<strong>Feb. 21 to Feb. 27</strong>
By the end of February 2000, Taiwan’s mobile phone users had surpassed those with landlines. It was a quick surge for the industry, as just three years prior the coverage rate was 7 percent, according to the 2001 book Covering the Sky with One Hand: The Telecommunications Wars between the Four Heavenly Kings (隻手遮天: 大哥大四天王的電信大戰) by Peng Shu-fen (彭淑芬).
By the end of 2000, it was at 75 percent.
“Although the battle for the mobile phone market was fierce, compared to other foreign markets, [Taiwan’s] developed quite rationally,” Peng writes. “Unlike Hong Kong, for example, there was
Kerry Ann Lee looks at the enduring appeal of Chinese typeface and letterpress design in the digital age.
In 1952, a slow boat from Hong Kong arrived in New Zealand carrying one metric tonne of lead type. This would be used by the Dominion Federation of New Zealand Chinese Commercial Growers Incorporated to print The NZ Chinese Growers Monthly Journal (僑農月刊) until 1972. Stories about the Chinese Growers and their journal have circulated through families for decades, and been made more accessible thanks to scholarship by Wai-te-ata Press, landmark books by Ruth Lam, Lily Lee and Nigel Murphy, and an essay by Emma Ng. A taonga that lives up to its namesake, the Growers Journal empowered the post-war Cantonese Chinese community to grow and organise in Aotearoa. As this country’s only surviving Chinese language printing typeface collection, it also stands as a glorious example of grassroots community publishing and letterpress design.