Just a few km south of the northeastern Taiwan city of Jaosi is Ilan (Yilan), home of the Taiwan Theater Museum. Formally opened in 1990 as the Taiwanese Opera Museum, its exhibits include artifacts relating to Taiwanese and Beiguan Opera, and Puppet theatre. In the opinion of your review team here at WoWasis, the puppets […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Culture & History' Category
WoWasis visits Taipei’s Xingtian Temple and fortune tunnel
There’s more than first meets the eye at Taipei’s Xingtian temple. It’s deity is Guangong, patron saint of merchants. The temple itself has soaring, ship-prow roofs adorned with carved dragons, and inside you’ll see people standing in line to get blessed by nuns in blue robes, who wave incense onto the clothes of visitors in […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Woman Islands,’ Taiwanese fiction by Chung Wenyin
Chung Wenyin is one of Taiwan’s most prolific writers of fiction. Originally published in Chinese in 1998, Women Islands (2011, ISBN 978- 986-82340-1-7) now appears translated into English. This novel is the tale of a young Chinese woman torn between familial responsibilities, her own personality, and the fact that she’s unprepared for the job market […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis visits the Chaotian Temple in Beigang, Taiwan
Located a few km northwest of the central Taiwanese city of Chiayi is the city of Beigang, where the flamboyantly exotic temple of Chaotian is situated. It’s one of Taiwan’s most important temples dedicated to the sea goddess Mazu, the deity of one of the major folk beliefs in the coastal provinces in Taiwan and […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Formosa in Fiction,’ by Rolf-Peter Wille
Rolf-Peter Wille is a German writer that has lived in Taiwan since 1978, which makes 33 years as of this writing. He is also a pianist who has performed all over the world both as soloist as well as in a piano duo with his wife, Lina Yeh, who also serves as one of the […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Angelwings,’ queer fiction from Taiwan
Oh how we desperately wanted to like Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction from Taiwan (2003, ISBN 0-8248-2661-2). It had all the markings of a winner, ten short fiction stories told from a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender perspective (referred to in Taiwan as the tonqzhi and ku’er wenxue movements). Here at WoWasis, our problem was that the […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis visits Taiwan’s Yingge Ceramics Museum
Located roughly 30 minutes outside of downtown Taipei, the Yingge Ceramics Museum, located in New Taipei City, is well worth the visit. Housed in a dynamic glass-concrete-steel building, the museum houses some 2,000 pieces of pottery, many of which are remarkable. The history of pottery making in Taiwan is ancient, the quality outstanding. Permanent exhibitions […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Wang Wen-hsing’s ‘Family Catastrophe’ from Taiwan
When originally written in 1972, Wang Wen-hsing’s ‘Family Catastrophe’ created a ton of controversy. His story of a dysfunctional family flew in the face of the Confucian concept of respect for parents. The story revolves around a young man named Fan Yeh, and is unfolded in a non-traditional time-lapse interpretation involving an older step-brother, a […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis visits historic Lin An Tai House, Taipei
Like many other nations, Taiwan has done a great job of tearing down its old houses in its surge to create a modern country. Aside from its venerated temples, there’s precious little left of Taiwan’s architectural past. Fortunately, Taipei has preserved a very old house that was built in 1785 by Lin Chin-Ming, and moved […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Eye of the Times: Centennial Images of Taiwan’
Taiwan is a country richly documented in photography. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic, the Taiwan Fine Arts Museum in Taipei in May of 2011 launched a photography retrospective documenting the many facets of Taiwan through historical and contemporary photography. The extraordinary richness of the exhibition is documented in its […]
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