The National Taiwan Museum in Taipei will hold a special exhibition on the Sino-French War, featuring valuable exhibits such as official documents, weapons and period pieces collected from both Taiwan and France that highlight Taiwan's role in the conflict.
The exhibition is slated to kick off on Oct. 25 and will last for three months.
The museum has been closed since an earthquake on March 31 last year damaged the museum's roof and wall. The Sino-French War and Taiwan exhibition has been organized as part of the museum's reopening celebrations.
"During the renovation, we inventoried the museum's collections and found we have a great collection of period pieces from the Sino-French War," said museum curator Hsu Shui-sien(
"So we had a notion to hold an exhibition to introduce those historical artifacts to Taiwanese people who may not know much about war and offer the opportunity to reconsider this period of history," Hsu said.
The Sino-French War was fought from 1883 to 1885, between France and China's Ching Dynasty, for dominion over the area now known as Vietnam.
When the naval forces of the two powers clashed in the Taiwan Strait, Keelung (基隆) and Tamsui (淡水) became important battlegrounds. Many local residents joined the war to protect their homeland, which has led some historians to cite this as the earliest manifestation of a "Taiwan consciousness" Lee Tzu-ning (李子寧), head of the museum's anthropology studies division.
With assistance from the Council for Cultural Affairs the museum borrowed an array of historical documents and artifacts from France's National Marine Museum, National Navy Archives and French national Library, Lee said
"We will display the models of naval vessels that the French used to blockade Northern Taiwan and the official seals used on the truce, which will be shipped from France next week," said Lee.
Lee said that the National Taiwan Museum will also display its Sino-French War collections, including the military uniforms and the rifles used by Ching-Dynasty troops, the correspondence written by the French soldiers and many contemporary articles for daily use.
All artifacts will be exhibited in a specially designed area which uses digital media to create the ambience of the period.
Ho Kang-mei (何康美), an adviser from the cultural council who helped to collect from France the historical documents related to Taiwan, said she expected those copies of the documents could be circulated in the National Central Library for people who want to study the history of Taiwan.
She added that many contemporary maps of Taiwan will also be displayed in the exhibition for people to realize Taiwan's position in the eyes of the world.
"We will not interpret the history of the war in the exhibition but let those historical artifacts tell the story themselves," Ho said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching