by Yvonne Lin

​Growing up I used to go to the morning traditional market with my mom. But as I grew up I never went on my own and have no intention of going. Unlike supermarkets, traditional markets are inconvenient, unclean, and hard for me, and my inability to speak Taiwanese prevents me from communicating with the vendors or even asking for further details about their products. As a result I wondered why people still go to traditional markets?

​There are three kinds of traditional markets in Taiwan, morning markets, afternoon markets, and night markets. The morning and the afternoon markets basically sell the same things, the only difference being the time. The night market is very different from the other two because it serves as both a shopping and an entertainment venue.

To find an answer to my question I asked my mom and my aunt, who both enjoy going to traditional markets. They told me that the prices are much lower, there are more options to choose from, and the food, especially the seafood, is fresher. If you don’t know how to cook you can always ask the market ladies for advice or even their recipes. Because everything that they sell is custom-made for each client, you can ask them to cut, slice, or mince the part that you want into any size. This can save a lot of time when cooking.

In addition, it can be more environmentally friendly to shop for groceries in a traditional market because there is no packaging and you can bring your own. You also don’t have to buy an excessive amount of food that ends up in the trash can because you couldn’t finish it in time.

​It’s the idea that counts

By: Vivianne Liang 


Conceptual art is a relatively new art form.  It is thought to have emerged in the 1960s and is an idea-based kind of art.  The medium through which conceptual artists express their ideas can be anything: a live performance, an installation, a photograph, a written description, you name it.  Marcel Duchamp, the French Dadaist, who exhibited notorious ready-made objects as art, is said to be the pioneer of conceptual art.  But Dadaism was not the only art movement that contributed to the rise of this art form.  Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, etc., have also contributed to the expanding definitions of art in its many varieties.    

Conceptual artists believe that ideas themselves count as art objects, and that therefore they cannot be judged according to traditional criteria such as technique, composition, and marketability.  Conceptual art often does not come down to a finished object such as a painting or a sculpture.  Conceptual art is not commercialized.  It questions the definition of art and the artworld.  Conceptual artists may also engage in institutional critique when exhibiting their art, by questioning the institutional hierarchies of the artworld.  This approach criticizes art that is dependent upon an exhibition space or an institution to sponsor it.

        Though it seems that most conceptual artists try to avoid having their art commercialized and that they do not take marketability into consideration, their art can still be auctioned at a very high price.  Their participation in social-political issues can be seen as either genuinely helpful or just another kind of marketability that helps them gain fame.

The British artist Tracey Emin created My Bed in 1988.  The controversial work is, as the title suggests, her bed.  The unmade bed exhibits condoms, vodka bottles, cigarettes, and blood-stained underwear.  It is said to represent the emotional turmoil that the artist had gone through in four days.  It is highly biographical and dependent on narrative.  Although it was an installation, not a traditional art-object, it sold for $3.77 million in 2014.

By Alfred Lalande

“I get inspiration from a lot of different things like nature, silence a lot of times, playing with my children, you know, things that people probably do every day, some people might take for granted, little things, the smallest thing will inspire someone. When I get stuck I just go back to normal mode.” –MF DOOM

​By Ashley Lee

​by Muriel Miao

by Madeline Scott

There are many things I personally love about men, I love it when I’m walking home at night and I feel scared for my safety or a man screams something at me out of his car window. It really makes me want to have sex with them when they do things like this. I struggle to understand why all men don’t act in this way, surely it works? Otherwise, why would they do such things, if screaming out of the window that I have a nice ass only results in making me feel sexualised, surely men would not engage in such activities? If women do not react positively to these advances, then obviously women are the problem. No obviously means yes… right?

“She wanted it, she was practically begging for it.”

In my first year of university, I was stalked by a man three years older than me. He attempted to use his seniority in age and social standing to intimidate me. I said no, countless times, I told him thousands of times how uninterested I was. But, it was always the same, “why are you playing hard to get?” He seemed to think it was his god-given right to have me if he wanted to. No matter what my feelings were towards him, no matter how many people told him how uncomfortable he made me, he didn’t seem to understand the simple word, no. He would constantly turn up in places where I was alone and vulnerable, on the tube, in the library, even outside my classrooms. I started to believe that it was normal, like I was just going to have to get used to it as he wasn’t ‘actually’ doing anything to me. Looking back now, I wish I had the resolve I have now back then. I wish that I hadn’t just believed that there was nothing that could be done.



Men have no god-given right over women. Women are not something that can be owned. Our bodies are not vessels that are at the disposal of men to be groped and gawked at.

Another thing I love about men, when they explain a simple task to me in a very helpful and respectful way. Mansplaining isn’t real, men just know more than women do. It’s natural for a man to have more knowledge about the world than women, they’re more intelligent after all… A man watching me get into my car once tried to stop me and asked if I knew how to correctly use the gear stick, even after I told him multiple times I had been driving for three years he asked to see my license. Where does the audacity for a question like that come from? From his penis? Surely. I am genuinely curious if the testosterone inside a man’s body impacts his brain. Is it the testosterone that gives men the audacity? Or, is it simply the society we live in? Does our society really allow men to believe that they are entitled to certain things, a wife, a car, a well paid job?

Being a woman living in any time scale throughout history would result in being a victim to the ‘male-gaze’. There is an unspoken factor behind many of the decisions modern women make… Do I walk home alone at night? Should I wear this dress? How do I tell him I don’t like him like that? This unspoken factor is the uncertainty surrounding the actions and reactions of men. I don’t understand why women should tiptoe through their life because they don’t know how men will react to their actions. In no way am I criticising all men or blaming all men, however, men should learn to take responsibility for their sex and stop sliming out of awkward situations by making ridiculous comments such as, ‘but it’s not all men…’ There is a reason why women are afraid to walk alone at night, just because you personally wouldn’t attack and rape a woman doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. Although there are many things that I ‘love’ about men, I do sometimes wish that some men would take a moment and think before acting. There will always be a power imbalance between men and women, all we can do is work together to try to bridge the gap as much as possible and hopefully eventually I will only be able to report on truthful things I love about men…

by may Yang
​
Many university students volunteer to teach children in rural areas. They join mainly to make connections with Taiwan and to devote themselves to eliminating the gap between the urban and rural educational systems. Some also want to devote themselves to addressing the wealth gap between the city and the countryside.

Volunteers don’t put emphasis on academic performance, but instead they devote themselves to bringing new influences to the children and to stirring their interest in the outside world. In rural areas resources are limited, and these children are often deprived of a variety of opportunities.
Meetings can be physical or virtual, depending on the distance of the school. Some meet regularly during the semester while others are intensive experiences that take place during school vacations.

By Catherine Weng

2021 was a turbulent year. Despite a worrying level 3 epidemic alert in Taiwan and a doomsday crisis for theaters, movies are still there and they continue to provide us a place where we can escape from gloomy reality. Cinema is where dreams begin.

Here are three of my top films for 2021*, and in each lives a dream. A dream that responds and reflects certain situations in different societies, and tries to carve a way out, where light enters, where there is hope.