Bar or Restaurant... Or Both?

Who'd a thunk it? Or in this case, who'd a drunk it? This video was taken a few weeks ago at a Thai restaurant that doubles as a microbrewery. I had the fortune, good or bad is for you to decide, of being there when they had one of their regular beer-guzzling competitions. And the winner is... hey, don't look at me. I was the designated driver.

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"Invisible Nation" and the Indivisibility Difference

Invisible Nation will probably disappoint Taiwan audiences, largely because the documentary was produced for is intended for international audiences, though the film is pragmatically “for Taiwan.” Completed in 2023 and made available to the global documentary film circuit last year, Invisible Nation finally found its way to movie screens throughout Taiwan on June 13, 2025 — a Friday the 13 th release, to be precise. Produced and directed by Vanessa Hope , Invisible Nation was filmed with the cooperation and encouragement of Taiwan’s first democratically elected female president, Tsai Ying-wen (whose Administration of the Republic of China spanned two terms, 2016-2024). Hope could easily be understood as something of a “China hand,” though she would probably not be comfortable with the label. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Hope had been a scholar of international studies for the Council on Foreign Relations in her hometown of New York City. She also earned a doctorate from C...

Trauma, Silence, and "Woman Islands"

Here’s a selection of excerpts from the 2011 English translation (by C.J. Anderson-Wu) of Chung Wenyin’s 1998 novel, Woman Islands ( 女島紀行 ). I provide it here in the hope that it might entice students and scholars, especially those with an interest in Women’s Studies and Feminist Literature, to consider taking up this book as a subject for literary criticism. I have straightened up the grammatical style of the original translation that had attempted to portray the “untranslatable” style of the Chinese text and the author’s insistence upon “maintaining the awkwardness of her writing instead of smoothing it out for English readers.” Although I can appreciate that desire, I chose instead to alter some of the sentence constructions that might come across as more a result of poor proofreading than of conscious choice by the translator. I’m going to hope this won’t be a problem, and I apologize in advance if anyone is offended by my editing choices. But then again, if you want to see...

Fascist Ghosts Must be Dancing in Glee

I have only just seen the official news report that former President Chen Shui-bian and his wife have been sentenced to life in prison for corruption during his eight years in office. Life imprisonment? For theft? And it wasn't even the kind of Bernie Madoff or Enron corruption that emptied the bank accounts of innocent people and left them bereft of financial security in their retirement years. A lifetime in prison? And this while the torturers and murderers who shot the victims of fascist Nationalist execution squads, who dragged people from their homes in the dead of night, remain unpunished to live out the remainder of their lives in comfort and the security of knowing that the machine will protect them? And this while those who supported the murder machines under the two Chiang regimes--the Squirrel and his archenemy the Incompetent--remain respected and free? Not a single person was sentenced to prison for their role in the executions and tortures of the White Terror years,...

My Life as Adoga

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