Although his prize-winning painting was disqualified from becoming a commemorative stamp because the UNESCO succumbed to pressure from Beijing, the 15-year-old Yang Chih-yuan (楊智淵) said yesterday that he will not be frustrated by China and will stand by his passion for the arts and his country.
Last Thursday, Beijing pressured the UNESCO to scrap Yang's selected work which was meant to be printed on stamps to commemorate International Peace Day on Sept. 21, saying that Taiwan's national flag shown in the boy's painting was an attempt at "splitting China's territory."
In addition to Taiwan, five other paintings drawn by child artists from Thailand, Israel, Indonesia and Peru and Philippines were also chosen to become commemorative stamps. Yang's work, however, was soon dropped and replaced by the work of a Belize boy after UNESCO buckled under pressure from Beijing.
Pan Wen-chuang (潘文忠), director of Taipei County's bureau of education yesterday went to Yang's Junior High School in Hsinchu to encourage Yang to continue to be a voice for Taiwan through his art. Pan gave Yang a commendation and a new set of paint supplies as motivation to continue his work.
"China's actions toward this child are unacceptable," Pan said yesterday.
"The creation of art should not be hindered by political matters ... that they would stoop so low is regrettable," he added.
With an impressive array of colors, Yang's work represents children's desire for peace and security.
In the picture, two children are riding a dove, symbolizing the escape from war and towards a peaceful nation. The right side shows a scene of war, with homeless children crying amid looming tanks, while the left side of the picture shows a joyful earth with vivid colors.
Most noticeably, a string of DNA-like spiral comprising national flags goes around the dove. The ROC flag is among them.
Yang said that his painting was inspired by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US.
"I just don't understand why my art was dragged into politics," Yang said yesterday. "I was born in Taiwan. I just want to draw what is in my mind. I will go on painting and I will have no misgivings about drawing the national flag into my work," Yang said.
Yang suffered from hydrocephalus when he was born. At only 3 months old he underwent an operation to install a tube in his head to channel water to his abdomen. This tube created limitations for the child, and his sense of equilibrium and motor skills were also hindered by the surgery.
"But it also helped me concentrate on painting," the boy said. "I can always have a calm head."
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized China's move by issuing a protest statement on Sunday, and the Chunghwa Post Co (中華郵政公司) will soon publish stamps of Yang's work at the suggestion of the Presidential Office.
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