The farming town of Meinung (美濃) in Kaohsiung County celebrates its unique Hakka culture this weekend with a bicycle tour and butterfly worship ceremony.
The 14th Yellow Butterfly Festival (美濃黃蝶祭) was originally started in 1995 to draw attention to environmental conservation efforts in the neighboring Yellow Butterfly Valley (黃蝶 翠谷), once home to millions of butterflies.
Those numbers fell drastically because of deforestation tied to a proposed dam construction project in the 1990s. By the time grassroots activists successfully halted the plan, the initial groundwork had already had an impact.
Now, during peak butterfly season in May and June, only hundreds of the insects can be observed, said Hsu Kuo-ming (徐國明) of the Meinung People’s Association (美濃愛鄉協進會), one of the festival’s organizers.
As usual, the festival features a bicycle ride in the Butterfly Valley area and a Butterfly Worship Ceremony, a traditional Hakka prayer ritual. But the event is no longer held during the peak season so as “not to disturb” the local ecology. Instead, the ceremony, which will be held tomorrow morning, now serves as a way of “apologizing to the butterflies,” said Hsu.
After the ceremony there will be booths set up by local groups to promote environmental awareness, as well as activities for children and a nature photography exhibition.
While the event still serves as a reminder of the importance of environmental conservation, it now focuses on cultural and community enrichment activities for Meinung residents and visitors.
This year organizers are placing the spotlight on Meinung’s Guanglin Community (廣林社區), which neighbors Butterfly Valley. The Guanglin Community Activity Center will provide bicycles free of charge for visitors to tour the area.
Bicyclists will be given tourist maps of Guanglin created by a group of students from Meinung as part of a community project.
Landmarks include several 100-year-old temples, kaiji bogung (開基伯公), or roadside altars built by earlier generations of Hakka settlers, and restored huofang (夥房), traditional Hakka houses similar to the U-shaped sanheyuan (三合院). The tourist maps also include popular local eateries serving traditional foods such as bantiao noodles (粄條).
The Butterfly Worship Ceremony takes place tomorrow at 9:30am at the Shuangsi Tropical Viviparous Forest (雙溪熱帶母樹林) near Guanglin Community and Butterfly Valley, which is a 20- to 30-minute drive from the town center.
The best way of getting there is by car or motorcycle. From Meinung, organizers say to follow the yellow flags planted along the town’s main road.
The event runs all day tomorrow and Sunday and is free. For a full schedule (in Chinese only) visit www.wretch.cc/blog/heausangfee.
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
There are shadowy cabals plotting to sell out Taiwan to be annexed by China, by invasion if necessary. Fortunately, they are buffoons. In 2019, former Bamboo Union gangster and founder of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), Chang An-le (張安樂, colorfully known as “White Wolf”), led a protest at the Legislative Yuan against comments made by then-premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) that in the event of an attack by China, he would never surrender, but would protect the nation by fighting to the end, even if he only had a broom. Chang had party members bring a wooden casket that they
June 1 to June 7 "If all Taiwanese were as afraid of dying as you, then what would happen?” Physician Shih Chiang-nan (施江南) reportedly said this to his wife Chen Chiao-tung (陳焦桐) after she urged him to stop intervening on behalf of Taiwanese soldiers stranded overseas after serving in the Japanese Army during World War II. Shih had clashed with high-ranking officials over the issue, engaged in several heated arguments with Taiwan governor-general Chen Yi (陳儀) and allegedly shouted at general Ko Yuan-fen (柯遠芬), chief of staff of the Taiwan Garrison Command, over
RSS