The lyrical voice of Tu Ying-hui (杜瑩慧) from Taiwan floated through the air of the East Railway Station in Paris yesterday as she read a poem in Chinese in front of a crowd of book-lovers sitting on a corner at the station, one of 18 major railway stations in cities around France that have joined in the annual Reading Festival.
Tu works for Taiwan's Council for Cultural Affairs, and her job is to encourage residents nationwide to read. In order to study France's efforts in promoting reading, Tu came to Paris to participate in the 16th Reading Festival that kicked off Friday around the country and will last for three days. She read a poem by Taiwanese poet Chen Yi-chi (陳義芝) to the onlookers, while Tang Shu-chuan (唐淑娟), a staff member of Taitung City Government's Department of Cultural Affairs, read a verse of Tang poetry.
Tu said that various activities related to the reading festival have not only been held at schools, libraries and bookstores around France, but also in public spaces, such as railway stations and street corners, and even at some hospitals and prisons.
She said that it is difficult for efforts at promoting reading to bear fruit in a short period of time, but added that through the organizing of colorful and interesting activities, like the annual Reading Festival in France, people can be drawn to experience the joy of reading. France has held the annual Reading Festival for the past 16 years, while the festival activity at the railway stations has been held for the last seven years.
The 2004 festival has a "bookstore" theme, with organizers arranging an activity called "sleepless in bookstores," inviting the public to remain late in bookstores that stay open until midnight or around the clock during the festival.
According to the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the reading festival has so far been introduced to 91 countries around the world.
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:
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