David on Formosa

Austronesian Taiwan: Linguistics, History, Ethnology, Prehistory was first published in 2000 and has been out of print for past few years. A new edition of the book was published to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Shung Ye Museum and the exhibition of artifacts from Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology. The new edition was edited [...]

The end of this semester marked my completion of the coursework requirements in the Master’s of Taiwan Studies program at NCCU (國立政治大學). The classes I took this semester were Political Development of Taiwan and International Relations of Taiwan. They were both great classes — Taiwan presents a vast amount of rich subject matter on these [...]

The 11th Taipei Film Festival (台北電影節) is on from 26 June to 12 July. This year the film festival venues are all conveniently located in Ximending. Most screenings will be at the Shinkong Cineplex (新光影城) and Zhongshan Hall (中山堂). There are also some outdoor screenings at the Taipei Cinema Park (台北電影主題公園) and a special exhibition [...]

The Taiwan Free Burma Network held a concert in Zhonghe last night to mark the birthday of Burmese democracy movement leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The concert called for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners in Burma. A Free Burma CD featuring music by Taiwanese artists was also released at [...]

The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (台灣民主基金會; TFD) is in the news for all the wrong reasons. There are concerns that direct intervention by the Presidential Office in the TFD’s affairs are undermining its work to promote democracy and human rights. TFD was established in 2003 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and is modelled [...]

It was ten years ago today that I went down to my local 7-Eleven and discovered a brand new newspaper, the Taipei Times. I brought it instead of the Taiwan News* which I usually purchased at the time. Since then the Taipei Times has been my preferred newspaper in Taiwan. A lot has changed in [...]