1 oct. 2010

A suivre : Treasure Hill, 寶藏巖 (Baozhanyan) - la colline des trésors


Voilà l'article de "Taiwan Today" :


C'est, semble t-il, un endroit historique remarquable qui ouvre au public le 2 octobre, après quatre années de rénovation. A noter.

Extraits de l'article :
  • "Treasure Hill was originally used as an ammunition depot under the Japanese colonial regime in the 1930s, and the residence area started to expand after the Kuomintang took over Taiwan in 1945. In the 1980s, as many as 200-plus families were living in this four-hectare area."
  • "In 2004, the Taipei City government designated the once illegal settlement a historical site, with the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs in charge of its refurbishment beginning in 2006."
  • "The hillside neighborhood was lauded by a 2006 New York Times report as one of Taipei’s must-see locations."

Autres articles sur l'évènement :

Treasure Hill reopens as an artist village, Taipei Times, 2010/10/02

Extraits :
  • "Home to veterans of the Chinese Civil War who fled to Taiwan with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) about 60 years ago, Treasure Hill used to be packed with aging and illegal structures built by the residents."
  • "The Taipei City Government designated the community as a historical site in 2004, and the community became the center of attention after the New York Times in 2006 named it one of the must-see destinations in Taiwan."
  • "In 2007, the city government’s Department of Cultural Affairs started a renovation project aimed at turning the area into an artists’ community, and sparked protests from a group of artists living in the neighborhood who refused to leave and vowed to continue occupying the area."

Voir le dépliant touristique et l'affiche (très réussie) : http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikiskate/5040813385/#/photos/nikiskate/5040813385/lightbox/

Localisation, voir http://www.artistvillage.org/thav/Home/AboutAIR :

捷運公館站(綠線)→ 一號出口→羅斯福路四段90巷右轉→汀州路左轉→汀州路三段230巷→ 步行5-7分鐘→ 寶藏巖共生聚落→ 寶藏巖國際藝術村

Voici un article sur "Treasure Hill" de Septembre 2006 :


D'où cette superbe photo panoramique :


Extraits :
  • "Treasure Hill, in ZhongZheng Riverside Park, is arguably the most eccentric neighborhood in Taipei. It is home to the historic Treasure Shrine for GuanYin, Goddess of Mercy. The original temple is almost 300 years old and is located inside the newer temple built around and over it. Since the 1950s it has been a squatter community, with residents from all over Asia and Taiwan. The diversity of languages still spoken there didn't stop the residents from building a hive of houses from salvaged materials on the hill."
  • "Treasure Hill is at the end of Lane 230, DingZhou Road in GongGuan.

Autre article notable :

Extraits :   
  • "Treasure Hill is a maze of mottled old illegal structures packed together on the slopes of a hill in Taipei's Kungkuan district. In highly developed urban Taipei, the village is an anachronism, a fossilized relic of the city's past."
  • "Some of those who do know it refer to it as "Little Chiufen" because its low houses and winding streets recall those of the better-known tourist destination. Its demographics have led others to call it "Taiwan's Rennie's Mill." Like the Hong Kong enclave where many KMT soldiers settled following the Nationalist government's relocation to Taiwan, the bulk of Treasure Hill's residents are single, elderly veterans."

Une photo magnifique de Treasure Hill :



Un autre article magnifique sur Treasure Hill :

Page of Taipei history closes for overhaul, 01/19/2007, By Sean Scanlan

Extraits :
  • "To some, it resembles an oil painting, with layers of burnt ochre brick rising out of a limestone outcrop, while others consider it an eyesore, a painful reminder of Taipei's rural, immigrant past."
  • "As much as 30 percent of the buildings in Taipei were illegal in the late 1950s and '60s."
  • "In its heyday, the community's 200 households shared just two official addresses on Lane 230 of Tingzhou Road: No. 1, a military garrison, and No. 29, a private residence."

    Fire broke out at Pili International Multimedia Inc.'s studios

    Les articles sur le sinistre :

    Fire destroys famous Taiwanese puppet company studios, 2010/09/30, CNA, By Huang Kuo-fang and Sofia Wu

    Extraits :
    • "More than 2,000 puppets that formed a crucial part of Taiwan's folk cultural heritage were destroyed Thursday when an early morning fire engulfed the studios of a famous puppet show company in the central-south county of Yunlin. The fire broke out at Pili International Multimedia Inc.'s studios in the county's Tuku Township in the early morning hours and the blaze raged for more than two hours before it could be extinguished, local firefighters said."
    • "Chris Huang (黃文擇), chairman of the puppet company that produces films and video games featuring the puppets, said all of the puppets, manuscripts, stage props, film production equipment and a number of newly completed films were burned to ashes. "The fire has caused incalculable losses, " Huang said. He added, however, that television puppet shows will not be affected because the company has film reserves and can produce new films at other studios."
    • "Huang comes from Taiwan's most prominent puppet [theater] family, whose members, including his late grandfather Huang Hai-tai (黃海岱) and his father Huang Chun-hsiung (黃俊雄), have continued finding new ways to evolve the traditional artistry of performing with wooden puppets. Their creative performances and skillful management have made them into the living history of Taiwan's puppet show development. Huang, along with his brother Vincent Huang (黃強華), later took up the family baton with a younger generation's vision and passion, forming Pili Multimedia and propelling the company into the modern era by adopting Hollywood production techniques, as well as computer animated special effects and digital sound effects, that took the traditional artform to a whole new level. An official of the Council for Cultural Affairs said the Pili Puppet Theater has become one of Taiwan's most important cultural and creative businesses."
    INTERVIEW: Pili mourns loss of valuable puppets to fire, ART TREASURES:The general manager of Pili Multimedia said that the original puppet prototypes of two main characters perished in Thursday’s fire, Taipei Times

    Extraits :
    • "Compunction and grief written all over his face, Chris Huang (黃文擇) talked about the large fire that hit Pili International Multimedia’s studio on Thursday, in which more than 2,000 puppets used in the performance and filming of Taiwanese traditional puppet theater, known as budaixi (布袋戲), perished."
    • "Among those destroyed in the fire were the original prototypes for Su Huan-chen (素還真) and I Yeh-shu (一頁書), two of the main characters in a well-known Pili budaixi (霹靂布袋戲) series: Su is known for his wisdom and martial arts skills, while I Yeh-shu is his loyal and trustworthy friend."
    • "For more than a decade, Vincent Huang wrote scripts for the plays, while Chris Huang took responsibility for voice dubbing. Pili’s television channel has a record of more than 3.5 million viewers and helped Taiwanese puppet theater go international when one of its shows aired on the Disney Channel in the US.“Budaixi represents a form of Taiwanese cultural heritage, and that it is the most important form of traditional art in Yunlin County,” Chris Huang said."
    Pili puppet show studio destroyed in blaze

    Extraits :
    • "The studio of the Taiwanese Pili hand puppet TV show (霹靂布袋戲), famous for its martial arts storyline and state-of-the-art animation, in Yunlin County was destroyed in a fire early yesterday." 
    • "Chris Huang and Vincent Huang inherited the art form from their grandfather, Huang Hai-dai (黃海岱), one of most revered hand puppet masters in Taiwan."
    • “My big brother is responsible for the script, and I was responsible for writing the chorus lines,” Vincent Huang recalled. The pair used to perform to packed houses in the heyday of hand puppet theater. 
    • "As live puppet shows were out of vogue, the brother established Pili to produce TV hand puppet programs, creating popular shows and characters such as Su and Ye Hsiao-chai."
    A propos de "Dolls"


    28 sept. 2010

    Fils conducteurs en Septembre (1)

    About: Taiwan’s pig blood cake (豬血糕) 
    Les nouvelles :
    Extraits :
    • "Local television stations and newspapers cited unnamed sources in Los Angeles County as saying the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) had banned sales of the food, which is made of pig’s blood and sticky rice."
    • "In Taiwan, pig blood cake is usually eaten as a steamed snack — served on a wooden stick — or cooked in a hot pot."
    • "[...] many people outside Taiwan only learned of the dish after it was voted one of the world’s 10 most unusual foods in a British Web site poll last year."

    Depuis la France : Sur la piste chinoise du frelon asiatique
    Extraits :
    • "Chaque année, le Muséum évalue le terrain gagné par l'insecte à une distance de 100 kilomètres."
    • "Ainsi la ou les reines fécondées dans un nid en Chine auraient-elles trouvé refuge, le temps d'hiverner, au coin d'un présumé carton de pots de bonsaïs prêt à être embarqué pour un long voyage en porte-conteneurs."

    Politique inter-détroit et Santé
    Extrait :
    • "Many Taiwanese believe that a corpse should not be moved for eight hours after a death, fearing that doing so could interfere with the deceased person's soul. [This] traditional idea […] makes organ donations difficult in Taiwan. […] there are an average of 7,000 patients waiting for organ transplants per year, a sharp contrast to the number of donors which averages just over 200."
    Second article :
    Ma must not risk Taiwan blood for PRC deals, Taiwan News, 2010-09-23
    Extraits :
    • "[...] the TAHR and the CSAMA revealed that the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Department of Health had agreed to permit expand imports of blood serum and blood plasma from the PRC earlier this month without advance Legislative approval."
    • "[...] there is ample cause to be worried about the entry of Chinese blood serum and plasma into Taiwan's medical system since China is a high-risk area for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, malaria and other diseases which can be and are transmitted through blood transfusions.
    • "[...] there are grave doubts over whether PRC medical institutions enforce rigorous and comprehensive regulations to ensure that blood products are obtained through voluntary donations and not obtained commercially or through coercion (such as from prisons), much less ensure the safety of such products."
    • "The TAHR expressed concern that the MOEA and DOH could be using a loophole to avoid the requirement for Legislative approval to open a back door for Taiwan medical supply companies to boost imports of blood products from the PRC despite the health risks and the gross violations of human rights in China with regard to human experimentation and forced blood "donation" and commercial sale of blood serum and plasma with inadequate safety precautions."

    Politique inter-détroit et Culture
    Extraits  :
    • "[...] the National Taiwan Museum said it plans to loan a 17-century portrait and other art treasures to the Hubei Provincial Museum in central China and another museum in Fujian province for exhibitions next year."
    • "The portrait is of Koxinga, a general in China's late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)."
    • "In return, the museum in Hubei will loan more than 100 cultural relics to the National Taiwan Museum, in Taipei, for an exhibition slated for November [...]."
    De cet autre article :
    China Times: Taiwan's superb culture is pride of all Chinese, 2010/09/19
    j'ai noté ces phrases plutôt sympathiques :
    • "As a country consisting mainly of immigrants, Taiwan is a melting pot of cultures from China, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Europe and the United States, and it has come into close contact with Southeast Asian culture recently as many Taiwanese have gotten married to women from the Indochinese peninsula."
    • "Different people have set up different regimes on the island and brought with them different cultures. All contribute to Taiwan's cultural vibrancy thanks to its free and open society."

    Politique inter-détroit et DPP
    Dans cet article :
    Voici une déclaration inhabituelle de Tsai :
    • "The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would adopt a more conciliatory stance in cross-strait relations that would seek to find more of a middle ground with China if it were to regain power in 2012, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday."
    • "Tsai used a rare chance to speak with the international press to suggest that the party’s China policies would remain consistent with those under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). This is not the first time the 54 year-old Tsai, a former Mainland Affairs Council chairperson, has sought to reassure the international community that the DPP would no longer pursue the same confrontational cross-strait policies that were a hallmark of former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration."
    • "On Friday last week, she suggested in an interview with the Chinese-language Apple Daily that the DPP would most likely continue Ma’s cross-strait policies and that any changes would have to be supported by public consensus and legislative approval. In a previous meeting with the international press in May, she also insisted the DPP had learned from its eight years in office and would work on a more predictable China policy. She has said that stable cross-strait relations would form a key component of the DPP’s 10-year policy guidelines."

    Tourisme Politique
    Un article vraiment chouette de la part d'un sénateur américain sur le voyage à Taiwan :
    The taste of Taiwan, September 21, 2010 [ Sen. Hank Sanders represents Dallas County in the Alabama Legislature.]
    Extraits :
    • "[Taste] No. 4 – Taiwan has very limited natural resources but it has become the ninth largest economic power in the world. That’s a testimony to the determination and ingenuity of its people. They possess the unique ability to stay on the cutting edge of technology and manufacturing as demonstrated during our visit to ASUS, Inc., an electronic manufacturing firm producing 3D television and other state of the art items. That’s one Taste of Taiwan."
    • "[Taste] No. 5 – The original (native) people of Taiwan, called Aboriginals, are of Polynesian background, not Asian. We met some as dark in color as I am. Their lands were taken and their culture broken by the Japanese occupation from 1895 to the end of World War II. The meal we had at an Aboriginal restaurant was 17 courses and probably our best food experience among so many great food experiences."
    • "[Taste] No. 10 — My dominant impression involved the capacity of the people to not only take what they have and make what they need, but to excel on the world stage in spite of constant threats from one of the world’s biggest and most powerful countries in the world while being officially unrecognized among nations. These are Tastes of Taiwan. Take your pick."
    J'aime bien cet article, c'est rafraichissant, et tellement juste !

    Langue Taiwanaise, Langue Chinoise, Langue Japonaise
    • "There is even a Chinese word for it: tibiwangzi (提筆忘字) or “take pen, forget character.”"
    • "[...] Li says she has become almost dependent on her telephone. “When I can’t remember, I will take out my cellphone and find it [the character] and then copy it down,” she said."
    • "Character amnesia happens because most Chinese use electronic input systems based on pinyin, which translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet."
    • "In Japan, where three writing systems are combined into one, mobiles and computers use the simpler hiragana and katakana scripts for inputting — meaning users may forget the kanji [...]."
    • "“We rely too much on the conversion function on our phones and PCs.”"
    • "“It is frustrating because I always almost remember the character, and lose it at the last minute. I forget if there was an extra line, or where the dot is supposed to go,” she said."
    • "The Wubi input system — available on some Chinese computers and backed by the government — uses character strokes as handwriting does. But the system itself is so difficult to learn that it has failed to gain mass appeal."
    Taiwan provides e-learning program for Chinese language, 2010/09/19, CNA, By Lin Si-yu and James Lee
    Extraits :
    • "Taiwan has released its official version of an online learning program for traditional Chinese characters and an English version for those whose mother tongue is not Chinese [...]. The Ministry of Education (MOE) said the new version features the stroke orders of 4,808 frequently used characters and the 37-symbol "bopomofo, " a Mandarin phonetic system used only in Taiwan, and they come with audio files, helping students to learn traditional Chinese more efficiently."
    • For more information, visit : 
    Politique inter-détroit et Agriculture
    Un article à lire avec une attention particulière (?) :
    China steals Taiwan’s agriculture, Taipei Times, By Lee Wu-chung 李武忠, Aug 22, 2010, TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON, [Lee Wu-chung is a professor of agricultural economics at National Taiwan University]

    Extraits :
    • "The more time one spends in one of China’s innovation parks for Taiwanese farmers, the more depressing they become. Many outstanding domestic Taiwanese species — grouper, Taiwan tilapia, silver perch, sweet fish, Chinese soft-shelled turtle, abalone, orchids, black pearl wax apple, jinzuan pineapple, golden mango, Irwin mango, Gaoshan tea, Jinxuan tea, Cuiyu tea, pearl guava and Yuhebao, or Jade Purse, litchi — are already being planted and bred at an astonishing scale in these parks throughout China."
    • "As a result, once China get their hands on superior Taiwanese species, technologies, machinery and production and marketing experiences, they will be able to eliminate traditional agricultural production and move toward the overall goal of a well-off society."
    • "[...] China [...] is also beginning to reach into Taiwanese agricultural biotechnology. China is planning to import advanced Taiwanese agricultural biotechnology and products by offering preferential treatment in the hope that they will be able to quickly shrink the gap between Taiwan and China in these areas and raise the overall standard of the agricultural biotechnology field in China."
    Politique inter-détroit et Sport
    Une nouvelle qui fait la fierté de Taiwan :
    Ce qui est dit :
    • "Taiwanese golfer Yani Tseng recently rejected a five-year NT$1-billion sponsorship deal offered by a Chinese enterprise, which required her to become a Chinese citizen, her father was cited as saying yesterday. The business, which had been trying to woo the star golfer since last year, approached her again last month with a five-year contract worth US$25 million, plus the use of private jets and a luxury villa in Beijing, the father was quoted by Apple Daily as saying. But the deal came with an extra term requiring Tseng to change her nationality to Chinese. “We cannot change the nationality,” the father, Tseng Mao-hsin, was cited saying. “So we rejected it right away.” The golfer currently is number four in the LPA ranking, having won many important championships."