inventive animation. It manages this without relying on high-budget technical wizardry, per se, but by creative use of rather basic CGI elements. It is not surprising, then, that the movie won Best Animated Film at the Golden Horse Film Festival in 2020 Read More

Bad Taiwan Takes: Code Pink Does Not Understand How to Read Polls About Taiwan

English Life

·May 19, 2023·3 min read

A recent petition by Code Pink sees fit to ventriloquize the people of Taiwan, claiming that the people of Taiwan do not want war with China–certainly true–but then claiming that the people of Taiwan do not hope for support for the US against China. The petition goes on to cite polling by Academia Sinica Read More

Interview: Charles Yu

Books English Interviews Life

·January 19, 2021·8 min read

New Bloom/No Man is an Island editor Brian Hioe spoke to writer Charles Yu about his recent book, Interior Chinatown, which recently won the National Book Award Read More

An Insipid and Vaguely Authoritarian Hong Kong COVID Comedy

English Film

·August 10, 2021·4 min read

2021 Hong Kong comedy All U Need is Love is likely one of the earliest films in the world to make the COVID-19 the central focus of its story. The movie features a star-studded cast of Hong Kong actors and actresses, many of which reprise their best-known roles for the film. This is due to the fact that the movie was originally intended as a collaboration between ten major Hong Kong film companies to benefit a hard-hit domestic film industry. However, All U Need is Love is an insipid affair, which says more about the film industry in Hong Kong today than anything else Read More