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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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) [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]