If you’re driving down Taiwan Boulevard (臺灣大道) in Taichung on Oct. 10, you just might see the words “I Love Taiwan” displayed across a 20m by 50m mosaic. And, the 2,012 people supporting this proclamation hope to make history by forming the world’s largest picture mosaic.
Shaun Bettinson, the organizer, hopes the event held at Taichung City Hall will shatter the current two-year-old Guinness World Record, when 1,458 people formed a picture mosaic in the US.
“I have a lot of passion for this,” Bettinson said.
Photo Courtesy of Shaun Bettinson
So, it seems, do others. He’s enlisted the aid of nearly 230 volunteers for the day to register participants and give out T-shirts, stickers and balloons adorned with the slogan, “I Love Taiwan.”
Bettinson, an affable 32-year-old native of England who has called Taichung home for the last eight years, garnered recent media attention with a Facebook campaign that gathered thousands of photos of people with their arms jutting into the air as a sign of their love for Taiwan.
Participants were not only asked to submit a picture, but also to explain why they love Taiwan and state how the country can be improved.
Photo Courtesy of Shaun Bettinson
Bigger picture
Showing your love for Taiwan is as simple as taking a picture, he said. “You can take a lot from Taiwan. But this is about giving something back that’s bigger than yourself.”
The Taichung City Government is throwing its weight behind the project. The city will provide tents, water, tables and chairs for the Oct. 10 event, which will coincide with festivities celebrating the Republic of China’s (ROC) Double Ten National Day.
Photo Courtesy of Shaun Bettinson
Double Ten (雙十節), as it’s commonly known in Mandarin, celebrates the start of the Wuchang Uprising on Oct. 10, 1911, which led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and the founding of the ROC in 1912.
“Shaun is really great and really sweet,” said Huang Shao-fu (黃少甫), the chief of the city’s Marketing and Planning Division. “He’s bringing people together to show that everyone loves Taiwan.”
Huang said that Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) believes the outpouring of emotion for the country is amazing, especially since it’s spearheaded by a non-Taiwanese. Only during election day or national day do you usually hear people declaring their love for their country, Huang added.
Bettinson said that while he welcomes the government’s help, the “I Love Taiwan” campaign has no political agenda.
Giving back
“This is just a way to say thank you,” he said. To Bettinson’s joy, throngs of others have also been empowered with national pride.
One photo shows 2,500 high school students in Kaohsiung standing in the shape of Taiwan, while raising their arms declaring their love for the country. In another, a baby’s arms are thrust into the air forming a “V” sign. Photographic backdrops throughout the island have varied from skyscrapers to mountaintops.
“It’s amazing how the whole community has come together,” said Patrick Byrne, an 11-year resident of Taichung.
Like many expats living in Taiwan, Byrne has his own story to tell of Taiwanese generosity — which seems to have rubbed off on Bettinson.
Byrnes’ son, Fionn, was born prematurely and needed medical care totaling NT$1.2 million. Without health insurance the bills seemed insurmountable, but Bettinson organized several charity events that raised enough funds to cut the bills nearly in half.
“He’s an amazing friend. We couldn’t have done it without him,” Byrne said.
The original idea for the “I Love Taiwan” photo campaign came in April with a Facebook appeal for photos. Within a half hour, he had his first photo. Five months later he’s collected more than 35,000 photos and his initial YouTube video has been viewed upwards of 500,000 times.
At first, Bettinson planned to showcase a stockpile of 201,210 photos in a massive collage on the side of Taipei 101 for Double Ten, but the NT$10 million cost proved prohibitive.
Despite the setback, Bettinson continues to amass a collection of photos, and is considering other venues to display the collage. “I’m just going to keep going and get as many pictures as possible.”
Breaking a record
In the meantime, Bettinson is focused on gathering together as many people as possible for the Oct. 10 event so as to break the world record. While he doesn’t expect Guinness representatives to be present, he is hoping video, photos and witnesses will validate that the 2,012-person mosaic is indeed a world record.
One of those who will be helping out is Taichung resident Pay Liu (劉權霈), who saw Bettinson’s online photo appeal and was determined to get involved. Liu was able to help bring in sponsors who will be supplying promotional balloons and stickers.
“This is a meaningful event,” he said. “People should get involved.”
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
RSS