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Oct 9, 2024 | 
pressnewsagency.org | David Frazier
By David Frazier / Contributing reporterThough some now point to a new rivalry between China and the US in southeast Asia, there are no easy equivalences to the Cold War, when the region’s governments were forced to declare for one side or the other.
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Sep 23, 2024 | 
taipeitimes.com | David Frazier
By David Frazier / Contributing reporter If you are a Western and especially a white foreign resident of Taiwan, you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of Taiwanese assuming you to be an English teacher. There are cultural and economic reasons for this, but one of the greatest determinants is the narrow range of work permit categories that exist for Taiwan’s foreign residents, which has in turn created an unofficial caste system for foreigners.
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Sep 14, 2024 | 
scmp.com | David Frazier
The phrase a “new Cold War” is regularly tossed about in discussions of mainland China, the United States and Taiwan. Russian-American pundit Dmitri Alperovitch has even gone so far as to declare that “Taiwan is the new Berlin.”Mostly, it is the hawks on both sides who have kept this kind of “new Cold War” talk in circulation, but if some hardliners are touting a new Cold War, how might this version compare to the original?
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Aug 23, 2024 | 
taipeitimes.com | David Frazier
Sat, Aug 24, 2024 page13 By David Frazier / Contributing reporter A Moving Sound (生動樂團) has long been one of Taiwan’s most important ambassadors of world music and, in terms of international success, they continue to break new ground.
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Aug 14, 2024 | 
taipeitimes.com | David Frazier
By David Frazier / Contributing reporter When the Sundance Film Festival: Asia came to Taipei for the first time last year, bringing with it an unprecedented crowd of Hollywood A-listers, “We had more parties than screenings,” said Iris Wu (吳采頤), a Taiwanese tech entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, who is one of the event’s three key organizers.
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Aug 7, 2024 | 
taipeitimes.com | David Frazier
By David Frazier / Contributing reporter For the current Paris Olympics, Taiwan’s team of 60 athletes is now competing for the eleventh time as “Chinese-Taipei,” even as Olympic security guards and Chinese bullies prevent Taiwanese fans from cheering their athletes with signs that say “Taiwan.” But “Chinese Taipei” wasn’t always the name Taiwan used in the games.
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Jul 3, 2024 | 
taipeitimes.com | David Frazier
By David Frazier / Contributing reporter To review a colleague’s memoir which has been published posthumously is an intensely bittersweet and personal thing. It is both an act of mourning at the loss of a writer to whom I looked for inspiration and who always greeted me with a kind word. At the same time, it is a way of smiling through tears in relating the triumphs and follies of a life I had long suspected but until now had not fully known.
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May 22, 2024 | 
taipeitimes.com | David Frazier
By David Frazier / Contributing reporter When the writer Fredick King Poole visited Taiwan in the late 1960s, he was struck by “the sad little sun flag over the airport proclaiming this to be China itself, the announcement over the plane’s PA system that picture-taking was not allowed because this island was in fact a great nation at war, the portraits everywhere of poor old discredited Chiang.” By Chiang, he of course meant Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), then leader of Taiwan’s authoritarian...
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May 4, 2024 | 
scmp.com | David Frazier
For the Chinese-speaking world, Teresa Teng Li-chun’s untimely death on May 8, 1995, at the height of her fame, aged just 42, could perhaps be compared to the deaths of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana; in that they were deaths that not only shocked millions of admirers, but sparked endless waves of conspiracy theories.
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Apr 19, 2024 | 
scmp.com | David Frazier
How former opium-producing towns in Thailand’s Golden Triangle are cashing in on their troubled past via museums and moreThe confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers sits in a sleepy, broad plain that runs through a historically lawless section of highland Southeast Asia.
