By June Tsai
After 18 months of intensive work, the Institute of Taiwan History at Academia Sinica, the country's top research body, set up an exhibition and released a book about the life of Sun Jiang-huai. Thanks to interviews and documents Sun had collected throughout his life, historians were able to piece together the lives of common people in the country over the past 100 years.
Sun was born in 1907 near Tainan, in the southern area of the island, where he still lives today. When the institute's historians met the old man for the first time, they discovered a trove of priceless documents. They were amazed by how carefully the documents had been preserved, and that Sun still remembered many details about past events and people. The researchers started their oral history project with Sun in January 2007. In May, Sun proposed to donate to the institute his archives, which included 35 boxes of documents and over 1,700 photos.
"What Mr. Sun had was an incredible treasure for researching Taiwan's history in terms of its commerce, legal institutions, but also for the study of the region," Lin Yu-ju, an ITH associate research fellow and project member, said Nov. 1. Part of the collection was displayed at an exhibition organized at Tainan County's International Center for Humanities and Social Sciences Research, Oct. 12-18, and at the Taipei-based Academia Sinica Oct. 25-Nov. 2.
Having completed only elementary school education, Sun managed to master the legal profession through practice and self-study. He started his career as a secretary to a "baozheng" at the age of 15. A baozheng was a district chief in charge of the security and administration of a determined group of households, who assisted Japanese police in administrative affairs during the colonial period (1895-1945). In 1923, Sun turned to business and started a grocery store. That same year, Japanese commercial and civil laws were implemented in the island colony.
Because he was often in contact with notaries and lawyers to solve business disputes, Sun developed an interest in the law and became an assistant to a Japanese notary. He eventually became a notary himself in 1932 and later opened his own firm specializing in both public and civil affairs.
Under the Japanese system, a notary handled the same tasks as a lawyer except he could not defend clients at court. Sun's documents revealed the key role notaries played in smoothing communication between ordinary people and the colonial government. "They actually helped solve many difficulties for the people when even the local gentry could not," ITH Director Hsu Hsueh-chi explained.
While court verdicts tell which legal articles were used in determining a case, Sun's papers show the whole procedure, such as the debates between the defendant and the plaintiff, Hsu said. "Sun's documents give us a picture of the people's life and how Imperial Japan enforced its colonial rule on the island, and how that rule was different from, for example, that in Korea."
What makes Sun noteworthy is his tireless effort at learning. If he had questions, Sun would write to judges and jurists, looked through old cases, and browsed law books.
"People had great trust in the law and the legal profession at that time," Hsu pointed out, though the court ignored or delayed cases when a ruling might have compromised Japanese interests. "The level of trust in the rule of law declined after the war," the historian continued, and the examination procedure for notaries ended in 1969 under the Kuomintang government. Notaries lost their prestige becoming nothing more than land brokers, she added.
As for his commercial activities, between 1923 and 1945 the entrepreneurial Sun dealt in retailing, manufacturing, orchid growing and investment realty. He also founded or co-founded five companies under the 'wartime controlled economy' that Japan started imposing in 1937. "His experiences are those of a typical Taiwanese entrepreneur forced by the environment to focus on business rather than politics," Lin said.
Sun was a successful businessman, and generous too, Lin remarked. Being an amateur photographer, Sun often went on trips. When he traveled, the businessman often took his whole family and company staff with him. And, like many of his contemporaries, he adopted western fashion. "Life must go on. The Taiwanese people's response to being ruled by outsiders has been to focus on trying to lead as decent a life as possible and win other people's respect," she observed.
Sun's collection documents as well the way Japan mobilized the colony's people and resources in preparation for World War II. "Official documents barely reveal anything regarding the actual operation of the wartime controlled economy, let alone its impact on people's daily life," Lin said. Sun's archives, however, fill that blank.
An important part of Sun's collection records his participation in public affairs, the historians said. Sun led a local business association in 1928 that once lodged protests against a sugar company, backed by the Japanese government, for polluting the environment. It also organized an ink painting and calligraphy exhibition with 350 works from around the island. Yet, Sun gradually withdrew from the public arena because of his father's opposition.
Though he was watched by the Japanese police for several years for heading the business association, Sun was asked to join the Kominhokokai, or Imperial Subject Service Association, a wartime organization that rallied local leaders and conscripted colonial subjects into the imperial forces. Upon the regime change after the war, Sun resumed his activities. He continued working as notary and thanks to his experience and extensive contacts, he helped the government in dealing with civil affairs reconciliation. In 1946, the versatile man raised funds to establish a high school in his hometown, and 10 years later he tried to invest in business again. He liked keeping busy.
However, only one of the 15 chapters of the interview, published last month, is dedicated to his life after the war. "Sun did not wish to talk about what happened locally after the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan," Lin said. Hsu believes this silence speaks for the difficulties ordinary Taiwan people of that generation faced in merging two cultures after being subjected to the rule of two different regimes, both imposed by outsiders and both seeking to deny the people's own identity.
"Having access to people like Sun, who had many interesting experiences and lived long enough to tell them, is a great opportunity for historians," she concluded. "They make history feel closer to us."
This article is published in Taiwan Journal Nov. 13, 2008.
Dec 29, 2009
Documentary film revives a lost stage
By June Tsai
“We feel appalled by the cultural amnesia of our society,” said filmmaker Waro Hsueh. Her documentary “E. Sha Age,” exploring the history of the influential E. Sha Singing and Dancing Group, sets out to make amends by rejuvenating old memories among middle-aged Taiwanese and creating new ones among the younger generation.
E. Sha was an all-female musical theater group modeled after Japan’s Takarazuka Revue. Founded in 1959, it soon became a box office smash and dominated the local entertainment industry for 25 years before it was disbanded in 1985. Its disappearance was so sudden and complete that Hsueh, who was trained in anthropology and whose films focus on history and the humanities, had never heard of it.
“I felt like a blind person stumbling across a national treasure,” she said in reference to learning about arguably the most popular show group of her parents’ generation. She first learned about E. Sha from a friend and researcher familiar with the history of theater in Taiwan.
Hsueh was intrigued by what she heard. “I wanted to know why they succeeded so well in their time, and why Japan’s Takarazuka Revue is still popular today, while in Taiwan no one seems to remember E. Sha.”
She discovered E. Sha’s all-embracing style and free use of a multitude of cultural components made it highly relevant to the study of changes in popular culture in conjunction with Taiwan’s political, social and economic history.
The documentary, which premiered Oct. 23, reconstructs E. Sha’s story in the context of this history, including censorship during the martial law era, the patriotic fervor following the break in diplomatic relations with the United States, Taiwan’s most important ally, the craze for baseball beginning in the late 1960s and the large infrastructure projects in the 1970s.
During the 1950s, the political atmosphere did not foster popular entertainment, while native forms such as Taiwanese opera and puppet shows were not encouraged. At the same time, strip shows were stigmatizing stage performance. In an attempt to initiate entertainment of a higher standard, Japanese-educated Wang Zhen-yu and his art-loving family invested their wealth in starting up the all-woman group.
The company recruited unmarried women, provided board and lodging, and trained them in a manner comparable to military discipline. The young women sang, danced, acted, made their own costumes and recorded their singing with big bands for use on stage. Former members of the troupe, some of them now over 60, still recall the hardships as well as the solidarity forged among them through living, learning and performing together.
“Surprisingly, no contracts were ever signed between the company and the performers,” Hsueh said. Yet those who could bear the rigors of training and the performing life received pensions when they retired.
E. Sha performances in their heyday boasted lavish costumes and makeup, elaborate set designs and sound and light effects produced by advanced equipment rarely seen locally at the time. A standard two-hour show would encompass large-group dance numbers, chorus lines, skits and melodrama.
In an age before the concept of intellectual property rights, E. Sha drew generously on ready-made stories and melodies, combining them with creative choreography mixing elements from folk and modern art. Genres ranging from Taiwanese opera to popular film, Latin dances to show tunes, and world literature to comic stories were all fair game. The group developed an eclectic repertoire appealing to a wide cross-section of audiences around the island.
E. Sha’s creativity could be seen in its response to censorship. “It happened that a song we were using one day would be banned the next, and we had to quickly change its lyrics for the next show,” recalled the group’s director, Tsai Pau-yu, now over 80 years old.
The troupe’s popularity soared in the early 1970s when Taiwan’s economy began to take off. Ticket prices could be 100 times the cost of a bowl of beef noodles, of 5 percent of a public servant’s monthly income. At its peak, E. Sha sold out 250 performing days a year. It delivered spectacular shows in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. In Hong Kong, a scheduled one-month sojourn was extended to six months.
E. Sha’s flexibility in accommodating contemporary feel and emotional need seemed to guarantee its continuing success. However, as the economy continued to grow, large movie theaters, which often provided venues for E. Sha, were either sold to capitalize on skyrocketing real-estate prices, or divided into many small theaters in order to accommodate the burgeoning number of movie-goers. This was the beginning of the end for the song and dance revue.
The biggest and deciding blow came with the death in 1984 of both the founder and E. Sha’s choreographer of over 20 years, Wang Yue-xia. After a performance in Taipei in June 1984, E. Sha decided to rest for two months, but those two months became forever.
In making the documentary, Hsueh sought out and interviewed many former members of the group, and ended up bringing them back together for the production of the film. These artists, in turn, volunteered to pass their skills down to an interested group of students from Kaohsiung City-based Chung Hwa School of Arts. The result is a film depicting E. Sha’s history and reproducing a typical E. Sha performance for today’s audiences.
Hsueh and her team not only made a documentary. They also helped to preserve historic materials relating to E. Sha. They drew on period films from the nation’s film archive to provide the social and political backdrop, and sought help from the public and private sectors in digitally saving photographs, posters and video footage from the 1960s to 1980s. They even hope to use proceeds from commercial screenings of the documentary to help revive E. Sha shows in the future.
“These performers and their professional spirit are part of our cultural treasure,” Hsueh said. Some of them, such as Chen Feng-gui, are still active in dance and other arts. Chen, better known as Xiao-mi, was a major star for E. Sha, admired for her ability to perform different roles, male and female, young and old, serious and clownish. Today she is an established Taiwanese opera actress and was recently awarded the Global Chinese Culture and Arts Award in the category of traditional theater.
“E. Sha Age,” linking this legendary group of the past to Taiwan’s present, opens up room for the revival of musical theater and new memories of the island’s vibrant artistic spirit.
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Nov. 6, 2009.
“We feel appalled by the cultural amnesia of our society,” said filmmaker Waro Hsueh. Her documentary “E. Sha Age,” exploring the history of the influential E. Sha Singing and Dancing Group, sets out to make amends by rejuvenating old memories among middle-aged Taiwanese and creating new ones among the younger generation.
E. Sha was an all-female musical theater group modeled after Japan’s Takarazuka Revue. Founded in 1959, it soon became a box office smash and dominated the local entertainment industry for 25 years before it was disbanded in 1985. Its disappearance was so sudden and complete that Hsueh, who was trained in anthropology and whose films focus on history and the humanities, had never heard of it.
“I felt like a blind person stumbling across a national treasure,” she said in reference to learning about arguably the most popular show group of her parents’ generation. She first learned about E. Sha from a friend and researcher familiar with the history of theater in Taiwan.
Hsueh was intrigued by what she heard. “I wanted to know why they succeeded so well in their time, and why Japan’s Takarazuka Revue is still popular today, while in Taiwan no one seems to remember E. Sha.”
She discovered E. Sha’s all-embracing style and free use of a multitude of cultural components made it highly relevant to the study of changes in popular culture in conjunction with Taiwan’s political, social and economic history.
The documentary, which premiered Oct. 23, reconstructs E. Sha’s story in the context of this history, including censorship during the martial law era, the patriotic fervor following the break in diplomatic relations with the United States, Taiwan’s most important ally, the craze for baseball beginning in the late 1960s and the large infrastructure projects in the 1970s.
During the 1950s, the political atmosphere did not foster popular entertainment, while native forms such as Taiwanese opera and puppet shows were not encouraged. At the same time, strip shows were stigmatizing stage performance. In an attempt to initiate entertainment of a higher standard, Japanese-educated Wang Zhen-yu and his art-loving family invested their wealth in starting up the all-woman group.
The company recruited unmarried women, provided board and lodging, and trained them in a manner comparable to military discipline. The young women sang, danced, acted, made their own costumes and recorded their singing with big bands for use on stage. Former members of the troupe, some of them now over 60, still recall the hardships as well as the solidarity forged among them through living, learning and performing together.
“Surprisingly, no contracts were ever signed between the company and the performers,” Hsueh said. Yet those who could bear the rigors of training and the performing life received pensions when they retired.
E. Sha performances in their heyday boasted lavish costumes and makeup, elaborate set designs and sound and light effects produced by advanced equipment rarely seen locally at the time. A standard two-hour show would encompass large-group dance numbers, chorus lines, skits and melodrama.
In an age before the concept of intellectual property rights, E. Sha drew generously on ready-made stories and melodies, combining them with creative choreography mixing elements from folk and modern art. Genres ranging from Taiwanese opera to popular film, Latin dances to show tunes, and world literature to comic stories were all fair game. The group developed an eclectic repertoire appealing to a wide cross-section of audiences around the island.
E. Sha’s creativity could be seen in its response to censorship. “It happened that a song we were using one day would be banned the next, and we had to quickly change its lyrics for the next show,” recalled the group’s director, Tsai Pau-yu, now over 80 years old.
The troupe’s popularity soared in the early 1970s when Taiwan’s economy began to take off. Ticket prices could be 100 times the cost of a bowl of beef noodles, of 5 percent of a public servant’s monthly income. At its peak, E. Sha sold out 250 performing days a year. It delivered spectacular shows in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. In Hong Kong, a scheduled one-month sojourn was extended to six months.
E. Sha’s flexibility in accommodating contemporary feel and emotional need seemed to guarantee its continuing success. However, as the economy continued to grow, large movie theaters, which often provided venues for E. Sha, were either sold to capitalize on skyrocketing real-estate prices, or divided into many small theaters in order to accommodate the burgeoning number of movie-goers. This was the beginning of the end for the song and dance revue.
The biggest and deciding blow came with the death in 1984 of both the founder and E. Sha’s choreographer of over 20 years, Wang Yue-xia. After a performance in Taipei in June 1984, E. Sha decided to rest for two months, but those two months became forever.
In making the documentary, Hsueh sought out and interviewed many former members of the group, and ended up bringing them back together for the production of the film. These artists, in turn, volunteered to pass their skills down to an interested group of students from Kaohsiung City-based Chung Hwa School of Arts. The result is a film depicting E. Sha’s history and reproducing a typical E. Sha performance for today’s audiences.
Hsueh and her team not only made a documentary. They also helped to preserve historic materials relating to E. Sha. They drew on period films from the nation’s film archive to provide the social and political backdrop, and sought help from the public and private sectors in digitally saving photographs, posters and video footage from the 1960s to 1980s. They even hope to use proceeds from commercial screenings of the documentary to help revive E. Sha shows in the future.
“These performers and their professional spirit are part of our cultural treasure,” Hsueh said. Some of them, such as Chen Feng-gui, are still active in dance and other arts. Chen, better known as Xiao-mi, was a major star for E. Sha, admired for her ability to perform different roles, male and female, young and old, serious and clownish. Today she is an established Taiwanese opera actress and was recently awarded the Global Chinese Culture and Arts Award in the category of traditional theater.
“E. Sha Age,” linking this legendary group of the past to Taiwan’s present, opens up room for the revival of musical theater and new memories of the island’s vibrant artistic spirit.
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Nov. 6, 2009.
Civic groups dissect national land planning act
By June Tsai
As post-disaster reconstruction work continues in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot, which hit Taiwan in August and caused the nation’s worst natural disaster in 50 years, an overhaul of the country’s land use has become imperative.
The government is moving full speed ahead in legislating the long-overdue National Land Planning Act. The bill was approved in a Cabinet meeting Oct. 12 and sent to the Legislative Yuan for immediate review. But speeding up the review of the law in its current form has civic organizations worried that a law not well thought through will do more harm than good.
In a forum held by the nongovernmental Organization of Urban Re-s Oct. 31, concerned members of civic groups congregated to exchange views and sought to revise the government version of the bill, which they felt leaves a lot to be desired with regard to its direction, principles and technical feasibility.
The act in question would divide national land into four zoning categories: land conservation, marine resources, urban and rural development, and agricultural development. The central government would mainly be responsible for demarcating land conservation and marine resources zones, while local governments would take charge of the other two.
In analyzing the bill, Hsia Chu-joe, a National Taiwan University professor of architecture and planning, said a schematic land-use plan such as the one under review would prove unfeasible or out of date as soon as it was passed.
Hsia argued that Taiwan’s landscape is undergoing a massive restructuring, and a forward-looking land-use plan should be in place to address the challenges brought about by the expansion of urban areas, the disappearance of rural regions and the growing frequency and impact of natural disasters. “Governments the world over are faced with similar challenges, which threaten to incapacitate them,” he said.
In Taiwan, where the private sector has been more flexible and active than the public one, “policies, rather than guidelines, will be better tools for managing growth and forestalling the consequences of rampant development,” he said.
Hsia pointed out that the act fails to face the reality that the development gap in Taiwan today is not one between north and south. “The reality is the urbanization of the long strip of Taiwan’s west coast.” He noted that many land issues, such as the management of mega cities, rivers that run through many administrative areas, and aboriginal territories, are not confined to the jurisdiction of one local government. “Overlap of jurisdiction would cause great problems,” the professor said.
To correct this, Hsia suggested a review committee should be established under the Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Development, with the vice premier as its convener. This committee should be responsible for reviewing land-use proposals submitted by various government agencies when their budgets exceed NT$500 million (US$14.7 million). No money should be earmarked before review by this committee.
In relation to this, Hsia said the government should show its determination to really do something by assigning the responsibility for carrying out the act to the CEPD, which according to a government plan will be upgraded to become the Council for National Development. Implementation of the act is currently assigned to the Construction and Planning Administration, “which is merely an administrative agency, rather than a policy-making one.”
Hsia said another very serious problem is the lack of an aboriginal-centered government body having greater power than local governments to carry out land-use planning involving aboriginal territories effectively and with understanding of indigenous people’s cultures and concerns.
“Indigenous people have rarely been included in the policymaking process involving their traditional territories, rights and ways of life,” he said. In fact, regulations in the National Land Planning Act pertaining to aborigines would supersede those of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act of 2005.
Participants were positive about the setting aside of land conservation zones, yet many were suspicious about Article Five of the act, which is dedicated to issuing land-development permissions.
“It’s like opening a back door to the evils of overdevelopment within a law meant to enshrine the protection of national land,” said Peng Yang-kai of OURS.
Likewise, Peng said, the bill does not put an end to a controversial article in the country’s Agricultural Development Act, which allows residences to be built in the midst of farmland and has since its passage in 1999 opened the door to the rapid annexation of arable land.
The act on national land planning was first proposed in 1993. Yet in the past years, drive for economic development, pressure from vested interests and election campaigns have kept it from becoming law. Now the rush to pass the law looks like a strategy for the government to evade the real issues of land conservation and the destructive consequences of decades of overdevelopment, said Ho Chen Tan, president of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation.
“There are actually enough laws in place if the government has the will to recover overused land and prevent further disasters from happening soon,” Ho Chen said. He pointed out that the bill, which fails to clearly set a date for the act to go into effect, gives a six-year time frame for the land use plans to be completed.
“If all goes well, it would take at least four additional years for other related rules that contravene this one to be amended, but by then it might be too late.” Ho Chen urged civil groups to focus on getting the government to clarify its position on individual development projects where there is policy conflict. “We can then ask the government to abide by what it professes, rather than allowing it to use the legislation as a shield to deflect its responsibility.”
Hsia concluded that if it were not for the past typhoon disaster, this act would still have been sitting idly in the Legislative Yuan. By intervening in the law-making process, society should oblige the government to take the law and the problems it sets out to cure seriously, he added.
“Friends used to joke that the only viable development plan for Taiwan is to build the island into a global junction for tourism and the cultural and creative industry,” Hsia said. “They might be right.”
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Nov. 20, 2009.
As post-disaster reconstruction work continues in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot, which hit Taiwan in August and caused the nation’s worst natural disaster in 50 years, an overhaul of the country’s land use has become imperative.
The government is moving full speed ahead in legislating the long-overdue National Land Planning Act. The bill was approved in a Cabinet meeting Oct. 12 and sent to the Legislative Yuan for immediate review. But speeding up the review of the law in its current form has civic organizations worried that a law not well thought through will do more harm than good.
In a forum held by the nongovernmental Organization of Urban Re-s Oct. 31, concerned members of civic groups congregated to exchange views and sought to revise the government version of the bill, which they felt leaves a lot to be desired with regard to its direction, principles and technical feasibility.
The act in question would divide national land into four zoning categories: land conservation, marine resources, urban and rural development, and agricultural development. The central government would mainly be responsible for demarcating land conservation and marine resources zones, while local governments would take charge of the other two.
In analyzing the bill, Hsia Chu-joe, a National Taiwan University professor of architecture and planning, said a schematic land-use plan such as the one under review would prove unfeasible or out of date as soon as it was passed.
Hsia argued that Taiwan’s landscape is undergoing a massive restructuring, and a forward-looking land-use plan should be in place to address the challenges brought about by the expansion of urban areas, the disappearance of rural regions and the growing frequency and impact of natural disasters. “Governments the world over are faced with similar challenges, which threaten to incapacitate them,” he said.
In Taiwan, where the private sector has been more flexible and active than the public one, “policies, rather than guidelines, will be better tools for managing growth and forestalling the consequences of rampant development,” he said.
Hsia pointed out that the act fails to face the reality that the development gap in Taiwan today is not one between north and south. “The reality is the urbanization of the long strip of Taiwan’s west coast.” He noted that many land issues, such as the management of mega cities, rivers that run through many administrative areas, and aboriginal territories, are not confined to the jurisdiction of one local government. “Overlap of jurisdiction would cause great problems,” the professor said.
To correct this, Hsia suggested a review committee should be established under the Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Development, with the vice premier as its convener. This committee should be responsible for reviewing land-use proposals submitted by various government agencies when their budgets exceed NT$500 million (US$14.7 million). No money should be earmarked before review by this committee.
In relation to this, Hsia said the government should show its determination to really do something by assigning the responsibility for carrying out the act to the CEPD, which according to a government plan will be upgraded to become the Council for National Development. Implementation of the act is currently assigned to the Construction and Planning Administration, “which is merely an administrative agency, rather than a policy-making one.”
Hsia said another very serious problem is the lack of an aboriginal-centered government body having greater power than local governments to carry out land-use planning involving aboriginal territories effectively and with understanding of indigenous people’s cultures and concerns.
“Indigenous people have rarely been included in the policymaking process involving their traditional territories, rights and ways of life,” he said. In fact, regulations in the National Land Planning Act pertaining to aborigines would supersede those of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act of 2005.
Participants were positive about the setting aside of land conservation zones, yet many were suspicious about Article Five of the act, which is dedicated to issuing land-development permissions.
“It’s like opening a back door to the evils of overdevelopment within a law meant to enshrine the protection of national land,” said Peng Yang-kai of OURS.
Likewise, Peng said, the bill does not put an end to a controversial article in the country’s Agricultural Development Act, which allows residences to be built in the midst of farmland and has since its passage in 1999 opened the door to the rapid annexation of arable land.
The act on national land planning was first proposed in 1993. Yet in the past years, drive for economic development, pressure from vested interests and election campaigns have kept it from becoming law. Now the rush to pass the law looks like a strategy for the government to evade the real issues of land conservation and the destructive consequences of decades of overdevelopment, said Ho Chen Tan, president of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation.
“There are actually enough laws in place if the government has the will to recover overused land and prevent further disasters from happening soon,” Ho Chen said. He pointed out that the bill, which fails to clearly set a date for the act to go into effect, gives a six-year time frame for the land use plans to be completed.
“If all goes well, it would take at least four additional years for other related rules that contravene this one to be amended, but by then it might be too late.” Ho Chen urged civil groups to focus on getting the government to clarify its position on individual development projects where there is policy conflict. “We can then ask the government to abide by what it professes, rather than allowing it to use the legislation as a shield to deflect its responsibility.”
Hsia concluded that if it were not for the past typhoon disaster, this act would still have been sitting idly in the Legislative Yuan. By intervening in the law-making process, society should oblige the government to take the law and the problems it sets out to cure seriously, he added.
“Friends used to joke that the only viable development plan for Taiwan is to build the island into a global junction for tourism and the cultural and creative industry,” Hsia said. “They might be right.”
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Nov. 20, 2009.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)