Who designs these things?
In this recent photo from Taiwan News, a model poses with newly launched audio products during a press conference to promote the upcoming 2006 International Hi-End Show.
City Council members in Irvine, California found themselves the objects of the ire of the city’s 2,800 Taiwanese residents thanks to a poorly-thought-out sister city agreement with China that expressly stipulates non-recognition of the existence of Taiwan.
The sister-city memorandum with Xuhui District in Shanghai, signed in late May, included promises not to send official city delegations to Taiwan, not to fly the Taiwanese flag and not to play the Taiwanese national anthem or attend National Day celebrations.
It also banned the use of the terms “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan” and stipulates that Irvine recognizes “that there is only one China.”
The City Council backed down and apologized for the error when about 175 angry protestors showed up for a council meeting.
The council also rescinded the original memo with the Chicoms, and said they would attempt to negotiate a new agreement, promising to scrap the agreement entirely if the two sides cannot agree on new terms.
Chang Jui-chen took this photo the other day which shows an orchid with a remarkable resemblance to a pair of traditional Dutch wooden clogs.
I’ve seen everything now!
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso has declared himself in the run to succeed Junichiro Koizumi when the prime minister steps down as he says he will do this September. Aso says he is confident of securing the backing of the minimum of 20 lawmakers required to run.
Aso points out that of the four prospective candidates, only he has stated clearly that he will run.
Aso is known for making public statements that irritate Japan’s Asian neighbors.
In one instance, he called China a military threat. He has also accused Beijing of using beautiful women as spies to lure Japanese diplomats into revealing classified information.
He also credited Taiwan’s high educational standards to Japanese colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century. Tokyo’s imperial conquests are remembered bitterly in the region.
With Aso in the race for prime minister, this autumn’s contest promises to an interesting one, indeed.
Back in February, Marie Mockett posted some interesting photos here about the Japanese tradition of placing holly and sardine heads on door fronts during Setsubun there. Marie said that her mother explained that it was a very old Japanese custom, and is intended to help ward off demons (oni).
During the Dragon Boat Festival here in late May/early June each year (it falls on the 5th day of the 5th month on the lunar calendar), called Duanwu Jie (端午節), there is a tradition that was once an integral part of the childhood memories of many people over 30 years of age, but is fast disappearing year after year as the modern age takes its toll on old customs. But some people still hang cattail and Chinese mugwort bouquets near their front doors to ward off evil.
In my ten years here, I had never seen these mugwort and cattail bouquets on front doors, until someone pointed one out to me last week on a local side street and I said to meself: “Whoa, how come I never saw those before?”
Learn something new every day. [And what I also found interesting is how both Japan and Isla Formosa use old traditions of placing certain kinds of superstitious bouquets on front doors during holidays to ward off evil spirits. My guess is that both these traditions had their genesis long ago in ancient China, and later emigrated to the Japanese archipelago and this once-green piece of real estate off the coast of the Middle Kingdom.
Although former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui, who was educated in Tokyo and speaks fluent Japanese, attended the opening ceremony for a Japanese war memorial in Taiwan on February 8, along with former Japanese soldiers and members of a rightwing Japanese civic group that rented a parcel of land for the site, government officials in Taiwan are now dismantling the colonial-era memorial and apologizing to local citizens for the gaffe.
An article in the Taipei Times, explains the brouhaha:
Taipei County Government officials say that they will order the demolition of a controversial war memorial that critics say eulogizes Japanese militarism. The Taipei County Deputy Commissioner admitted that it was inappropriate to allow the monument to be set up on county land and apologized to the public. At issue is a memorial at the Wulai Waterfall Park that was set up recently by a Japanese civic group on land rented from the county in commemoration of a team of Taiwanese Aboriginal soldiers that fought for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. The structure comprises a series of stone tablets with inscriptions in Japanese that mourn the deceased soldiers, commend their bravery and sacrifice for Japan, narrate the history of the establishment of the team and express loyalty to the emperor of Japan.
Taiwanese travel writer Windy Yang (known as the “Spa Lady of Taiwan”) has been to Japan many times over the past 25 years, and her English-language website describes her trips around the island archipelago.
One chapter is devoted to Oshin, possibly NHK’s most popular TV drama ever aired and broadcast in over 50 countries.
Have you ever seen Oshin?
The first time I saw it was in Alaska, watching it with some Korean friends who had told me it was actually a Korean movie since the actors spoke in Korean. It wasn’t until I came to Japan in 1991 that I finally learned the true story about the movie.
A pop group in Taiwan named 2moro has come up with a cute remix of that funny Romanian folk song that became an Internet hit last year, and the Mandarin version now getting lots of play on MTV Asia is titled Shabu Shabu.
Here’s a link. Scroll down to the listen icon and click if it works, and if it doesn’t maybe someone in the comments can find a way to show us another link to listen to the song.
It’s very hummable and safe for work!
Here’s an ironic twist: insularity blinds China, the most populous country in the world and the fourth-largest in terms of land mass, while openness and magnanimity are more prevalent on the island of Taiwan.
That’s the picture Ralph Jennings paints in this Kyodo article. Jennings reports that Beijing is trying to seduce the Taiwanese by harking back to World War II history and depicting Japan as their common enemy. The Chinese are also trying to pin the blame for Taiwan’s self-rule on Japan. Their efforts have run into a serious obstacle, however—the Taiwanese aren’t buying the sales pitch.
“Senior Chinese officials would like ordinary citizens on the mainland to see Japan as an aggressor that wrenched Taiwan away in the Sino-Japanese war, but unfortunately for Beijing, the attitudes of many Taiwanese undercut that view,” said Gordon Chang, author of the 2001 book “The Coming Collapse of China.”
“You’ve got to look at history and look at reality. Most Taiwanese people see things that way,” KMT spokesman Chang Jung-kung said recently.
Beijing’s concerns include more than just reunification. They also fret that Taiwan will develop stronger ties with both Japan and the United States. Moreover, China now admits that their Japan-bashing stems in part from domestic concerns. How’s this for an Orwellian quote?
Lin Zhibo, commentator of the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, said late last year in reference to Japan that “having an enemy country and external peril forces us to strengthen ourselves.”
Perhaps the most delicious irony of all is that the only people to be fooled are the Chinese themselves–even members of the media:
“When I meet Chinese journalists, they ask me why Japan is so disliked in Asia, and I say ‘not really, a lot of Asian countries really appreciate Japan’s efforts,’ ” said Keiji Ide, spokesman for the Japanese Embassy in Beijing.
If I were part of the Chinese leadership, I’d be worried too. The more they open up and let events develop naturally, the more likely it becomes that political and cultural behavior in the behemoth of China will be driven by the pint-sized powerhouses of Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Not to mention their bete noire, Japan.
Westerners teaching English in Japan and other Asian countries have been known to go the extra mile, but this guy’s amazing.
Lani Gerity is a Canadian doll and puppetmaker who lives in Nova Scotia. Having grown up in Japan and Taiwan, she now focuses on the therapeutic value of non-traditional art forms.
Her e-zine titled Wabi-Sabi in Art and Dolls is free for the asking.
The very married-with-children Ang Lee, the Taiwan-born director who made the current Hollywood hit “Brokeback Mountain” — which some pundits are calling “the gay cowboy movie” — recently told an interviewer about how he sees the differences in how Westerners view homosexuality and how Asians see it.
When it comes to attitudes about homosexuality, my personal theory is that Eastern culture is more relaxed than in the West. This stems from a difference in why a culture perceives homosexuality to be wrong — in Western culture, it stems from religion, and you are condemned if you are gay. Eastern culture seems more, flexible — and being gay is more of a social issue than a religious one; there is no God deity to offend. The West also seems to tolerate lesbians more than gays because it’s a very macho culture; homosexuality is not okay because it threatens this culture. — Ang Lee
I don’t get the attraction here. Can someone explain it all to me?
Junko Wong of JWC Japan and curator of the Behind Blythe exhibit brings a new level of understanding and appreciation to the complexity of doll creation and the intensive collecting and customizing these dolls encourage.
The Blythe doll is unique because if you pull the cord behind the doll’s head, her eyes change color.
Really?
Photo via Taipei Times
A group of ninjas from the Iga-ryu Ninja sect in Mie Prefecture is setting out a global stealth tour after the New Year’s holidays are over.
Starting on January 12, the group will make a six-day trip to Taiwan and then “stealthily” (the press release from the tourist organization sponsoring their tour uses that very word) work their way to South Korea, North America and Europe.
Via Mainichi Shimbun
Ian Hideo Levy has written a few novels in Japanese, without resorting to a translator. Now a German expat in Taiwan named Cay Marchal has written a collection of essays directly in Chinese, without translation.
In a recent interview, Mr. Marchal explains how he learned to write in Chinese characters, after a long apprenticeship that began in 1994.
Whether it be in Japan, China, Taiwan, New York or Pais, some critics — on both sides of the gender aisle — question whether using beautiful young women to attract consumers to car or computer exhibitions sends the wrong message to society.
Jean Lin in Taiwan looks at the issue here.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using beauty. It is, after all, using what you were born with. And of course we help sell the products. We attract more people for the companies. Plus, showgirls have to take days of classes before the exhibitions to learn about the products. We have to know the product in order to sell it… I stopped when I made enough money for college and graduate school. That’s how I paid for my MBA degree in the USA.”
– Eli Hsiao, 26, former campaign girl
“Chink” is an insult word from an earlier era, when Caucasians in North America often referred to Chinese people as “chinks”, and yes, it was and is a slur word. But now an “ABC” singer from Taiwan — that’s “American-Born Chinese” person, or ABC, sometimes called ABT for American-Born Taiwanese — named Lee Hom Wang (stage name just Lee Hom) is releasing an album called Unparalleled Hero that calls itself “chinked-out” music.
Apparently, Chinked-Out is a new musical style created by Lee Hom himself, which blends Chinese traditional music with Western hip-hop rhythms.
Wonder what the PC police will say about this new term?
Then, I coined the term “chinked-out”. Derived from the historically derogatory racial slur “chink”, used to out-down Chinese people, “chinked-out” repossesses the word, turns its negative connotations upside-down, and uses them as material to fuel the new sound of this music. The term describes an effort to create a sound that is international, and at the same time, Chinese. — Lee Hom
Here’s some food for thought: an art student in Thailand named Kittiwat Unarom has come up with a startling new idea — bread made to look like a human face!
He says he wants people to ponder whether they are consuming food, or whether food is consuming them.
When engineers in Taiwan were building the world’s tallest building, called Taipei 101, everyone said don’t worry, it will be perfectly safe.
But now, this!
Engineers in Japan planning on building megaskyscrapers in the future should think twice.
The weight of the world’s tallest skyscraper, Taipei 101, specially built to withstand Taiwan’s frequent earthquakes, could be causing a rise in the number of tremors beneath it, according to Lin Cheng-horng, an earthquake specialist at the National Taiwan Normal University.
Professor Lin says the Taipei 101 building, named for the number of floors it has, might rest on an earthquake fault line.
Oops! There goes the neighborhood!
