The Taipei mayoral race saw twelve candidates this year. The three serious candidates are, of course, Chen Shih-chung of the DPP, Chiang Wan-an of the KMT, and Vivian Huang of the TPP. It remains unclear as to which of them may win, with a tight three-way race anticipated. At the same time, as the nation’s capital, Taipei often attracts a number of fringe mayoral candidates. This was no different this year, with the views of these candidates on display at the four-hour policy platform held by the Central Election Commission, in which all of the candidates were given thirty minutes to express their views Read More
This past weekend, over 200 participants came to see the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights’ (TAPCPR) "看見跨性別藝文展 100 Ways to See Transgender" exhibition at 二空間 SPACE TWO. Since their first Transgender Film Festival in 2020, TAPCPR has made it a tradition to do larger scale public engagement programming around transgender issues every year in the month of November. Last year was the second Transgender Film Festival, and this year is the 100 Ways to See Transgender exhibition Read More
Tuan Tuan, one of four giant pandas displayed in the Taipei Zoo, has become ill with brain lesions. MRI imagery from late September shows that Tuan Tuan has local large-scale necrosis and edema on the left-side of his brain. There is local small-scale edema on the right side of his brain. Read More
If you've heard of Jiufen, you might know it is the site of filming for many Taiwanese movies, most notably City of Sadness. You might have heard it has wonderful teahouses, and maybe from a friend you heard to try the taro balls there. But you probably first and foremost know it as where Hayao Miyazaki allegedly drew inspiration from in Spirited Away, the hit animated movie about a girl who loses her parents in the spirit world Read More
A cultural event in Beitou has been criticized regarding Indigenous representation. Namely, the event, the “Beitou Witch Magic Festival”, draws on the history of female Indigenous mediums in Beitou 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
This past weekend, BDSM Company hosted four performances of “Kinky Community Musical 2.0" at the Huashan 1914 Creative Park. Written by Della Wang and directed by Hsiao-I Lu, "Kinky Community Musical 2.0” is a revised version of Wang’s first “Kinky Community Musical,” which debuted in late April 2019 just weeks before the legalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan. Featuring mesmerizing rope-binding scenes, catchy tunes in the form of twelve original songs, and gripping script writing, the play tells an intertwined love story of four main characters that pushes the boundaries of tongzhi politics to further incorporate Taiwan’s BDSM, asexual, and polyamory communities Read More
Although most discussion of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan has been about the geopolitical implications, a bizarre undertext to the visit was the frequent times that food came up as part of political attacks Read More
Pingtung County recently began offering cash rewards for local residents that bring in an invasive vine, as part of an effort to prevent its spread. The vine, Mikania micrantha, is among the world’s 100 most invasive species, and is known for its ability to rapidly spread, even from branchlings, and it smothers native species by blocking access to sunlight Read More
The latest online blow-up by authoritarian leftists–commonly referred to as tankies–proves a bizarre one Read More
At a time in which calls to remove authoritarian symbols have more often led to proposals for the removal of the Chiang Kai-shek statue in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, pan-Green legislators have recently called for the removal of the Sun Yat-sen portrait in the legislature 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