Belgium has honored its friendship with Taiwan by dressing Manneken Pis — an iconic bronze statue in Belgium of a boy urinating — in traditional Hakka costume.
The statue, a symbol of the city’s humor, is frequently garbed in costume as a gesture of friendship to its many foreign tourists.
At noon on Wednesday at Brussels Town Hall, Representative to the EU and Belgium Harry Tseng (曾厚仁) gifted the costume to The Order of Friends of Manneken Pis, the statue’s managing committee.
Photo: CNA
Brussels Archivist-Curator and Director-General of Culture Anne Vandenbulcke and Brussels City Councilor Hamza Fassi-Fihri attended the ceremony.
“It is gratifying as a person of Hakka descent to represent Taiwan’s Hakka people to the world,” Tseng said, praising traditional Hakka culture for its respect for women, and its ethos of frugality and hard work.
The costume, made by Shih Chien University fashion design professor Yeh Le-Chang (葉立誠), is a dark-blue jacket and baggy trousers, traditionally favored by Hakka of both sexes.
Eight Hakka children from Pingtung County’s Neipu Elementary School danced in a street procession to deliver the costume to the statue.
After dressing Manneken Pis, the children performed another 10-minute routine using tung tree flower designs and handcrafted paper parasols, a specialty of the Hakka community in Kaohsiung’s Meinong District (美濃).
The procession and the dressing ceremony attracted a large crowd, including Brussels residents, tourists and Taiwanese-Belgians.
Last year, a member of the public wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying that Brussels often put Manneken Pis in costumes from various nations and the ministry should use the opportunity to promote Taiwan, Tseng said.
Following the ministry’s instructions, the Taipei Representative Office in the EU and Belgium worked for months to create the costume with the Hakka Affairs Council and to advocate for its selection by Brussels, he said.
It is very meaningful that Taiwan was able to show its diverse culture to the world, he said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the statue wore the Hakka outfit for seven hours on Wednesday.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS