The Wild East / Editorial The Taiwan media is notorious for being lame and vacuous, heavily relying on lightweight ‘coverage’ of food stories and the like, since restaurant ‘tributes’ are an important cash cow for them. Chinese New Year ‘reporting’ is especially pathetic. One TV station (must have been TVBS!) replayed the same exact
Read moreAuthor: Trista di Genova
‘Ridin’ with the wind’: A jazz singer is born in Taiwan
The Wild East recently caught up with American comedy writer, artist and now singer/musician Trista di Genova, who is following her bliss in Taiwan after performing her debut ‘Riding with the Wind’ at Chez Maurice in Tamsui on Christmas Eve. She calls on other would-be artists to ‘carry a guitar
Read moreWhy Xmas sucks, and what I’m doing about it
The Wild East / Comedy I’ve always enjoyed being in Asia for Christmas because they really don’t give a rat’s ass about it. For this very reason, we are able to have such niceties as Chinese restaurants to eat Christmas dinner in the West, for those who are too lazy
Read moreBalladeer Scott Cook back in Taiwan – briefly
Hey there friends, It’s about time you had a word from me. I’m writing you from a hotel room in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second-largest city, where I’ll be playing later this evening, mid-way through a two-week round-the-island tour. I’ve just come down from three days spent alone motorbiking through the
Read moreThe collapse of the buxiban industry in Taiwan
Editorial / The Wild East Foreigners teaching in Taiwan’s ‘buxibans’, or cram schools are finding an increasingly tough job market, with sharply reductions in hourly and monthly wages, fewer teacher openings, and competition with an influx of new graduates entering the stagnant, saturated world of English teaching in Taiwan. In
Read moreWhy I’m suing my Taiwanese landlady
The Wild East / Culture Shock Why am I suing my landlady? Out of principle, basically. She broke the law, and therefore needs to be taught a lesson so she doesn’t do it again. I reported my Taiwanese landlady, ‘Helen’ Lin, to the Tamsui police station a few months ago,
Read moreFEPOW 70th anniversary event to be held at Taipei SPOT
T The Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society is holding a FEPOW Day (Far East Prisoners of War) event this coming Saturday evening August 15th at 5:30 pm. at the Spot Theatre – 18, Zhongshan North Road Sec. 2 in downtown Taipei. At this time there is still plenty of space
Read moreTaiwan’s English language education: A living dinosaur
By Trista di Genova, The Wild East / Editorial The Taiwanese fare abysmally in international English scores. Why? Part of the reason could be attributed to the difficulty of learning such a vastly different language. According to the US State Department, Mandarin is one of the world’s most difficult languages for
Read moreCheck yourself at this July 12 Taipei yoga workshop
Confirm attendance on <a href=”https://www.facebook.com/events/1672052289683562/“>Facebook</a> We welcome you to join us for a nourishing day of yoga and transformational Bio Behavioral activities to help you resolve negative habits and thought patterns. In this half day workshop, we have a professional psychologist to guide us in making mental and behavioural changes
Read moreTaiwan schools putting business before education
BY ROSS KENNEGER / The Wild East / Opinion Working for Xinmin Private Elementary school in Taipei this year was a head-shaking, riveting experience. I’m writing this piece to talk about the chaos I’ve observed in the modern Taiwanese classroom, and to offer other foreign teachers some advice here in
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