2-28 Massacres: Remembering the dark side of Taiwan’s history

Feb. 28, 1947. A confrontation occurs between agents of the Monopoly Bureau and a woman cigarette vendor; in their view she is illegally selling cigarettes, and they try to confiscate her life savings. Onlookers intervene on her behalf and one officer opens fire as they flee, killing one of the

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‘Keeping up with the War God’: BOOK REVIEW

Keeping up with the War God, by Steven Crook (Yushan Publications, 2001) Buy it on Amazon.com here This is a fantastic read for anyone who’s already perused all the guidebooks and now wants to delve into some of the deeper historical contexts behind important people, places and mind-bending customs in

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'LONG LIVE THE TAIWANESE PEOPLE’ (Requiem for 2-28 Victims)

The following is an excerpt from the recent anthology of poetry, “The War on Sleep” (2010), by Trista di Genova. The 228 Incident, also known as the 228 Massacre (Chinese: 二二八), was an anti-government uprising in Taiwan that began Feb. 27, 1947, and was violently suppressed by the Kuomintang (KMT)

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Taiwan Architecture: A Festival of Junk

How and why the island’s modern-day architecture evolved into such a sad state — an aesthetically offensive living museum of bile-inspiring monstrosities By Trista di Genova The Wild East A few years ago, when producer Will Tiao and his crew were scouting locations for the film ‘Formosa Betrayed’, they discovered

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Will Tiao on 'Formosa Betrayed': ‘I can defend my movie to the T”

By Trista di Genova Wild East senior correspondent At a speaking engagement jointly sponsored by Prof. Jerome Keating’s Breakfast Club and the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club (TFCC) and held at Central News Agency’s headquarters in Taipei Saturday, Will Tiao, the American-born Taiwanese writer/actor/producer of a controversial new independent film, “Formosa

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Study explores the "Kinmen Identity"

See original article in the China Post here. By Trista di Genova The history of Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen Island, known in the West as Quemoy, goes back 1600 years. When the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan after the Chinese civil war of 1949, the battles didn’t stop there for the residents

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