The first hint that something big would be taking place in Bangka over the weekend was when a large stage was set up on the street of my apartment building and started blaring loud electronic music every day at 11 AM Read More
Life
Oldest
The thing about living in a city I really love is how many interesting characters there are. And you'll never know them all, no matter how hard you try. Where I live in Taipei—Bangka, the oldest and historically poorest district—has proven especially full of unique characters. All of these people have stories, but I'll never know them all Read More
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
“The winner of the 2020 National Hakka Stir-fry Culinary Competition goes to A-Wu’s Shop!”, announced Andre Chiang, the lead judge of the final round judges’ panel. The crowd cheered as the restaurant owner and chefs headed up to the stage to claim their trophy and banner Read More
What follows, written at a time when news is coming out of both Hong Kong and Thailand of young activists facing prison time for speaking out for things they believe, is the English language original of the preface of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink Read More
In 2016, Trump shocked liberal Democrats. They should not have been shocked. It takes a certain level of ignorance and magic thinking to believe in their candidate at the time. Hilary Clinton, after all, is the spouse of a president whose trade policies were largely responsible for the closing of factories and deindustrialization of the nation Read More
Dafydd Fell’s recent academic monograph, Taiwan’s Green Parties: Alternative Politics in Taiwan, is not to be missed for those who are interested in or who study party politics in Taiwan. Drawing on close to a decade of research and observation, the book details the ebbs and flows, as well as the transformations, experienced by the Green Party in Taiwan since its founding. The book also focuses on the Social Democratic Party and Trees Party as Green Parties Read More
To be a child of globalization comes with an inconceivable sense of perpetual displacement—a disturbance of sort: the fault lines between distant societies or “civilizations” are deeply felt in the space you occupy, the people you interact with, and the commonplace cross-cultural misunderstandings you observe Read More
Temple festivals in Taiwan often seem to be a mixture of the sacred and the profane. Sure, temples are places of worship—but temple festivities often have elements of what would otherwise be considered “low” culture incorporated into them Read More
A few years ago during the one-hundredth year anniversary of the May 4th Movement, when members of the pan-Blue camp, along with various Chinese nationalists, were outraged by the Tsai administration instead commemorating the date as “May the Fourth be with You”—Star Wars Day, I guess you could call it Read More
Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives, edited by Robert Ovetz, is an ambitious book Read More