China has been rocked by protests in the past days, which have taken place in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and others. The protests, which are broadly against the restrictive measures maintained in China as part of COVID-zero, broke out in the wake of a fire in Urumqi that killed ten and injured nine. The protests have been termed the “A4 Revolution” by some. Namely, protesters have often taken to holding up blank pieces of white paper as part of their protests. This is due to authorities cracking down on signs with slogans on them. Read More
“The Wild Eighties: Dawn of Transdisciplinary Taiwan,” which runs from December 3rd to February 26th at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, is a highly successful look into the artistic creativity of Taiwan’s 1980s. This was the period in which martial law was lifted in Taiwan, resulting in an unprecedented explosion of creative freedoms. Read More
Minister of Culture Lee Yung-te made comments at the recent National Culture Congress earlier this month that might strike as somewhat unusual Read More
A recent scandal involved singer Rainie Yang claiming not to be Taiwanese, but a “Guangdong person that grew up in Taiwan” on a Chinese program. Yang claimed this despite being born in Taipei in 1984 Read More
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
Joshua E. Livingston’s Sunrays on the Beachhead of the New Creation, a book with 54 short stories with black and white graphic illustrations that serve the tales beautifully and integrally, deals with what it means to have faith (specifically Christian faith), and what it takes to have faith when our daily reality is decidedly secular. When secularism is practically a religion, what does it mean to believe, be spiritual, and attempt to see beyond ourselves? Does life have no meaning beyond what we are capable of understanding? Read More
FoxConn founder Terry Gou is at it again. After having announced his 2020 presidential bid with the claim that Mazu, Taiwan’s patron sea goddess, came to him in a dream, Gou claimed earlier in the month that Mazu and war god Guanyu had expressed approval of another presidential run by him. Gou claimed this after visiting temples over the Lunar New Year to ask the gods about his potential run Read More
There are no answers in the vast endless ocean...only questions Read More
The popular influencer, bodybuilder Holger Chen, recently raised eyebrows with comments that one in three young people today have gang ties. Read More
In retrospect, it was probably inevitable that Taiwan’s domestically developed and manufactured vaccine, Medigen, would encounter difficulties in public reception Read More
China continues to present mixed signals after the end of the three days of live-fire drills that it announced on Saturday 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