New Bloom's Brian Hioe spoke Olivier Richard, the director of the new TaiwanPlus documentary series, "BPM ECSTASY: The Techno Wave Between Taipei and Beijing." The documentary can be seen on their YouTube channel Read More
The Nanshan Gravesite at the southern outskirt of the Tainan city central is a historical site of land burials that had been in use for hundreds of years until 2008 when it was forbidden for any further interment. The “no interment” rule follows an earlier order in 1991 by the Tainan City government to restrict new interments on the site. The “no interment” regulation is aligned with the general trend in Taiwan where the use of cremation has been much preferred over land burial in funeral practices. The Ministry of Interior of the Taiwan Government, for many years now, has been persistent in encouraging its people to use cremation to bid final farewell to the recently deceased. By one count, in 2017 there were only 38 land burials in Taipei City, the capital of Taiwan of about 2 million residents Read More
Coming off of a fifteen-city tour of Asia, LVRA’s soft like steel: reforged proves a strong reworking of the original album Read More
Island in Between follows director S. Leo Chiang’s personal journey. Having grown up in the US, he finds himself back in Taiwan after the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, he finds himself drawn to the island of Kinmen, where his father previously served in the military as part of the draft Read More
Several incidents in August involved Taiwanese musicians who faced restrictions or otherwise came under scrutiny while touring in China. Read More
Kirsten Han’s The Singapore That I Recognise provides a glimpse of Singaporean civil society activism in recent years. The book stands out not only as a personal account of Han’s own journey as a journalist and activist, but also with regards to what it shows about Singapore today Read More
With its laughably inconsistent plot and confusingly selective use of CGI, "Detrimental" could be Hong Kong’s contribution to the "so-bad-it’s good" genre Read More
Among the Braves, by Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin, is a gripping, powerful narrative of the events surrounding the 2019 Hong Kong protests Read More
Internet personality Joeman was arrested on drug charges earlier this month. Though hardly the first time that a celebrity has come under public scrutiny for a drug-related arrest, the arrest has struck a chord with the public at large Read More
Dear Chrysanthemums, by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, is a well-crafted set of stories set during various points in modern Chinese history Read More
New Bloom/No Man is an Island's Brian Hioe spoke to South Korean writer and photographer Minsik Jung about the art project "Monday Without a Wheelchair", detailing the lived experiences of Filipino migrant workers in Taiwan Read More
A June piece in The Telegraph, on the joys of tourism in Taiwan as it is under geopolitical threat, proves a bizarre exercise in colonial disaster tourism–or pre-disaster tourism, if you would, seeing as there has been no Taiwan contingency as yet Read More