The Tainan City Government yesterday unveiled details of this year’s Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成�?ulture Festival to celebrate the 347th anniversary of the Chinese general’s successful campaign to drive the Dutch out of Taiwan.
Better known in the West by the name “Koxinga” (國姓爺), the Ming loyalist established the Kingdom of Tungning (東寧國) in Taiwan as his base to overthrow the Qing dynasty.
While Koxinga has often been touted as evidence of the historical link between Taiwan and China, Taiwanese historian Lee Shiao-feng (李筱峰) has said that documents from the Koxinga period contradict the claim by China that Taiwan has been part of Chinese territory since ancient times.
The Tainan City Government, which is organizing the festival for the eighth consecutive year, named this year’s festival “The Return of the King” to celebrate the recent relocation of Koxinga’s golden statue to the 300-year-old Koxinga’s shrine, the earliest shrine built to worship Cheng in Taiwan.
The statue had been lost for about 40 years before it was found earlier this year.
“This year’s Koxinga cultural festival centers on traditional and educational activities,” Tainan City mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (�?]) said.
Tourists will be able to experience local culture through a series of activities separated into three categories: cuisine, performance and exhibitions.
Performers will include groups from Kinmen, the Chinese cities of Zhangzhou, Quanzhou and Xiamen as well as some from the Japanese city of Hirado, Hsu said.
The nine-day festival will run through Sunday.
Hsu Keng-hsiu (�?�), director-general of the city government’s Cultural Affairs Bureau, said that the main task of this year’s festival was to invite performance groups for cultural exchanges.
Plans include a southern Fujian folk art exhibition and a conference to discuss ancient art and literature.
“The festival is not just about religious worship, but also about the combination of cultures, which is a major feature of Tainan City,” Hsu Keng-hsiu said.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its