Women in Asia

Women in Asia

Sixteen years ago, Chang Shu-mei came to teach at Wu Lai Middle School. She already had 13 years of teaching experience before that. She had high expectations when she first came in the mountains, but after a year, she began to doubt of herself. The educational method which evaluated grades by written examination just put a bored grin on aborigine children’s faces. As the teachers had to finish the programs in a certain time, she had no choice but to “accelerate” the speed of teaching. But the children could no longer understand anything at all. This situation got worse and worse. So Shu-mei thought: “Have I done something wrong? Where did I go wrong?” The confidence built by long experience of teaching had disappeared in a...

Read more: The "Blackboard Revolution"

Women in Asia

Directed by HSU YEN LING
Taipei Blooming production
Length: 1 hour and 30 minutes

‘Take Care’ is the first production of TAIPEI BLOOMING, a theatre group founded by Hsu Yen Ling last year. The show will be performed at Guling Avant Garde Theatre from July 1 to July 10 2011. The main question raised in this new production deals with abandoned and injured animals through the story of a lesbian couple; one is a veterinary surgeon, the other a teacher. Italso raises the question of the complexity of the relationships between human beings, between human beings and animals, and between animals.

Hsu Yen Ling, well known as an extra gifted performer, presents her fifth show as art director: “I tried to find a new way to write a...

Read more: A review of the play 'Take Care'

Women in Asia

I believe that what is taken as a school system here is in reality institutionalized training. I do not believe students are educated as much as programmed. I do not believe they learn, they perform intellectual operations which are required of them. I do not believe that school is a place where students grow up, maturing intellectually as well as emotionally and socially. Although lasting bonds are created between young people trying to make it through the system, “growing up”, from a western perspective, does not happen.
Academically there is a truly enormous amount of information that must be memorized in order to pass the multiple choice test. And because there are not the end of semester tests that I remember, after the exams...

Read more: Training VS. Education

Women in Asia

A recent survey conducted by the Research development and Evaluation Commission in Taiwan gave some ‘positive’ results regarding the progress of gender equality in Taiwanese society: for example, approximately 86% of respondents said that men and women should share equal responsibilities at work and at home while 80% “disagreed with the idea that men should be the master at home and women should obey them”.

To what extent are these opinions reflected by reality? Actually, the 2010 figures published by the Service of Accounting and Statistics of the Executive Yuan are not so bad: they show improvement in the decreasing of inequalities between men and women in the work environment in terms of salary difference as an example or...

Read more: The master at home

Women in Asia

Read more: Crafting the future

Women in Asia

From Classic to Improvisation
I was born in Taiwan on Feb. 27, 1974. I received my Master’s degree in pipa performance in the Chinese instruments department at Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. I am a pipa soloist, and have performed solo recitals, concertos, multimedia-performances, improvisation performances, as well as master classes, lectures and workshops in Asia (Taiwan, Beijing, Singapor), and also in Europe, the United States, and South America.
I chose to learn the pipa, because it is very suitable to do sound experimentations. I also play the ruan as my minor instrument. I compose my own music and most of the time I like to improvise. I started with classical Chinese music, then got the opportunity to cooperate with...

Read more: Chao-yun's dialogue with the pipa

Women in Asia

In Taiwan, the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS), has been fighting for the rights of former prostitutes since 1999, In 1997 the previously legal profession was criminalised under Chen Shuibian.
Li Jun, who turned to legal prostitution after her divorce, set up the organisation to struggle for the now jobless (or illegal) prostitutes after the law took effect in 2006, struggling for a longer buffer zone period for retraining for different jobs.

Having been delegitimised, the girls often had nowhere left to turn, many of them were far from earning sufficient savings to retire and most were old enough that it would have been difficult to change profession with only 2 years of legality. Furthermore, as in many societies, they...

Read more: Roses in full bloom

Women in Asia

Roxana Saberi is an Iranian-American journalist and a friend, who was recently released from Tehran’s Evin prison - much to the relief of family, friends, online petitioners and anyone who was aware of her situation in the world. Roxana was arrested in late January this year and was initially thought to have been arrested for purchasing a bottle of wine, a Foreign Ministry spokesman later said she was detained for working in the country with expired press credentials. After weeks of detention inside Tehran’s Evin Prison, she was convicted in the revolutionary court on April 14 of espionage for the United States. They couldn’t be any further from the truth.

For six years, Saberi has worked openly as a freelance journalist in Iran...

Read more: Roxana Saberi's Release

Women in Asia

I called Sister Denise Coghlan the day I arrived in Phnom Penh. I had heard about her engaging work in banning landmines from Fr. Jerry Martinson and was determined to meet this extraordinary woman who has spent the last two decades of her life in Cambodia. She invited me for dinner on a Thursday night, whereby I found myself in the midst of a private farewell party for one of the priest-to-bes. It was not until our second meeting together that I was able to get down to ask her all my questions.

Denise Coghlan is a sister of mercy from Australia. She was working in Thai Refugee Camps with the Jesuit Refugee Service before their decision to separate the crew to focus on other fractions of the civil war. It was decided that some would stay...

Read more: Woman on a mission

Women in Asia

When I was a child, I was called Wusay. My father probably preferred the "-ay" ending - he named my elder brother Foday. So we were, originally, Foday and Wusay.

Some twenty years later, one day, I came back to Tafalong to visit my Grandfather. We had a nice chat before he started to call me Nakao.

"Why do you call me Nakao?!" I was astonished.

"Your name is Nakao," said Grandpa peacefully.

Later on, I went to Sado and asked my aunt, "my name is Wusay, right?"

"Yes...." My aunt nodded, slightly confused.

"But Grandpa says, just now, that my name is Nakao."

"Oh really?" My aunt thought for a second and said, "in that case... you are Nakao."

My transformation took about ten minutes only.

One day, my neighbor, a Hoanya, asked me...

Read more: Pinganganan

Women in Asia

When I met Hsin-Chin for the first time, I immediately saw her as a sensitive woman and a thinker. As we talked more, I realized how generous she was too; she is one of those rare persons that people would go to when they needed consolation or a sympathetic ear.

Currently a student at the Institute of Life and Death Education and Counseling Department in Taipei, Hsin-Chin has decided to devote her life in helping people who lose their faith in life.

This decision is in fact, deeply related to her life experience.
As Hsin-Chin was still a teenager when her elder sister committed suicide. Qingqing who could neither forgive herself, nor her sister for putting such an abrupt end to her life, spent many difficult years mourning the her...

Read more: Hsin-Chin Deals With Life and Death