The Art of Xiyadie

The gay-themed paper-cut work of a rural Chinese artist known as “the Siberian butterfly”, or Xiyadie, which is part of an exhibition titled “Spectrosynthesis – Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now” at Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

 

Taipei Diaries

From the photo-book “taipei Diaries’ by Peter Bialobrzeski.

 

Love doesn’t lie

A quarter of a million Taiwanese took to Taipei’s Ketagalan Boulevard this weekend in a massive show of support for the legalisation of gay marriage. The rally came in response to earlier Christian-led anti-gay protests which drew 80,000 protesters to oppose the changes, which have been proposed by President Tsai Ing-wen.

The issue had been given further impetus with the suicide of a French university lecturer on the island who had been kept away from his chronically ill long-term partner by that man’s family. After his Taiwanese boyfriend passed away, the French partner also killed himself.

But anti-gay rights campaigners have been opposing any changes.

“Every person has a right to love, but there is also a proper order to love: We do not use the same manner to love animals as people, and love for a husband and wife is different from how you love friends,” Chinese Regional Bishops’ Conference secretary-general Otried Chan (陳科) said. Other protesters have made wild claims about the impact the bill would have on heterosexuals, inaccurately claiming for example that the changed marriage law would outlaw the terms “mother” and “father”.

Such statements have led to Taiwanese gay rights protesters adopting the catchphrase, “love doesn’t lie”.

The bill will receive its final test in parliament in the first quarter of next year.

 

Easy, tiger

I spotted top Taipei party boy Kevin Wei on the Midlevels escalator on Sunday, perhaps in town for the weekend?

Gaysia

Above, more of the always-arresting artwork for Melbourne’s Trough X party and after the break, a (NSFW) photo-essay from new Thai gay arts collective Supper and the promotional image from this weekend’s Beach Bear party in Taipei.

Summer fun

As Summer spreads around the Northern Hemisphere, New York house club Body & Soul touched down in Hong Kong (pathetically, I didn’t go), Taiwan is hosting a gay beach party in the first week of July and Tokyo is gearing up for its “Bear Week”at the same time with a bonus visit from Francois Sagat to the FancyHim party on June 25th.

 

Down under meanwhile, the Vivid Festival has been lighting up Sydney with its now trademark projections onto the Opera House, plus a storming DJ set from Bjork and an equally storming actual storm, which saw monster waves sweep over multi-million dollar harbourside mansions. One woman’s marble swimming pool was washed out to sea. An acerbic Facebook friend of mine remarked, “Where will she keep her diamonds cool in the summertime now?”

 

Grimes

I’ve never paid much attention to Canadian alt-pop star Grimes before, but her new album featuring Janelle Monae and Taipei glitch-hopper Aristophanes has definitely caught my attention. I must explore more!

Asia’s sexiest….

Over the weekend, with some friends, talk turned to the latest internet sensation in the Far East, Taiwan’s
sexy beancurd seller, above, who has been burning up hearts online over the last week. The hot-blue-collar-worker-plucked-from-anonymity-to-become-a-sex-symbol seems to have a particular resonance in Asia. This is just the latest case in a string that includes Sexy beancurd Seller’s compatriot Ms Fried Chicken who parlayed a video of deep frying a chicken steak into a softporn bikini-modelling career in Taipei, to Bangkok’s mototaxi-model.

There have also been hot Japanese war correspondents, dashing English teachers, a handsome Filipino KFC store manager and a suave Malaysian immigration official (apparently) who have burst out of anonymonity to become short-lived lust objects.

The most unlikely story of all, though, I had missed. It is that of ‘Brother Sharp’, dubbed China’s most handsome beggar, who was hounded by paparazzi after his movie-star-like looks were revealed to the general public, went into a mental institution and then emerged to walk in Guangzhou Fashion Week and be reunited with his family, mysteriously losing his looks along the way.

And that is to say nothing of his fellow PRC citizen, Most Fashionable Homeless Person in History.

Divine Love: The Gay Rabbit God

I stumbled across a reference this week, while reading an article on the history of male prostitution in Singapore, to Tu’er Shen, a traditional Chinese gay rabbit god. Needless to say, I immediately googled to find out more.

According to his wikipedia page, Tu’er Shen “manages the love and sex between homosexual men.” The article says:

In a folk tale from 17th century Fujian, a soldier is in love with a provincial official, and spies on him to see him naked. The official has the soldier tortured and killed, but he returns from the dead in the form of a leveret (a rabbit in its first year) in the dream of a village elder. The leveret demands that local men build a temple to him where they can burn incense in the interest of “affairs of men”. The story ends:

According to the customs of Fujian province, it is acceptable for a man and boy to form a bond [qi] and to speak to each other as if to brothers. Hearing the villager relate the dream, the other villagers strove to contribute money to erect the temple. They kept silent about this secret vow, which they quickly and eagerly fulfilled. Others begged to know their reason for building the temple, but they did not find out. They all went there to pray.

The article went on to discuss the historical form of gay marriage practiced among the Hokkien-speaking people of Fujian province, whereby men would be joined by the rabbit god as recognised spouses for a period of twenty years, after which they would both be expected to take wives and have children.

Although little known to most Chinese people, the gay rabbit deity has recently been revived in Taiwan, where he has an LGBT-focused temple in Yonghe, North of Taipei, which gay couples visit to pray for the longevity of the relationships and leave offerings of carrots on the altar.

As far as I know though, the God of Gay Love has no temple in Hong Kong 😦

Hmmmmm

July, you say? I think I’m free..

New world order

Tale of Two Cities: Hong Kong 80s X Taipei 90s

A Parallel Tale: Hong Kong X 80s and Taipei X 90s is a surprisingly interesting exhibition now on in HK, tracing the comic book culture of the two cities in two different decades. I have to admit I was quite ignorant of the scene in either city, but the exhibition serves up some nice images from artists from Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as their interesting reminiscences about life and art in the 80s and 90s.

The show is free and its on currently at Comix Home Base, a new centre for the comics industry in a restored four storey historical building in Wanchai (across the street from a Mos Burger, I discovered to my delight, too.)

Taipei funny

Danshui and Bali

Some of my favourite times in Taipei this trip were on the foreshore of Danshui, and across the river in the neighbouring town of Bali. Danshui, at the far end of the Northern suburban train line, is one of the city’s weekend hangouts. Its boardwalk-like foreshore is lined with snack stalls(most selling some form of squid) and inland along its “old street,” alleyways snake up hillsides past temples and old colonial churches and forts. One alley (well, staircase almost) transforms on weekends into a colourful flea market for local craftspeople, with the odd little gallery or patch of street art and ocean views over the rooftops. It reminded me of a little Valparaiso.

The area also has cheesier attractions. Although the “Starbugs Insect Mall” was closed, we did manage to find the Ripleys Believe It Or Not (not affiliated with the international version!) “freakshow” museum with its two headed turtle, a stuffed four-legged chicken, various bizarre reptiles and fish, rusty chastity belts and an (apparently used) female condom, and other jokey exhibits.

Bali, a short ferry hop across the shining waters of the estuary, is much quieter. It sits in the shadow of a volcanic-looking mountain and when we went midweek it was – wonderfully – empty. The big attraction here is the bicycle paths which spread over 20 blissful kilometres through sun-dappled parkland, under freeways, past sculptures and little cafes and in its wilder segments, along volcanic black beaches where packs of scary dogs rove, past witchy mangrove swamps and rusty old factories and villages, one home to an apparently abandoned temple reputed to be home to a “ghost army”.

We spent a happy day whizzing up and down the bike paths, watching the sun shining on the water and the city skyline rising up across on the other bank, dodging pigeons and racing each other down the slopes, before retiring for the local specialty of garlic-fried mussels.

It was great.

I want to go back!

 

 

 

Taiwan: What I learned

– The spirit of protest is alive and well. For several weeks prior to my trip student protestors had succeeded in occupying the Parliament building, in protest against a trade agreement with China. The protestors, known as the “sunflower movement”, were concerned that the agreement would undermine wages in Taiwan and leave the country open to pressure and manipulation from Beijing while alienating traditional ally Tokyo. In our time in the country there were also environmental protests over threats to the habitat of the leopard cat, a local endangered species, and a windfarm, as well as “no more Fukushimas” anti-nuclear banners strung up in many youth-oriented establishments around the city.

– Taiwanese don’t use toilet paper rolls. How did it take me five trips to the country to notice this? Although many restaurants and hotels use Western style rolls of toilet paper, in their homes Taiwanese almost all opt for tissue-style packs.

– Taipei is expensive – for locals at least. While we marvelled at how cheap everything was ( half the price of Hong Kong in many cases), a friend mentioned that real estate in the city is the second most expensive in the world in relation to local wages. Many Taiwanese complained about poor salaries compared to HK or, increasingly, Shanghai.

– All shops in Taiwan give receipts which come with lottery numbers. Every month the lottery is called and – if you care to comb through all of your receipts for the month – you could win. A local accountant friend explained this odd system: its actually a government ploy to crack down on businesses avoiding tax by giving consumers an incentive to insist on proper receipts.

– The Fried Chicken Girl is Taiwan’s hot new celebrity – a pretty girl who rose to fame in a youtube tutorial on how to cook fried chicken and has since parlayed this “talent” into appearance on talk shows and bikini photoshoots in gossip mags.

Taipei nights

Taipei nights are warm, buzzing with the rush of scooters and workers returning home on foot, shops thronged and brightly lit and  multicolored neon lights flashing above the glass booths of the “betel nut girls”, bored-looking ladies in skimpy clothing who sit by the roadside selling betel, Taiwan’s indigenous stimulant which is chewed and then spat out, leaving red blood-like stains on the footpaths.

With the buff boys all away in Bangkok (scroll down) I didn’t spend much time experiencing the city’s bumping gay scene (hahaha) – but to tell the truth I wasn’t in the mood anyway. I preferred to spend the nights at home with the boyfriend, or sampling the local street food: gun-shaped taiyaki (waffles), pineapples and custard apples, rice hot dogs (delicious!), chicken steaks, butter buns and stinky tofu.

王若琳-Apathy

Taiwanese singer Joanna Wang.

TAIPEI cafe

Taipei is home to quite a burgeoning cafe scene, with lots of cute little places serving OK (if not quite-Melbourne standard) coffee and names like “Mother’s Mouth”, “Emptiness of Cats”, “Kafka by the Shore” (Murakami reference!) and my favourite, “Eat Shit and Die is Not Allowed”.

We went to A8, owned by Taiwanese superstar A-Mei, which features a warm if slightly muddled rustic-industrial theme, a basement art gallery, leisurely service, serviceable coffee and a pretty good Taiwanese pork noodle.

Up

Flying above the forest in the crystal-floored cable car that travels 300 metres up from Taipei’s impressive zoo (home to pandas and koalas among other things) to the summit of a wild green mountain and the tea-farming village and weekend getaway of Maokong.

The cable-car travels over deep valleys, thick green forests and monasteries before reaching Maokong, with its popular weekend teahouses and views over the city below and the skyscraping Taipei 108 building.

We managed to time our trip perfectly, to see the city lights switching on on the way down.