Branded city living: Taipei becoming-Paris in Yi ye Taibei/Au Revoir Taipei (2010)

This article analyses Yi ye Taibei/Au Revoir Taipei (Chen, 2010). Due to its status as a co-production (with talent drawn from across borders, its various international funding sources and its deliberate appeal to global audiences through the festival circuit), the film is seen to provide a transnational perspective on Taipei. In this the film’s relationship with a film tourism agenda, a branding process pursued by the Taipei authorities, is stressed. Au Revoir Taipei’s consideration of life in Taipei, as a ‘branded city’, is analysed in terms of its three becomings (becoming-Paris, becoming-imperceptible, becoming-dance), in relation to Gilles Deleuze’s idea of the time-image (a striking example of which concludes the film) and it’s intertextual referencing of several ‘world’ or ‘art’ cinema classics, including Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à Part (1964). The film’s transnational view of life in the branded city is thus understood to emerge at the conjunction of global production and distribution realities for film-making, and contemporary work and lifestyle opportunities in Taipei, the convergence of which create a cinematic construction of Taipei city that can be deciphered using Deleuze’s concepts

HEADROOM - A space between presence and absence

This paper represents the first theoretical account of 'HEADROOM', a site-specific interactive art installation produced by Paul Sermon in Taipei as the successful recipient of the 2006 Taiwan Visiting Arts Fellowship. This residency programme was a joint initiative between Visiting Arts, the Council for Cultural Affairs Taiwan, British Council Taipei and Arts Council England. The development of this interactive art installation has been extensively documented as part of the AHRC Performing-Presence project [1] led by Prof. Nick Kaye from Exeter University in partnership with Stanford University. HEADROOM was exhibited at Xinyi Assembly Hall Taipei, April 2006

Developing Family Development Accounts in Taipei: Policy innovation from income to assets

In July 2000, the Taipei City Government launched an anti-poverty program, Taipei Family Development Accounts, which drew heavily on Sherraden¿s asset-based welfare theory, and was to provide matched savings accounts for low-income families in the City. This paper presents the ¿income to assets¿ policy shift process and a research summary on the participants to date.family development accounts (Taipei), poverty, assets-building

Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on Taipei,China’s Industrial Structure and Firm Activity

Given the dominance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Taipei,China (97.6% of business establishments, and 77.1% of employment), it is of vital importance to develop ways to aid SMEs in surviving the current global economic crisis. Indeed, the government can utilize this crisis to reform and strengthen SMEs so they can continue to be the backbone of Taipei,China’s economy. This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of SMEs in Taipei,China. Policy recommendations are presented to address the weaknesses of SMEs, including short-run and long-run approaches.sme; global economic crisis; industrial organization

Taipei,China's banking problems: lessons from the Japanese experience

Over the past decade, the health of the banking sector in Taipei,China has been in decline. Falling returns on assets and equity, steadily rising non-performing loans and bank runs at smaller financial institutions have highlighted problems across the banking sector as a whole. This study analyzes both the causes of, and policy responses to, the banking sector problems in Taipei,China, drawing comparisons from the experience of Japan. The author shows that there are many valuable lessons to be learned from the Japanese experience. In particular, policy makers in Taipei,China are urged to heed the early warning signs of overall banking sector problems and to avoid the policy of forbearance. Importantly, a hoped-for macroeconomic recovery cannot be relied upon to help banks “grow out” of their problems.bank, crisis, Taiwan, Japan

Effects of Topography on Seismic-Wave Propagation: An Example from Northern Taiwan

Topography influences ground motion and, in general, increases the amplitude of shaking at mountain tops and ridges, whereas valleys have reduced ground motions, as is observed from data recorded during and after real earthquakes and from numerical simulations. However, recent publications have focused mainly on the implications for ground motion in the mountainous regions themselves, whereas the impact on surrounding low-lying areas has received less attention. Here, we develop a new spectral-element mesh implementation to accommodate realistic topography as well as the complex shape of the Taipei sedimentary basin, which is located close to the Central Mountain Range in northern Taiwan. Spectral-element numerical simulations indicate that high-resolution topography can change peak ground velocity (PGV) values in mountainous areas by ±50% compared to a half-space response. We further demonstrate that large-scale topography can affect the propagation of seismic waves in nearby areas. For example, if a shallow earthquake occurs in the I-Lan region of Taiwan, the Central Mountain Range will significantly scatter the surface waves and will in turn reduce the amplitude of ground motion in the Taipei basin. However, as the hypocenter moves deeper, topography scatters body waves, which subsequently propagate as surface waves into the basin. These waves continue to interact with the basin and the surrounding mountains, finally resulting in complex amplification patterns in Taipei City, with an overall PGV increase of more than 50%. For realistic subduction zone earthquake scenarios off the northeast coast of Taiwan, the effects of topography on ground motion in both the mountains and the Taipei basin vary and depend on the rupture process. The complex interactions that can occur between mountains and surrounding areas, especially sedimentary basins, illustrate the fact that topography should be taken into account when assessing seismic hazard