The organizing committee of the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival on Monday offered an apology to the Taiwanese delegation, which was unable to walk the “green carpet” on the opening day due to a protest raised by the Chinese delegation over Taiwan’s name.
Festival office chief Nobushige Toshima told the Central News Agency (CNA) in a telephone interview that the Taiwanese delegation was among the distinguished guests invited by the festival organization while the Chinese were not.
On the opening night of the festival on Saturday, as throngs of international stars and filmmakers were gracing the green carpet, the Taiwanese and Chinese groups were feuding over the name that would be used to introduce Taiwan’s delegation.
The Chinese side, headed by director Jiang Ping (江平), demanded that Taiwan’s group use the word “China” as part of its name, a request deemed unreasonable and rejected by the Taiwanese delegation led by Chen Chih-kuan (陳志寬), director of the Department of Motion Pictures Affairs under the Government Information Office.
The argument lasted over 90 minutes, causing both delegations to miss their grand entrances.
Speaking to the CNA, Toshima said the committee was shocked and dumbfounded when it received the news regarding the feud. However, when asked why the organizers did not step in to mediate the dispute, he admitted the committee did not take good care of the Taiwanese delegation.
Taiwan has been a regular participant at the festival and has always attended under the name “Taiwan,” Toshima said, and he promised that the committee would not deviate from that as long as Taiwan continues to be part of the event in the future.
During the argument, Jiang threatened the committee with an ultimatum that if the name issue were not resolved in China’s favor within 10 minutes, the Chinese delegation would withdraw from the festival and contemplate never attending again.
According to an individual familiar with the film festival, Jiang’s behavior left the committee feeling “used” as his own self-promoting tool. Although the Chinese delegation was at fault, the committee’s hands were tied, the source said.
He added that Jiang participated in the film festival last year but did not make the same request. If Jiang had made the demand one week ahead of the event, the organizer would have had time to come up with a solution, but what Jiang did caught everyone by surprise.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS