A sapling from Sri Lanka's Maha Bodhi Tree, which is sacred to Buddhists, was planted in Taiwan yesterday in the hope that it will bringing blessings to the nation.
Vice President Annette Lu (
During the planting ceremony, Lu made a supplication to the Buddhists, expressing the wish that Taiwan can meet the challenges that natural disasters such as avian flu or other kinds of diseases might bring.
Lu also praised Ling Jiou Mountain Monastery for its international rescue missions whenever disaster strikes.
"This is a historical moment not only for Ling Jiou Mountain Monastery but for all of Taiwan," said venerable master Sobhita Thero, who is also a parliamentarian from Sri Lanka.
"With the planting of this sacred Bo tree sapling, Buddhism will become firmly rooted on this island, bringing with it its shower of blessings for all its people," Thero said.
The mother fig tree is said to have been planted in 288BC and grows at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka. Legend has it that it grew from a sapling of the original Bodhi tree under which Lord Buddha attained enlightenment some 2,500 years ago.
In related news, Lu also attended the "2005 National Maha Sanghika Dana" held in Taoyuan County for the eighth year in a row.
"We are now experiencing an age without favorable weather as a result of global warming. It is also expected that epidemics of diseases such as avian flu might pose a serious threat to Taiwan later this year or early next year," Lu told the faithful.
Lu, flying by helicopter to inspect northern Taiwan on Saturday, said that a large part of mountainous areas has been devastated. She called on the religious, who often build monasteries in mountainous areas, to pay attention to soil and water conservation.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
RSS