David on Formosa

Exclaim! TV from Canada visited Taiwan in April this year to report on Taiwan’s burgeoning indie music scene. They attended Spring Scream (春天吶喊) and also checked out live venues in Taipei. A five-part series of videos documenting Taiwan’s music scene is now available for viewing online. Part One is embedded above and links to all five videos can be found at the end of this post.

I contacted  Exclaim! TV’s Sam Sutherland by e-mail and asked him about his impressions of his time in Taiwan. He was surprised that at Spring Scream not many people were drinking. Sam said, “At any music festival in North America, the beer tent is as crowded as the main stage. But it seemed like James and I were the only people bothering to buy beers in a crowd of thousands.” Read more »

Although the “five cities” elections (五都選舉) are still more than three months away, billboards promoting election candidates have been in place for many months. Over the last few months I have been photographing some of the billboards around Taichung. Some of the photos with comments are included in this blog post. A larger collection can be found in the “Five Cities” Election Campaign Posters gallery at my Taiwan photo gallery site. Although the focus is on Taichung I hope I will get the chance to add some photos from other cities in Taiwan before the elections are held.

Most of the posters tend to have a pretty simple design. There is a large photo of the candidate occasionally adopting poses such as the raised fist.  There are usually only a few words describing the candidate such as their party and the position they are running for. This is also often accompanied by words such as “hard-working”, “capable” and “honest” indicating the candidate’s qualities and also the phrase “earnestly requesting your vote”. A few posters do vary from this theme and get a little bit more creative though. Read more »

After a long wait Formosa Betrayed (被出賣的台灣) has come to Taiwan. I saw the film at the Taichung premiere on Monday night. The premiere was well attended and producer Will Tiao was there to to introduce the film. Tiao said it was the first ever Hollywood film about Taiwan’s White Terror period. He also said that as the film was produced in the USA and Thailand some details are not accurate, but the important point was to tell this story about Taiwan to the world.

The film is described as “inspired by actual events”. The murder of a Taiwanese American professor at the beginning of the movie is an obvious reference to the murder of Taiwanese writer Henry Liu in California in 1984. The Kaohsiung Incident, the Lin Yi-hsiung family murders, spies on US university campuses and the 228 Massacre are also alluded to in the film in varying degrees of detail.

Audiences in Taiwan will already be familiar with much of the historical background to the events portrayed in the film. Those with background knowledge of Taiwan’s history might find some of the details are not accurate or don’t concord with the chronology of the White Terror period and the early 1980s the film is set in. However, the focus should really be on the story of how an American FBI agent discovers the truth about the true nature of the ROC regime on Taiwan. It is this process of discovery by that forms the central part of the story. Read more »

I spent last week visiting Marqwang and Smangus, two communities in the houshan (後山) area of Jianshi Township (尖石鄉) in Hsinchu County. The visit was to conduct field work for a research project about the management of the Shimen Reservoir Catchment following the implementation of the Shimen Reservoir and Catchment Area Remediation Special Act (石門水庫及其集水區整治特別條例) which was passed by the Legislative Yuan in January 2006. The act created a special budget of NT$25 billion to upgrade the facilities of the Shimen Reservoir and management of the catchment area.

The Shimen Reservoir suffered severe impacts following Typhoon Aere in 2004 and several other typhoons in the period from 2001 to 2005. These typhoons caused large inflows of the sediment into the dam and compromised the ability of the reservoir to supply water to Taoyuan and Taipei counties. Michael Turton recently published a post detailing some of the problems based on an article that was published in CommonWealth magazine (天下雜誌). These two articles provide excellent background information. Read more »

I had a busy day yesterday taking photos around Taichung. The day began at an Aboriginal Cultural Festival organised by the Taichung City Government. The event featured some traditional dancing as well as some fun activities like the three-legged race pictured above and a tug-of-war. There was also a good range of aboriginal style food on offer — plenty of assorted meats on the BBQ and some fresh fruits like grapes and peaches grown in the mountains.

The colorful clothing of the Amis makes for great photos. I have a complete set of photos from this event at flickr.  Read more »

Taiwan Pictures Digital Archive is a collection of over 3,200 historical photos of Taiwan that was previously launched as Vintage Formosa in March 2008. All the images were collected by  Marc who has just completed a great redesign of the site.

I had a letter published in the Taipei Times today suggesting some reforms Taiwan could make to its electoral system. I have previously discussed the importance of referendums for Taiwan and the belligerence of the KMT in opposing them. I also wrote about reforming the voting system for the Legislative Yuan following the election in 2008.

Since democratization began in Taiwan in the early 1990s, there have been a number of reforms to the electoral system. One of the largest changes was the reform of the voting system for the Legislative Yuan that came into effect in 2008.

The 2008 legislative election, the first under the new system, resulted in the pan-blues having a super majority. The most recent conflict in the legislature has come about because the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has used this majority to push the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) through the legislature without any substantial scrutiny.

A thorough review of the ECFA by the legislature may have done much to allay the fears of Taiwanese about the content of the agreement. However, after the rejection of petitions for a referendum on the ECFA, Taiwanese have further been denied the chance to submit the ECFA to the scrutiny it deserves. Read more »