fulbright Taiwan online journal

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Month: April 2016

Chinese Martial Arts Cinema in the 21st Century: from Wong Fei-hung to Huang Fei-hong

( This manuscript is NOT a formally written paper and is NOT FOR CITATION in any form. )     The real Wong Fei-hung (WFH) was a celebrated martial artist, a physician, an herbalist, and a street performer. He belonged to the Hong Fist (洪拳) of the Southern Shaolin School (南少林) and was taught by his father, Wong Kei-ying (黃麒英). Wong Fei-hung’s legend was first popularized because of the serialized stories written by Zhu Yu-zhai in Hong Kong and published in newspapers in the 40s. In 1949, the first WFH film, True Story of Wong Fei-hung, (Huang feihong zhuan) was made, with 2 installments. This film ushered in a new era of martial arts films, and the directors trademarked it with Cantonese opera actor Kwan Tak-hing (關德興). These two films started the longest running series in world cinema. In my count, there are at least 107 films made featuring WFH from 1949 to 1997. And it is officially confirmed that Kwan Tak-hing appeared invariably as WFH in 77 films.      This specifically Cantonese series proclaimed to be kung fu, in the sense that it departed from a previous fantasy subgenre of martial arts, shenguai wuxia (神怪武俠). It rejected the

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Fulbright 經驗流水談

Fulbright 最主要給我三州的回憶: Enrichment Seminar的Tulsa, Oklahoma、Outreach Lecture Fund的Boston, Massachusetts,以及學習駐足基地的Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas。 一、Enrichment Seminar (四月1~4,2015@Tulsa, Oklahoma)     我選擇的主題是「Old to New West: The Role of Land in Shaping the American Story」,最後公布在我的故鄉高雄的姊妹市Tulsa舉辦。其實隱約猜得到會是個在美國中部有原住民文化的地方。我很榮幸可以以一位不同文化背景的訪問學者,來認識美國境內曾是主流的文化,並同時和其他不同文化背景的訪問學者學習。這個活動非常符合Fulbright設立的「增進互相瞭解」的宗旨。以下五點為我對此活動歸納的心得收穫。

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Me and Howard Go to See the Puppets and Almost All of Them Die

        I am a little late because Connor has taken me to UNIQLO to buy some kind of padded jacket–call it turquoise–I am bad with colors. Taipei winter is exacting vengeance on me for mocking it (“it’s like spring back home!”) by inflicting a lingering sore throat. The winter sun is heatlessly ablaze as we skitter ably through traffic, mirthful but cold: I tell Connor that Howard knows I will be a little late, he doesn’t have to rush across the intersection; but Connor is not thinking about me or tardiness. He has his own goals, is rushing to try and achieve traffic nirvana, the pulsing freedom where you hit every traffic light just so, what the Germans call the green wave. I think how every now and then the old desire to dress properly seems, for a moment, attainable; the new beginning! Taiwan will turn me into a cleaner man, will teach me sartorial rectitude. Progress towards that mirage: adulthood, maturity—the codes of which are always obscured by travel, by abrupt changes in climate, language, milieu, context—and which, like all ideals, get only vaguely approached, inclined towards, and never achieved. Whenever I say “I am getting my bearings,”

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Distribution of Ecosystem Service Benefits: An Initial Look

    Natural resource economics remains a powerful tool in both effective marine policy design and public advocacy. While total economic valuations now have a strong legal, policy, and cultural history in the United States, globally much work remains in understanding benefit allocation (NOAA 2013; Edgar et al. 2014). Where do the benefits of nature go? Generally, economists explain that this value goes to the public equally (Martín-López, Montes, and Benayas 2008). However, given certain inherent social inequalities, in reality, certain benefits go to certain groups or institutions first and only reach other sectors later. In my previous article, I shared initial results of the total economic value (TEV) of the Kenting National Park marine area. For an explanation of those methods, please refer to that article. This time, I propose an experimental methodology to map out the potential benefits of an ecosystem so we can better design marine resource policies to benefit the entire community. Scope Covering most of the Hengchun peninsula, the Kenting National Park (KNP) represents a logical scope. However, given the importance of KNP for Taiwan, we must take into account the entire island in terms of benefits distributions. The benefits of these corals extend far

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What the Taotao Means to Me

        On Orchid Island, the Taotao is a ubiquitous symbol.  It can be found inside churches, outside of 7-11, adorning many a tourist trinket, and most importantly, on every Tao boat.  Known as (人型 renxing the person symbol), the Taotao is often depicted as a small person with swirled arms and “curly Qs” coming out of its head. Whimsical in appearance, but steeped in meaning, the Taotao represents a person’s relationship with his or her physical environment.  For Tao people, this environment includes dense mountainous jungle, rocky beaches, and the crystal blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean.            Living on a small island over 40 miles from Taiwan and the Philippines, the people of this island have historically had a comprehensive knowledge of their environment.  In fact, the Tao people had such a depth of understanding that Orchid Island was self-sustaining until the Japanese occupation of Taiwan at the turn of the 20th century.  While the Tao are the only of the 16 officially recognized indigenous tribes of Taiwan that have taboos with otherworldly ramifications, many of these taboos actually contribute to the ecological sustainability of the island.  For example, the taboo that forbids island residents from fishing for or eating

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A Rich and Fulfilling Fulbright Experience in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong

    This paper contains reflections on my stay in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China as a Fulbright Senior Scholar from May to July 2015.   Research-Wide Reflections      Because the Fulbright Scholar Award is prestigious in supporting activities and projects that promote educational exchange and international understanding, I have been able to identify and collect data and collaborate with researchers and business managers in Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. Since my research topic focuses on mergers and acquisitions among companies in these three places, researchers and data in this area are scattered in multiple disciplines (e.g., business/management, political science, and sociology). It is challenging to conduct research in three different locations within three months, however, it is also extremely worthwhile to exchange ideas with people who are doing similar research or who are conducting business with real experience.      During my stay, I gave guest lectures to graduate students (approximately 60 students and 10 faculty members) where I shared my prior and ongoing research projects. I was also able to serve as a discussant and presenter giving an oral presentation in one international conference (Asia Academy of Management). Several comments and insights that people shared with me

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My Fulbright Journey in Taiwan: Language-Discordance as a Social Phenomenon

    Social worlds and social relationships are created, maintained, and resisted through human communication. The best of communication scholarship emerges through researchers’ willingness and ability to listen, by recognizing the perspectives of others, and learning through the nuances and complexities of communication practices. This is particularly important when working with marginalized and underserved populations, whose voices are often deprived and silenced, resulting in disparities in their everyday life. These are the values that have driven my research program for nearly two decades. Interests in and empathy for humans and the human phenomenon is fundamental to the scholarship of any social scientist.       I have dedicated my research to understanding how linguistic and cultural differences can create barriers to patients’ health experiences, including their access to and process of care. In particular, I am interested in how language-discordant patients, such as patients with English-limited proficiency (LEP), coordinate and negotiate healthcare services with their healthcare providers. As I presented my model of Bilingual Health Communication (Hsieh, 2016), a communicative model that aims to provide guidance for interpreter-mediated provider-patient interactions, to various groups in the United States, interpreters of American Sign Language often told me that their deaf patients are

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Jeffery Hou: Creative Urban Commoning – Examining Alternative Placemaking in Contemporary Taiwan

As the first Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program grant recipient to Taiwan, Jessica Dzieweczynski observes and collects Taiwanese everyday life experiences as firsthand material and term them into Chinese curriculum back in the States. Jessica holds a M.A. in Chinese Pedagogy and teaches high school students Mandarin at Latin School of Chicago.

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James Winkler: A Computational Infrastructure for Understanding Tolerance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBrdljFhe2g Currently, our ability to understand how microbes tolerate different environmental conditions, antibiotic treatments, and other insults is limited by the lack of a centralized resource containing genetic and gene expression data. Dr. James Winkler introduced the creation of a tolerance-focused database (the “Resistome”) and present preliminary analysis of trait interactions. Originally from Houston, Texas, Dr. Winkler completed both a bachelors and PhD in chemical engineering at universities in Texas. He subsequently moved to Colorado to conduct research in the Ryan Gill research group at University of Colorado-Boulder in order to better understand how we are currently engineering bacteria to produce fuels, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals needed for a renewable economy. As a Fulbright scholar, he is extending the research to understand how microbes and other organisms tolerate different types of chemical treatments, including antibiotics. The ultimate goal of my research is to design novel, evolution-resistant methods for combining antibiotics and engineering tolerance phenotypes into industrial biocatalysts.

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Sarah DeMola & Emily Quade: My ETA TEFL Training Experience

Sarah DeMola and Emily Quade work within the ETA advisory team which provides training and advice to the English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) and Taiwan local English teachers (LETs). Through weekly reports, bi-weekly workshops, class observations, and annual ETA conference, the team provides agile response and thorough training to enhance teaching quality of ETAs and LETs. Sarah DeMola and Emily Quade both hold M.A. degree from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and were both grantees of the “FSE English Teacher Training & Research Awards.”

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Research & Reflections

fulbright taiwan online journal