The Taipei County Government said yesterday it would step up its efforts to have Pingsi Township’s (平溪) Sky Lantern Festival ratified as a world cultural heritage event.
County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) expressed its displeasure with the Council for Cultural Affairs’ recent rejection of the county government’s proposal to apply with UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee for the lantern festival to be added to its World Heritage List.
The council rejected the proposal on the grounds that Taiwan is not a UN member, he said.
Chou said that as the nation’s top agency on cultural affairs, the council should be helping the county government rather than shooting down its efforts.
He said the county government would seek other means to achieve its objective, adding that if the county did not move fast enough, it could be surpassed by South Korea and other Southeast Asian countries, which could seek to have their own sky lantern activities listed as world cultural heritage property.
“A South Korean mission visited Taipei County in February to gain a better understanding of the Pingsi Sky Lantern Festival and surrounding activities,” Chou said.
Pingsi Township has long been a center of sky lantern activities, with the small town attracting about 30,000 people to the event in February every year.
As of last year, the World Heritage List included 878 items the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
Actor Lee Wei (李威) was released on bail on Monday after being named as a suspect in the death of a woman whose body was found in the meeting place of a Buddhist group in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) last year, prosecutors said. Lee, 44, was released on NT$300,000 (US$9,148) bail, while his wife, surnamed Chien (簡), was released on NT$150,000 bail after both were summoned to give statements regarding the woman’s death. The home of Lee, who has retreated from the entertainment business in the past few years, was also searched by prosecutors and police earlier on Monday. Lee was questioned three
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
WAR SIMULATION: The developers of the board game ‘2045’ consulted experts and analysts, and made maps based on real-life Chinese People’s Liberation Army exercises To stop invading Chinese forces seizing Taiwan, board gamer Ruth Zhong chooses the nuclear option: Dropping an atomic bomb on Taipei to secure the nation’s freedom and her victory. The Taiwanese board game 2045 is a zero-sum contest of military strategy and individual self-interest that puts players on the front lines of a simulated Chinese attack. Their battlefield game tactics would determine the theoretical future of Taiwan, which in the real world faces the constant threat of a Chinese invasion. “The most interesting part of this game is that you have to make continuous decisions based on the evolving situation,
RSS