Nowadays, more than 90% of Taiwanese citizens move on to attain higher education, and with a literacy rate of more than 90%, it’s safe to say the nation loves its learnin’. This year, the Ministry of Education has extended the love to elderly citizens, most of whom could not attend college because of financial and social issues. It looks like Grandpa and Grandma don’t get to walk away with a real degree, but they get to fully immerse themselves in a college environment for five days and four nights. It’s like a getaway for the academic brainiacs that could’ve been.
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Tags: Education, eldery, ROC, senior citizens, taiwan

As you may know, some of the Ningin staffers went to the Jay Chou concert. We all had a great experience along side with the contest winner, Pods.

Anyways to spread the joy, we’ve got two great fan videos of Jay Chou’s Mohegan Sun concert online!
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Tags: concert, cpop, fan video, Fragrant Rice, Jay Chou, Live, mandopop, Mohegan Sun, Sunny Otaku, Sunshine Boy, taiwan, 周杰倫, 稻香, 陽光宅男

Ok, it’s now Monday, December 22, 2008. Yesterday Ningin reporter Amy Chang and I trekked from New York City to the Mohegan Sun Arena in Conneticut. A good three hour bus ride in the snow and only one shared bathroom on the bus. Although bathroom, washroom or restroom wouldn’t really describe it accurately. How about chemical commode that you don’t want to touch? Anyways, the point is that I have finally recovered from the awesome and inspiring Jay Chou concert!
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Tags: cpop, Jay Chou, mandopop, taiwan, 周杰倫

Talk is cheap, barbers give it away for free with a haircut; however, there are moments in conversation that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. The following celebs have left their mark in media history by saying the wrong thing at the wrong place and time. While most can just be laughed off, others will forever haunt them.
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Tags: betsu-ni, Edison Chen, HK sex scandal, Oguri Shun, President Ma Jing Yeou, Sawajiri Erika, taiwan, Yamadu Yu

2008 has been an exciting year for a fair number of Asian celebrities. On deciding who to spotlight, I took into account the recent histories of the celebrities’ careers and how 2008 is a good indication of what they stand to gain in the future. And of course, I filtered out celebrities that had any publicized drama, career blunders, and/or scandals; this is the happy section, after all! A couple of these picks may not be the biggest names, but I’m more than sure they’ll be riding their notable upswings well into 2009 and beyond.
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Tags: amuro namie, atsu-hime, best fiction, china, danso no reijin, galileo, giragira, himitsu no hanazono, horikita maki, Hotaru no Hikari, hyorish, innocent love, japan, kase ryo, korea, lee hyori, liar game, lin chi ling, matsuda shota, maya miki, mokomichi hayami, nhk, oh! my girl, osen, Red Cliff, taiwan, takeshi kaneshiro, toda erika, vidal sassoon, yoshida riko

I bet FOBs around the world would scream in delight when they hear about this. There is actually a maternity hospital in Taiwan that is all about Hello Kitty (see video here). The hospital management hopes that this popular Japanese cartoon icon will help ease the pain and fear associated with child birth. The nurses here all wear Hello Kitty aprons. Newborns here will get a birth certificate with Hello Kitty’s face on it. You can find the annoying feline’s face on everything used in this hospital, including blankets, bedsheets and probably diapers and ass wipes. There are also Hello Kitty posters and statues everywhere. A life sized Hello Kitty would swing by twice a week to visit the mothers and their newborns. My mom had me there and that life sized Hello Kitty had probably peered into her doorway as I was about to pop out, scaring the shit out of me. This explains why I am so afraid of pussy now.

Tags: hello kitty, hospital, maternity, taiwan

Cape No. 7 (海角七號) is a Taiwanese comedic romance film written and directed by Wei Te-Sheng, his first full-length motion picture. The film is mainly in Mandarin Chinese but also contains significant lines in Taiwanese and Japanese. Before its commercial release, the film premiered world-wide on June 20, 2008 at the 2008 Taipei Film Festival as its opening film. The film later won 3 awards in this festival.

Prior to this film, the two leading actors Van Fan (范逸臣) and Chie Tanaka (田中千絵) only had minor acting experience while some of the supporting roles were filled by non-actors. Even without a strong promotional campaign, this movie has become so popular in Taiwan that on November 1, 2008 it became the 2nd top grossing film in the island’s cinematic history, behind Titanic. The film has been nominated for 9 awards in the 2008 Golden Horse Award and it is Taiwan’s entry to compete in the 81st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.
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Tags: academy award, cape no 7, festival, film, movie, taiwan

The Hana Yori Dango craze is spreading like wildfire with China the next to join in.

It is reported that Chinese network Hunan TV will be doing a remake based on the storyline of Meteor Garden (Taiwan). The producers are hoping to bring on the Taiwanese band F4 in addition to pop stars Hankyung of Super Junior and Yu Haoming in addition to Ariel Lin to play the role of Makino.

While it is all talks, part of me is hoping they’ll do it whereas the other half is like that’s a lot of HYD. The Japanese movie just came only over the summer and Korea has already gone into production with their version. A lot of fans feel the same way but even if they do pull through, it’s not like everyone won’t watch it.

Source: Seoulbeats

Tags: ariel lin, china, F4, hana yori dango, hankyung, japan, korea, Super Junior, taiwan, tv series, yu haoming

Can a theme restaurant satisfy taste buds, serve an all you can eat menu of delicacies, and still provide customers with high class service?? Located in Tainan, Taiwan, the Alice Maid restaurant offers all these things with a distinguishing feature.

The manager, Ms. Xu the of Alice Maid restaurant, said that building a high quality and an interesting restaurant atmosphere are the main demands of the Alice Maid restaurant. In the begining, Ms. Xu just wanted to open up a coffee shop, but she saw some reviews related to theme restaurants in a Japanese magazine by chance, and she got the idea of using maid costumes on the waitresses as the restaurant’s theme.
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Tags: alice maid, meido, restaurant, taiwan

Paris Hilton has gone through best friends just like she goes clothes so now she’s in search of a new one in her MTV reality tv series, Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.

In the most recent episode, Paris flies off to Tokyo, Japan taking 4 of the contestants with her and leaving the remaining 8 behind. While she’s in Tokyo, the 8 left behind get into a little cat fight: one of the contestants, Onch (Asian male), offered to give one of the other girls a pedicure who then asked if he could really do pedis. Corrie butts in and states in a matter of fact tone “He is Taiwanese“. Talk about being racist. The other girls ended up ganging up on her telling her she was wrong and that racism is so gone. It did get a little out of control and Zui even threatened to stab her. Gg?

Throughout the entire time, Corrie never admitted she was wrong and kept saying that “Asians do nails“. Honestly if she admitted she was wrong it could have been avoided. Now I hope Paris eliminates her, not that she had a chance anyways. If you’ve been keeping up, she’s quite slutty.

Tags: asians, best friends, mtv, my new bff, paris hilton, racism, reality show, taiwan, tv series