Mandarin Scholarship Taiwan » museum

Chinese Character Festival

Jeffrey Withaya Campbell — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:59:33 +0000

Students studying Chinese in Taipei might be interested in the 6th Taipei Chinese Character Festival. There is a “Cultural Bazzar” and an Art Exhibition featuring ten South-east Asian artists.

Cultural Bazaar
The bazaar will feature a fusion of Chinese characters and the cultural creative industries. Activities include calligraphy, paper cutting, lithography, interactive character quizzes, New Year’s couplet demonstrations, hand puppet shows, dancing, street performers, poetry recitals and puppet performances.

Dates: January 9th-10th 10am-5pm

Venue:Taipei Confucius Temple Google map

Art Exhibition
Ten artists from areas in Southeast Asia influenced by the culture of Chinese writing are invited to present artworks based on Asian thinking and Chinese characters.

Dates: January 1st to 11th 2010
Venue: Exhibition Room, CKS Memorial Hall Google map

Note: CKS Memorial Hall is also known as “National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall” (國立臺灣民主紀念館).

The Chinese Character Festival website is in Chinese only:

chinese-character-festival.org.tw

Kinmen National Park 金門國家公園

kang-wei — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:44:26 +0000

Kinmen National Park 金門國家公園

In 1995, three years after the ending of the military administration of the island, Kinmen National Park was opened. It was Taiwan’s sixth national park and the first to have the primary aim of protecting historical and cultural heritage, and serve as a war memorial. Kinmen Island today is still a military stronghold on the front line between Taiwan and Mainland China.

It is located approximately 225 kilometers from Taiwan and just two kilometers from Mainland China, and covers an area of 13,425 hectares. The park is spread out over 3,780 hectares, or about one quarter of the area of Kinmen and Little Kinmen islands.

Chinmencheng means Kinmen City and refers to a strategic impregnable city that is the gateway to the sea. Taken literally Kinmen (金門) means golden gate.

There are traces of human habitation dating back 5000 to 6000 years. Historical records show that people began coming to Kinmen from China’s central plains over 1,600 years ago. Most of the early inhabitants came from certain areas of Fujian Province. The architectural style of the dwellings follows these old traditions. Due to 40 years of military control the pace of development was slowed and as a result numerous well preserved examples of traditional architecture have survived. Eleven have been registered, within the park, as historical monuments but the park and the islands are littered with entire living villages that have retained their southern Fujian architecture. This is in stark contrast to the main island of Taiwan.

In addition to the examples of Fujian architecture there are many so-called ‘Western-style’ houses, which are a combination of Western and Chinese architecture. They date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and were built by local merchants who traded overseas.

Other Important structures include the ancestral shrines. Their importance denoted by their geographical position in heart of the settlement. Another prominent symbol of the island’s folk culture is the Wind Lion God or Spirit Lion. Numerous statues of this god dot the island usually in front of a village or set into walls. Their purpose can vary but are generally to protect against storms. Due to the massive deforestation that has taken place over the past 300 years they are more important than ever.

Kinmen National Park includes various battlefield monuments that hold an extremely important place in the history of modern day Taiwan. On October 25, 1949, the year when mainland China fell to the Communists, Communist forces unsuccessfully attempted to occupy Kinmen for the purpose of capturing Taiwan. Again in 1958 Mainland China began a massive bombardment campaign that lasted 44 days. It was also unsuccessful. Over the next 20 years the Mainland continued to occasionally fire on the island. All bombardment stopped in 1979.

The islands are built on a base of granite. This geological attribute contributed to the defense of the islands. Many of the tunnels and bunkers were carved into the granite base of the island creating robust defenses.

Kinmen National Park contains more than 548 species of plants. Some of the species are not found in Taiwan.

Due to the parks proximity to mainland China in attracts a huge variety of migratory birds. More than 280 species have been recorded in high density. Kinmen’s birdlife is markedly different to that of Taiwan.

References
Kinmen National Park Headquarters, Construction and Planning Administration Ministry of the Interior R.O.C. (2001), Kinmen National Park, Shun Cheng Printing Co, Taichung.

Dutch man revives Taiwanese puppets

kang-wei — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 04:45:05 +0000

Asia’s rich intangible cultural heritage is under constant pressure from the homogenising forces of globalisation. As values change ancient art forms die. Traditional Taiwanese puppetry has received a helping hand from an unlikely source.

Robin Ruizendaal, a Dutchman, is the unlikely Director of the Lin Liu-hsin Puppet Theatre Museum*.

The Mandarin speaking, betel nut chewing Dutchman is a genuine doctor of puppetry, whose graduate thesis focused on Chinese marionette theatre.

Opened in 2000 with the generous support of several private donors, the museum is located in Taipei’s historic Da Daocheng neighbourhood, where puppet troupes once thrived, and is housed in a well preserved 4-story manor house built in 1946.

Today, the museum boasts a collection of some 7,000 puppetry artifacts from across Asia and is home to an internationally renowned troupe of theatrical puppeteers.

The troupe features Taiwanese puppet master Chen Xi-huang (陳錫煌), son of legendary puppeteer Li Tien-lu (李天祿), Chen’s protege, Massimo Godoli Peli of Italy, and a crew of narrators, light and stage designers, and a puppet maker.

In a recent interview with the Taipei Times, Ruizendaal lamented local indifference to this aspect of Taiwan’s rich cultural heritage.

…not unlike other Asian countries heavily influenced by Western pop culture, Taiwan is facing a lack of interest among young people in traditional puppetry.

“There are people coming from France and Spain to study Taiwanese puppetry at our museum, but local youth think it’s more sexy to become film makers, video artists or disc jockeys,” he said. “It seems crazy to them to study the obsolete puppetry. There is a crisis to pass on the craft if nobody wants to learn it.”

Ruizendaal hopes the puppet museum can attract new blood by offering free puppeteer apprenticeships.

Hand glove puppet shows are a regular event across Taiwan. They are generally sponsored by local temples and everyone is welcome to watch for free.

[youtube=http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=kvj-O4QWnFc]

*The museum was previously known as Toa-Thiun-Thian Puppet Centre

Sources

Department of Information, Taipei City Government. (2001). Taipei’s Museums: The Doors are Open.

Taipei Times report: Dutch man attempting to revive a dying art

www.taipeipuppet.com

Adventures in the National Palace Museum…

kang-wei — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:21:26 +0000

“Adventures in the NPM” won the prize of “Animation of the Year”, Tokyo International Animation Fair 2008.

To demonstrate the results of digitization at the National Palace Museum (NPM), computer animation technology has been use to personify treasures inthe NPM collection as its “superstars”, in the hope of bridging the gap between modern audiences and ancient artworks. In collaboration with Digimax Corporation, NPM has produced a 3D animated film short entitled “Adventures in the NPM“”, which will premier to audiences on April 13, 2007 on the B1 level of the Main Building at the NPM.

Characters Child Pillow, Jade Duck and Pi-hsieh Beast search for an insect missing from the Jadeite Cabbage. The Jadeite Cabbage, as the name suggests, is a cabbage made of jade. It’s one the NPM’s most prized artifacts.

The filming of this 3D animated short took more than a year to complete and runs for a total of 13 minutes. You can watch the 2 minute promotional video below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmCP3Aep5XI]

For more information click here.

Juming Museum 朱銘博物館

kang-wei — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:33:09 +0000

Currently Mandarin scholarship students must be enrolled for 12 contact hours per week (This will increase to 15 hours after August 31 2008). I have 8 hours of one-on-one classes, 2 hours language exchange and I complete a cultural activity once a week, such as visiting a museum. Below is an example of my homework for a cultural activity.

On Thursday I went to Ju Ming Museum.

The sculpture park is located in beautiful Jin Shan (金山), Taipei County.

Ju Ming is a very famous artist. He is best known for his sculptures, created in bronze, clay and wood, but he is also a painter.

He started working on the 11 hectare museum/gallery/park almost twenty years ago. It finally opened in 1999.

Ju was born in a small Miaoli County town in central Taiwan. When he was young he worked as a temple artist specializing in woodcarving. He was taught by some very famous Taiwanese artists and has since been internationally recognized. His work has been displayed in France, Japan, Hong Kong, Canada, Germany, U.S.A., Singapore etc.

You can view a slideshow of photos I took here.

朱銘博物館

我二零零八年四月星期四去了朱銘博物館。

朱銘博物館的地址是台北縣金山鄉西勢湖2號。

我覺得金山很美麗。

朱銘是藝術家。他會創作雕刻品，也會畫畫。他很有名。

我很喜歡朱銘博物館，我帶來了我的照相機，所以我拍很多照片。

我覺得朱銘博物館很特別。

他的作品去了加拿大，法國，香港，日本，德國，美國，新加坡 etc。

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