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Keeping the love from Russia alive

“Look” exclaims Kamil. “No hooligans!” He’s just picked us up outside our hostel close to the Kremlin in Nizhny Novgorod. With insane mark-ups being slapped on taxi fares for the duration of the World Cup, Yandex.taxi – Russia’s ride-hailing app of choice – is a godsend. They generally arrive in minutes and the drivers are […]
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‘Heartbreaking’: Taiwan’s Salvadorans express anger and frustration at diplomatic rupture

“This guy is our Trump,” says Yao Lin (林駿堯), resignedly. “Everyone hates him and no one has a clue how he won the seat.” Mario Argueta goes a step further. “As ignorant as someone can get,” he says. “He didn’t even finish college.” The most withering assessment of all comes from a Salvadoran former student […]
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Time for Taiwan to make the personal touch count in its foreign aid

The following piece appeared in today’s Taipei Times: (NB: The original headline was not mine and is quite misleading. I’ve reverted to my original here. The text is exactly as it appeared in the paper.) Few publications have documented Taiwan’s official development assistance (ODA) efforts in such a personal way as the booklet Greening the […]
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Moroccan chef brings taste of Marrakesh to Taipei

The following article appeared in today’s New Lens: For Hicham Baba, rustling up custom for his fledgling food stall was no trouble. “Taiwanese are very willing to try,” he says. “As soon as I opened, there were many people interested.” Serving up ciabattas with a Moroccan twist, Baba’s Crazy Kitchen is incongruously located across the road from […]
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End of the Road: Will Taiwan Pick Up Britain’s Tab in Guatemala?

“Officially, the British are unpopular in Guatemala,” wrote Nicholas Wollaston, while traveling in the Central American country in 1961. “For Britain occupies the whole of Belice Province by force, and calls it British Honduras. There are three empty seats in the Guatemala assembly with blue and white ribbons and marked ‘Belice’ [sic], and every map […]
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Small Town Taiwan to Big Screen Hollywood: Xiluo Theater and the Lin Family Odyssey

The following piece appeared in today’s News Lens: By Taiwanese standards, the small town of Xiluo (西螺) in Yunlin County (雲林縣) is brimful of attractions. Bestriding the Zhuoshui River (濁水溪), Taiwan’s longest waterway, there’s the Xiluo Bridge, which was second only to the Golden Gate Bridge in length when completed in 1953. Then there’s the […]
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Tone deaf: Taiwan’s mobile phone providers continue to confound

There’s nothing like a good old fashioned whinge to see in the New Year, and this New Year has provided me with one nice and early. This week, No. 2 son’s time came. He’s been incredibly helpful around the flat – doing chores when he hasn’t even been asked, trying his best in a school […]
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Huang’s uneasy time in the spotlight

My op-ed from Taipei Times, Sunday 26 November: Foreign policy was always going to be tricky for President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration. It was one of the few areas that her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), could hail as a success when he left power on single-digit approval ratings. Granted, Ma’s can be regarded as something […]
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Playing with Fire: Taiwan and India’s Long Courtship

The following piece appeared in the Fall 2017 (Vol.12, No.3) issue of Global Asia: The visit to India by a group of Taiwanese parliamentarians in February drew predictable guard-dog growls from Beijing. Any country foolhardy enough to flout the sacrosanct one-China policy can expect a swift rebuke. But, for a powerful neighbor and competitor with […]
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Working the fields: Wooster Group’s performance invites parallels with Taiwan’s indigenous folk music

The following piece appeared in the features section of today’s Taipei Times: Taiwan owes Kurosawa Takatomo. Without his efforts, much of Taiwan’s indigenous music would be lost. In 1943, while Aborigine soldiers were packed off to fight Japan’s war in the Pacific as part of the Takasago Volunteers (高砂義勇隊) squadrons, Kurosawa was recording the songs […]
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