Chinese rapper Wang Yi-tai was denied permission to perform in Taiwan last month by the Mainland Affairs Council. This was on account of several reasons, including that Mercury Entertainment, which represents Wang, began selling tickets on July 1st...
The young audience exclaimed when the dancers of Cal Y Canto dance group wheeled a giant goldfish kite to swoop over them, aghast with wonder. Cal Y Canto‘s performances at the New Taipei City Children’s Art Festival had created a following for themselves. Their performances between July 14 to July 20 at the Children’s Art Festival regularly gathered a crowd of youthful audience every night at 8:30pm. The dancers saw their free for all performances for children as a way to “recover the public space"...
Chinese United Front activity involving Taiwanese celebrities and influencers has increasingly been in the spotlight after a number of recent incidents...
In the wake of Lai Ching-te’s presidential inauguration a number of Taiwanese entertainers that work in the Chinese market have made statements expressing their opposition to Taiwanese independence. This has often taken the form of entertainers reposting statements from Chinese state-run outlet CGTV...
As the judge announced, "America's next drag superstar is - Nymphia Wind!", the room of filled with anticipation and excitement. Nymphia, wearing her iconic all-yellow outfit and high ponytail, covered her face and kneeled down dramatically, overwhelmed by her victory. Born in the United State and raised in Taiwan, Nymphia, otherwise known as Leo Tsao, developed a passion for making clothes and dressing up as a teenager. She transformed her teenage enthusiasm into a thriving career and made history for queer people in Asia by becoming the first drag queen of East Asian heritage to win RuPaul's Drag Race. Her victory sparked discussions about Taiwanese drag culture, LGBTQ+ rights, and Asian representation across the globe. This article explores how Nymphia evokes the exoticized fascination of Asia in the Global North through her performances and recodes this fascination into tools that empower queer people in Asia...
The aesthetics of presidential inaugurations often reflect the image that incoming presidential administrations hope to convey, with regard to everything from performances to the meals eaten at the presidential banquet. This was the case with the Lai inauguration today, as could be seen from the performances that preceded the inauguration...
The International Journal of Taiwan Studies, one of the flagship journals of the discipline, published an unusual piece several months ago by Flair Donglai Shi. Though framed as an attack on Shih Shu-mei’s concept of the Sinophone, the crux of the piece’s argument is effectively that Taiwan studies is insufficiently Sinocentric...
On August 1, 2020, the National Museum of China launched “Unity is Strength: An Art Exhibition on the Fight Against COVID-19”, displaying 200 works created during the COVID-19 pandemic featuring themes such as rescue scenes and epidemic prevention. This exhibition places Xi at the center of authoritarian power, as well as China’s pairing of prosperity and social control, with regards to the fight against COVID-19...
