Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's ICRT Vlog! I'm Nancy, and we're here to
talk about some of the lifestyle entertainment kind of news that's
coming out of Taiwan, and from around the world. So, for this week there is a very
exciting thing happening in Taipei. Actually, it involves an international
fashion brand. Have you guys heard of a brand called 'Gucci'? I have... Basically what's
happened is, Gucci has worked with a huge local artist, and they've also worked
with, you know, some of the residents in the Yong Kang district in Taipei. They
have put up a Gucci art-wall. This is something that they've been doing for
the past couple of years, and it is part of an ad campaign. They're advertising
with street art, and they go around different parts of the world and
they put up a huge wall mural in different cities. This ad campaign is featured
in cities all over the world, including New York, Milan - did I say the right? Milan...
Milano - Milan, London, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Now
it is in Taipei. Taipei is the sixth city in the world to have a Gucci art wall,
and it is the third in Asia. The local artist that Gucci worked with this time he is
called Yan Jhen-Fa. Yan Jhen-Fa is a local artist who has spent 48 years of
his life painting huge movie posters. Now, I don't know if some of you are young
enough to remember this - I'm not - in Taiwan, movie theaters...
They didn't used to use large posters or screens to display each movie poster.
They would get a local artist to paint the whole poster, and it's huge. It goes
up on the side of a wall of a building. It's meant to be seen from far away,
and on highways and whatnot. These... murals are huge and so, it seems like he
is the perfect person for this job. A lot of people refer to him as a national
treasure. 國寶級的 artist. In an interview for Elle magazine Yan Jhen-Fa said
that he likes to do everything by hand, obviously. What a lot of mural artists
will do is, they will project the painting onto the wall, or the picture
onto the wall, and then paint onto that. But, he did he did it all by hand.
It's enormous, it's huge. If you get a chance you can go and check it out. It is
in Yongkang district right next to the park, so that would be a great thing to
look at over the weekend. The next story we have for you today is a nice
heartwarming story with a happy ending. This also takes place in Taipei. There
was a woman who took a cab and she was on her way to a hospital for a checkup.
She had left an enormous sum of money in the cab, along with her purse. She left a
check for 1.5 million, and she also left 55 thousand NT in cash. That is a lot of
money - rent plus, you know, fees plus - living expenses for months! After
she realized this, she was in a complete panic, of course, and she went to the
police, and the police were very efficient. They found CCTV footage and
security footage from the area, identified the cab driver, and they
notified him, and as soon as he was notified, he drove the cab and the purse
and a huge amount of money all the way back to the police station, where she
reclaimed her funds. And that is a happy ending. That is one of the things I'm
pretty sure we've all done before, with something or other. It's just great to
hear that people in Taiwan are so friendly, and police are so efficient! For
our third story for today, I don't know if you do, this but most countries around
the world, they have, you know, everybody believes there's three meals in a day,
with some snacks in between. But, in Taiwan there is a well-loved and
time-honored tradition of a fourth meal, and that is the 宵夜 - the midnight
snack. I do this sometimes. A lot. Maybe everyday. I don't know if you do, or not,
but, it's it's awesome. All the best food is for like midnight
snacks. You've got your like 鹽酥雞...what is that called... salty fried chicken.
You've got your, you know, 滷味 - braised pork and vegetables, and all of
that. That's all... the best stuff is for 宵夜. BBC - the British news network -
they've taken notice. They featured this tradition in their Travel section just a
few days ago. They basically had a reporter come in and write a story, and
experience a lot of the delicious foods and places where you can get that
midnight snack. Some of the things they talked about: Night markets,
beer houses, with the 快炒 - fast fried foods. They talked about
all-you-can-eat karaoke places where you get the food deliver into your karaoke
you know booth. What are the things they've actually focused on is how these
family-run stalls, they will focus on like one signature dish, or one or two
things that they do better than everyone else, and they will do it again and again
and again, so you can go to a whole bunch of different stalls and get the best of
everything, and just like go get the little dishes as you go and that's one
of the things that they found to be completely different from other parts of the world!
If you have a chance, or if you just feel like getting a snack, you can go
visit those places and you can check out the article on the BBC News website. That
is it for this week's ICRT Vlog. Remember you can check out our vlog post
on our blog page, or you can just check out our posts on YouTube, and on our
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Bye!