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This paper examines urban and well-educated Taiwanese women's resistance to the dominance of the valorization of female appearance, providing ethnography of undoing beauty in East Asia's era of post-developmentalism. Findings reveal the importance of the factor of time in their resistance to bodily grooming. First, participants have a "holistic" understanding of "doing beauty"; they consider this set of gender inequalities "chrono-normativity," which serves as a vector of social control. Second, the burden of long-term sustainability of aesthetic investment often turns into an unbearable weight that includes an endless quest for extreme slenderness, the exhausting immaterial labor of enacting cuteness and hetero-likability, and the difficulty of long-term financial affordability. Third, due to a bleak economic outlook and strong gender inequalities, disapproval of the quest for beauty showcases women's rejection of pursuing market success based on an aspirational and future-oriented temporality. Participants' "lying down" attitude and their emphasis on "assured little happiness" are witness to an anti-aspirational temporality, since women seek a present-focused and non-dominated experience of temporality. I argue that this anti-aspirationalism should be seen as an alternative configuration of neoliberal rationality where the care of the self and its ethos of individualism eclipse the pursuit of economic productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese Tofu (1971), edited by the acclaimed female writer Lin Haiyin in Taiwan, came out in a rapidly changing Cold War order in East Asia. Focusing on this previously neglected work, this article offers a close reading of how a mundane foodstuff shed light on contested Chineseness, one informed by Lin's own gendered experience in the diaspora. Rather than reifying or essentializing "Chinese" foodways, tofu opened up the possibility of a more cosmopolitan geography. That geography pointed to former imperial frontiers, the Sinitic cultural sphere, and beyond. The book's afterlife in reform-era China underscores the ongoing debate over what it means to be Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We aimed to examine the factors associated with treatment outcomes in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) after 1 year of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEI) treatment. Method: We obtained electronic medical records from a medical center in Southern Taiwan between January 2015 and September 2021. Participants aged ≥60 who were newly diagnosed with AD and had been prescribed AChEIs were included. Cognitive assessments were performed before the AChEIs were prescribed and at the 1 year follow‐up. Cognition progressors were defined as a Mini‐Mental State Examination decline of >3 or a Clinical Dementia Rating decline of ≥1 after 1 year of AChEI treatment. The relationship between the baseline characteristics and cognitive status after follow‐up was investigated using logistic regression analysis after adjusting for potential confounders. Results: A total of 1370 patients were included in our study (mean age, 79.86 ± 8.14 years). After adjustment, the body mass index (BMI) was found to be significantly lower in the progressor group [adjusted odds ratio (AOR): 0.970, 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs): 0.943 to 0.997, P = 0.033]. The usage of antipsychotics was significantly higher in the progressor group (AOR: 1.599, 95% CIs: 1.202 to 2.202, P = 0.001). The usage of benzodiazepine receptor agonists also tended to be significantly higher in the progressor group (AOR: 1.290, 95% CIs: 0.996 to 1.697, p = 0.054). Conclusion: These results suggest that patients with AD who receive 1 year of AChEI treatment and have a lower BMI or concurrent treatment with antipsychotics and benzodiazepine receptor agonists are more likely to suffer from cognitive decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Shanghai Fish Market (1936), initiated by Republican China's Ministry of Industry, was briefly a linchpin for producers and distributors, facilitating state intervention in the supply chain of the treaty port city. The market's modernist design by Su, Yang & Lei Architects departed from the Beaux-Arts-inspired practices often associated with Nationalist China's self-presentation. Influenced by foreign precedents, it incorporated rationalized trading procedures into its spatial layout. This article examines the market's construction, which was guided by fishery expertise and aimed to harness natural resources for societal and national benefits. Technopolitical dynamics surrounding the reconfiguration of food provisioning logistics generated power struggles among stakeholders at the local and international levels. Despite the obstacles that constantly challenged the technocrats' ambition to revolutionize the fishery industry, the Shanghai Fish Market's historical and architectural significance lies in its efforts to integrate the built and natural environments into a national system of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]