Wang Wen-ching (王文清), an 83-year-old former political prisoner, sighed as he recalled the years he spent in the Green Island prison after being convicted for no reason in the 1950s.
He said the one thing that made him proud was the violin he pieced together from whatever materials he could get hold of, and that kept him company during his 15 years behind bars.
Wang was born under Japanese rule and worked for the post office. When the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) took over Taiwan in 1945, the Japanese language was banned, and people had to attend classes in Mandarin Chinese. When Wang was 23, his Mandarin teacher was accused of being a communist spy. All 34 students in Wang’s class were found guilty by association and sentenced to 15 years in Green Island Prison without even being questioned.
PHOTO: CNA
One of Wang’s fellow prisoners had a violin that started to rot in the damp conditions. The moldy fiddle seemed symbolic of the prisoners’ own sorry condition, and Wang decided to give it a new life. Wang, who knew nothing about music, said he borrowed the old violin and examined its structure. Then, through the prison shop, he had some juniper wood, bowstring and a wooden hoe handle brought over from Taiwan proper. Wang said it took him a whole month to fashion the hoe handle into a bow.
Lacking tools, Wang gathered washed-up glass from the beach to make implements for sawing, gouging and sanding. To give the wooden parts the required curves and contours, he got access to the kitchen and heated them over a stove.
It took him six months to finish the instrument, Wang said, adding that then he got hold of a Japanese violin music book and went to practice in the pigsty, where his amateurish playing would not disturb the other inmates.
At the end of his sentence, Wang took his precious violin home, where it gathered dust for more than 40 years before he took it out of its case two years ago and restored it to its original condition.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS