CULTURE
Taiwan festival to begin
The annual Taiwan Plus cultural festival in Japan is to be held in Kyoto for the first time on Saturday and Sunday, showcasing the Taiwanese religious icon Mazu and featuring live performances by popular music acts, an event promoter said yesterday. The festival, which celebrates the rapport between Taiwan and Japan, would include an exhibition about the sea goddess enshrined in Fengtian Temple in Hsinkang, Chiayi County, the Kyoto City Tourism Association said. There would also be live music shows, featuring Taiwanese folk singer Chen Ming-chang (陳明章), Hakka pop singer Hsieh Yu-Wei (謝宇威) and Puyuma Family Band, an indigenous band whose members have won more than 10 Golden Melody awards. During the event, the Taiwanese artists would also collaborate with their Japanese counterparts, such as the Style Kyoto Orchestra and conductor Kimbo Ishii, the association said. Other well-known participants include Kyoto Tachibana Senior-High School marching band and Japanese Noh music performer Tatsunori Kongo, it said. Besides music, a bazaar featuring Taiwanese food and culture from about 100 local brands would offer delicacies including bubble milk tea, pastries, beer and jam, it said. The event is to run from 11am to 6pm.
EDUCATION
Teacher suspended
The Taichung Bureau of Education said it has fined and imposed a four-year teaching ban on a preschool teacher who threatened a child with scissors, while also ordering the school that employed her to halt new enrollments for one year. The bureau said it received a tip-off earlier last month and contracted an outside investigator on April 22 to examine the case. The investigator’s report said that the teacher forcibly held down a child with special needs, threatened a child with a pair of scissors and made children run laps around a track as a punishment. After a meeting on the situation on Tuesday last week, the bureau said it had fined the female teacher NT$400,000 and banned her from working at educational institutions for four years.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
Snow fell on Yushan (Jade Mountain, 玉山) yesterday morning as a continental cold air mass sent temperatures below freezing on Taiwan’s tallest peak, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Snowflakes were seen on Yushan’s north peak from 6:28am to 6:38am, but they did not fully cover the ground and no accumulation was recorded, the CWA said. As of 7:42am, the lowest temperature recorded across Taiwan was minus-5.5°C at Yushan’s Fengkou observatory and minus-4.7°C at the Yushan observatory, CWA data showed. On Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County, a low of 1.3°C was recorded at 6:39pm, when ice pellets fell at Songsyue Lodge (松雪樓), a
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