Opinions, dreams & videos

Is it better to further one’s study or to immerse oneself in a job? This question often haunts the new graduate. On the one hand, they are thrilled by the opportunities that their freshly acquired diploma brings with it: entering adulthood, earning an income, testing their skills at something concrete, exercising responsibilities, even if such responsibilities are modest in scope… On the other hand, they realize that they do not know much yet, that they may earn a bigger salary within a few years if they master extra knowledge and become more competent, that holding a job might soon appear to her more boring or stressful than remaining a student…  Decididng between Present and Future, between different kinds of gains and losses...

Read more: Studying or working: a choice always to be renewed

Opinions, dreams & videos

Wafa Ghermani is currently a doctorate candidate in cinema studies (La Sorbonne and Lyon Universities). She focuses on the evolution of identities in Taiwanese film history since 1895 (the beginning of the Japanese colonial era) until today. She explains here how she delimited her field of research and gives some of its oultines while retracing for us briefly the timeline of cinema in Taiwan.

Read more: CEFC Files: National Identity in the History of Taiwanese Film

Opinions, dreams & videos

At the beginning of a new year, what wish do I want to express for myself and for the people whom I know and love? Let me think… Maybe, you’ll consider my wish to be rather unambitious (but think twice); I just wish all of us to cherish and nurture a tiny little virtue – a virtue often neglected: Attentiveness. Attentiveness to what? Well… to nothing in particular. Pure attentiveness. Attention to anything that may happen, to silence as well as music - to the changes that are occurring within oneself, society, the cosmos… Or, maybe, if such attentiveness is truly to be assigned an object: attention to the current of life that runs within the depth of my inner being.

There are privileged moments when the breeze of the night...

Read more: The Gift of Attentiveness

Opinions, dreams & videos

Lin Poyer is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming. Her recent work focuses on the Micronesian experience and history of the Pacific War, during the Japanese colonization and afterwards. In December 2011, she was invited to Taipei by the Taiwan Center for Pacific Studies to give a series of lectures presenting her research. We had the opportunity to meet her beforehand and learn about the impact of WWII in Micronesia and the specificities of its oral history in the region.

Read more: Micronesian Memories of War in the Pacific

Opinions, dreams & videos

This is the trailer of the film I realized last summer.

"Clasping your consciousness
your back turned to the beast, 
you hide in a dark, dank hole.

Wake before the rotting of the flesh,
Deflowered."

Read more: Deflower

Opinions, dreams & videos

Last month,  a very special event happened in my street: my neighbor, the god San Wang Ye (三王爺), decided to travel back home for his birthday!



The god San Wang Ye is originally from Tainan, a city around 300km south of Taipei, and he had arrived in Taipei a long time ago, so long ago that I don't remember!

I had been wondering for a long time what the temple in my street was all about: this small, unassuming, but well taken care of temple, that you can hardly see by day, but is always shining and often holds events at night. Some lanterns are usually hanging, a vague reminder that a god lives there. Day after day, I had made up stories of mafia and gangsters, of witches and weird spirits, stories of everything that could...

Read more: San Wang Ye: A god goes back home!

Opinions, dreams & videos

On October 3rd, 2011, I embarked with dancer Kao Yu-i and musician Yang Zijie on a theatrical tour to Marseille, France. We gave five performances in five different parts of the city. Here is a video excerpt from the fourth performance which took place at the Alcazar library on October 14th:

"Segments from two separate dreams create a beautiful moment shining through lucid shadows
Heading towards an unknown, far away destination, the people gradually disperse
In the dream, everyone has already passed away, gathered in the tranquil darkness;
when an object is stripped to its essence, the only thing we can see out from the darkness, is light
Dead branches protrude awkwardly from the lifeless beaches, yet sprout new roots
I hope you...

Read more: Flowers of Liberty

Opinions, dreams & videos

The Book of Revelation is the last one of the New Testament. Its style, its images and its dramatic aspect cannot but astonish its readers. Yet, it remains one of the most widely read of the Bible, especially in times of crisis.

It is difficult to understand its style and meaning if one does not know that it belongs to a literary genre: the “apocalyptic genre”, which developed in the Jewish world around two centuries before the birth of Jesus and will still last for one more century after his death.

Writers of “apocalyptic books” intend to reveal to their readers the project of God: the coming of His Day, when His Kingdom will be definitely established on earth. They first look at the past of Israel, reflect with their readers...

Read more: A Book Written for the Present

Opinions, dreams & videos

Stéphane Corcuff is a political scientist trained in Sinology and Geopolitics. When he is not on sabbatical research in Taipei, he is also a professor at Lyon Institute of Political Studies and lecturer at Paris’ National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations. When we visited the CEFC, Taipei branch, Stéphane explained some conclusions from his past research leading up to his current program of study based around identity politics in Taiwan and the geopolitics of Taiwan since the 17th century. He draws a parralel between Zheng Keshuang (鄭克塽) - the grandson of Koxinga (鄭成功) - who was briefly the leader of Taiwan (1681-83), and the incumbent President of the ROC, Ma Ying-jeou. He then uses this historical...

Read more: CEFC Files: Neighbour of China, Taiwan's Liminality

Opinions, dreams & videos

Daniel Arroyo is 29 years old and he is a Spanish painter. He studied Fine Arts at Barcelona University and Ecole National Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. He has been living in Taipei for 7 months where he is currently learning the Chinese language and where he hopes to exhibit his work soon. He is very interested in seeing how his work will evolve in contact with Asian culture and Asia's approach to the sacred and the everyday, the dialogue between these two being a major driver of his artistic creation.

Read more: Between the Horror and the Sublime

Opinions, dreams & videos

Taipei-based filmmaker Pinti Zheng teams up with the members of avant-jazz project Flâneur Daguerre for this documentary exploring their music, their concept of "sound images," how they "wander" through musical space, and the musical life in Taipei. Includes footage from recording sessions, live shows, and interviews. (edited by Pinti Zheng with Louis Goldford)

Read more: The Flâneur in Taiwan

Reading Group

It's 8 in the morning on a very rainy 10th November. The weather report said that today would be the first cold spell since winter began in earnest. The terrible weather has failed to put off the head of the Tien Educational Centre and the publisher of Renlai Monthly, Father Jacques Duraud, from donating copies of the magazine to the prison.

Father Duraud has brought 500 copies of Renlai to the Taiwan Taipei Prison located in Guishan township, Taoyuan County in his "vintage" car. The image of this white bearded man, driving a mechanical reindeer through punishing weather to bring a gift of letters and learning to the inmates of the prison would almost put one in mind of a modern Saint Nick.

Read more: Renlai Sent to Prison

Opinions, dreams & videos

Their knowledge of China is thin. They relate to the world outside through a limited range of material symbols rather than through deep cultural engagement.[1]

To those of us following media commentary immediately after Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard pronounced “we are truly already a decade into an Asian century”[2], the above statement would be familiar.

Routine sentiment appeared on the airwaves: Australian students show no interest in studying Asian languages; government funding is misdirected; there is an entrenched failure of Australians to grasp even the most basic cultural aspects of our northern neighbours. Not just China, but India, Indonesia, South Korea and the rest. Even Japan, our old mate, remains as...

Read more: An all-new flavour? Australia’s Asian Century