Late architect and academic Han Pao-teh (漢寶德); writer and translator Chi Pang-yuan (齊邦媛); and poet and writer Yu Kwang-chung (余光中) have won the nation’s highest cultural award, the Executive Yuan Culture Award, the Ministry of Culture said on Monday. The award honors their lifetime achievement in their respective disciplines, it added.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) is to present the awards — along with certificates and cash prizes of NT$1 million (US$32,350) — in a ceremony set for Feb. 9 next year.
Describing the trio as being highly regarded in their fields, Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) said they have made great contributions to national culture.
Their works and influence have reached far and wide, while their discourse and thoughts have encouraged young people to follow in their footsteps, she said.
Lung said that Han, who died on Thursday last week, explored the philosophy of architecture through the perspectives of history, aesthetics and environmental ethics.
He helped found the National Museum of Natural Science in Greater Taichung, Tainan National University of the Arts and the nation’s first museum studies graduate school.
Chi, who has taught in universities, has systematically promoted translating modern Taiwanese literature into English, the minister said.
Her masterpiece, the River of Big Torrents (巨流河), chronicles her family’s experience amid the turbulence of China in the first half of the 20th century and in Taiwan after 1949. The book also examines the plight of women during these transitional periods.
Yu has worked in creative literature for more than half a century and is well-known in the Chinese-language world. The literary world has lauded him for attaining “unrivaled achievements, while writing poems with his right hand and prose with his left hand.”
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese