An announcement that the Megaport Music Festival has been rescheduled for some time next year has been met with great enthusiasm from fans, musicians and the Kaohsiung Bureau of Cultural Affairs.
The festival was canceled this year after the organizers said that the Kaohsiung City Government, under then-Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), was allegedly “unfriendly and obviously unsupportive.”
Late last month, the organizers arranged a live broadcast event in which FireEx (滅火器) front man Sam Yang (楊大正), Elephant Gym (大象體操樂團) bass player Tif Chang (張凱婷), Chthonic lead singer Freddy Lim (林昶佐), DJ Mykal (林哲儀) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) discussed their experiences attending the Megaport Music Festival, an annual event that debuted in 2006.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
Fan support has been the greatest motivator in reorganizing the event for next year, the organizers said, adding that most planning committee members had considered not holding the event for a few years.
“However, over the past year, we were truly touched by the fans’ support of the event and we have decided to return,” the committee said.
The organizers have had a rough time this past year, Chthonic band spokeswoman and bass player Doris Yeh (葉湘怡) said, adding that she hopes that rescheduling the event for next year would succeed.
The bureau said that it is always supportive of pop music, and always happy to see music events of every style held in Kaohsiung.
FireEx thanked the organizers’ efforts, saying that it understands the difficulty of the decision and hopes to be back on the festival stage next year.
Taiwanese rapper Dwagie (大支) said he was “moved” by the decision and said he hopes the organizers would invite him to the event.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS