Well, a short-lived English-teaching phenomenon is over, at least for the moment. It was in the news today that Tainan City garbage trucks had, six months ago, suspended indefinitely their broadcasts of English lessons. "The city government decided to temporarily suspend the service because it has so many other policies it needs to deliver to residents," said Environmental Bureau Chief Chang Huang-chen, as quoted in the Taiwan News (September 6, 2008). Well, considering that nobody could ever really evaluate the effectiveness of the service, it seems appropriate that the mobile loudspeakers now carry warnings of health problems in Vietnamese and Thai "for the benefit of foreign spouses who do not understand Chinese." Tainan City has, according to the news article, recently been struggling with a spreading crsis of dengue fever and enterovirus. In these circumstances, I think we can forgive the bureau's decision to "trash" the city's "English Time."
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...
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