More than 12,000 people gathered in Taipei yesterday to attempt to set a Guinness World Record by writing calligraphy on the first day of the new year.
Braving low temperatures and sharp wind, 12,902 people gathered at the Central Culture Park on Bade Road to attend the city’s fifth Chinese Character Festival.
The festival was initiated by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in 2005 when he was the city’s mayor and was organized to promote Chinese culture and traditional Chinese characters. In ancient times, it was a tradition that a writing ceremony would take place on the first day of the new year to offer freshly written characters to the gods as prayers for a prosperous year ahead.
Addressing the event yesterday, Ma said Chinese characters were among the oldest writing systems in the world and a valuable asset.
The government has launched a campaign to obtain world heritage status for traditional Chinese characters in a bid to preserve them for the future, Ma said.
Traditional Chinese characters are used in Taiwan and 50 million people are estimated to use them worldwide, Ma said, compared with the 1.3 billion people in China using the simplified form.
However, publications printed in traditional Chinese seemed to be more popular than those printed in simplified Chinese, Ma said.
Ma said it was important to read traditional Chinese because it was a necessary tool to understanding classic Chinese literary works.
It would narrow the gap between both sides of the Taiwan Strait if the Chinese could also read traditional Chinese characters, Ma said.
As one of the 16 guests invited to write auspicious words and usher in the Year of Ox, Ma wrote the character han (漢), or “Chinese.”
It was one of the characters assigned to the guests making up the 16-word couplet, which read: “Genesis of stroke sheds grace on the people, Chinese culture spreads out over four seas.”
They then wrote one more Chinese character on a different piece of paper to sum up their New Year’s wish. Ma and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) wrote an (安), “safety,” Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) wrote he (和), “harmony,” and Taipei City Council Speaker Wu Bi-chu (吳碧珠) wrote chun (春), or “spring.”
On behalf of the participants, four-year-old Cheng Pei-chieh (鄭佩婕) and 93-year-old Chao Chia-li (趙家理) accepted “wisdom brushes” from Ma and a “hero certificate” as a token of gratitude for their attendance. Cheng said she wanted to be a calligrapher when she grows up.
Chen Yeh Tsai-mei (陳葉再妹), who does not read or write, drew circles on a long strip of red paper. She said it was the first time she had written with ink and a brush.
Holding her brush in shaky hands, the 97-year-old said the circles symbolized perfection and she wished everything in the New Year to be perfect and that everybody would make a lot of money.
Chen’s four-year-old great-grandson, Hu Hsiu-yi (胡修禕) seemed to have a good time drawing on the red paper. With his hands covered with black ink and the brush’s end split, Hu was biting the sleeve of his sweater when he said he wants to be a doctor when he grows up. His New Year’s wish was to be happy.
His mother said it was the first time her son had written with ink and brush and that they had returned home from San Jose, California, for the New Year holidays.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
RESPONSE: The government would investigate incidents of Taiwanese entertainers in China promoting CCP propaganda online in contravention of the law, the source said Taiwanese entertainers living in China who are found to have contravened cross-strait regulations or collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be subject to fines, a source said on Sunday. Several Taiwanese entertainers have posted on the social media platform Sina Weibo saying that Taiwan “must be returned” to China, and sharing news articles from Chinese state media. In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asked the Ministry of Culture to investigate whether the entertainers had contravened any laws, and asked for them to be questioned upon their return to Taiwan, an official familiar with the matter said. To curb repeated
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday appealed to the authorities to release former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) from pretrial detention amid conflicting reports about his health. The TPP at a news conference on Thursday said that Ko should be released to a hospital for treatment, adding that he has blood in his urine and had spells of pain and nausea followed by vomiting over the past three months. Hsieh Yen-yau (謝炎堯), a retired professor of internal medicine and Ko’s former teacher, said that Ko’s symptoms aligned with gallstones, kidney inflammation and potentially dangerous heart conditions. Ko, charged with
RSS