More than 20 orphans from Africa sang Taiwanese folk songs and performed Chinese Shaolin kungfu routines at Kaohsiung City Hall yesterday, captivating an audience that included Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊).
The performers, whose parents all died from AIDS, live at a shelter founded by a Taiwanese Buddhist monk, Master Hui Li (慧禮法師), in Malawi.
They began a 21-day tour on Monday to express their gratitude to sponsors in Taiwan.
PHOTO: CHANG CHUNG-YI, TAIPEI TIMES
Impressed by the Malawian children’s proficiency in singing in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and performing martial arts, Chen pledged to donate NT$10,000 a month to the organization.
Chen praised Hui Li for not only volunteering to promote Buddhist doctrines in remote and underdeveloped villages in Africa, but also for building shelters for children whose survival was threatened by hunger and disease.
Hui Li founded the Amitofo Care Center in Malawi in 2001 to offer shelter, care and education for AIDS orphans. Since then, it has sheltered more than 2,000 Malawian children.
At City Hall, the monk expressed his gratitude to the mayor for taking the time to meet him and the children and for her support.
Such support inspired the group to launch the tour of Taiwan that will also take it to Taichung, Tainan and Taipei, the monk said.
Hui Li, who became a monk at the age of 23, is a disciple of Master Hsing Yun (星雲法師), founder of the Fo Guang Shan Monastery in Kaohsiung County.
He traveled to South Africa in 1992 to build Fo Guang Shan’s Nanhua Monastery, the group’s first foothold — and the first Buddhist hub — in South Africa.
Hui Li left Fo Guang Shan in the late 1990s to start his own religious career in Africa, where Buddhism is often condemned as heresy.
He has since dedicated himself to helping African AIDS children, traveling around many African countries, including Malawi, Swaziland, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Cameroon. He has also built Amitofo care centers in Zimbabwe and Lesotho.
Hui Li has been quoted as saying that he hopes to be buried in Africa and be reincarnated five times as an African monk.
Over the past 16 years, he has adopted or provided care and shelter for nearly 10,000 African AIDS orphans, earning the sobriquet “African monk,” while many children call him “daddy sent by Buddha.”
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
NUMBERs IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
RSS