David on Formosa

A beautiful sunny day greeted participants in the LGBT Pride Parade in Taipei today. Organisers estimated 25,000 people participated in the parade, an increase from 18,000 last year. The theme for this year’s parade was “Love Out Loud”. Participants marched in groups matching the colors of the rainbow. Red for sex, orange for power, yellow [...]

With local elections approaching the campaign is not just being run on the streets but also in cyberspace. The screen shot from the DPP website above shows the party’s candidates for mayor or county commissioner in the end of year local government elections. Beneath each candidate’s photo there are icons linking to Plurk, Facebook, blogs, [...]

William Stanton, the Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), gave a speech at the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University (國立政治大學) this morning. He addressed the topic of US-Taiwan relations highlighting the close ties between the two countries especially in the areas of education, trade and military exchanges. Last week Taiwan [...]

Formosa Betrayed, a political thriller set in Taiwan in the 1980s, now has a worldwide distributor and is set for a release in 15-20 North American cities in February 2010. A tweet from @TaiwaneseAm_org on Twitter said the film will be released on the February 28th weekend. A press release from Taiwanese American.org says the [...]

Reporters Without Borders 2009 report on world press freedom ranked Taiwan 59th in the world. This was a significant drop from Taiwan’s ranking of 36th in 2008. Japan was the leading country in Asia ranked 17th. Reporters Without Borders noted that both South Korea, at 69th, and Taiwan had fallen in the rankings this year. [...]

The streets of Taipei came alive this afternoon with the vibrant, noisy and colorful Hope Parade (世界夢想嘉年華). The parade is an annual event organised by the Dream Community (夢想社區) in Xizhi (汐止), Taipei County. The parade began at Freedom Square before a short march through the streets to Ketagalan Boulevard. After arriving on the boulevard [...]