■ Festivals
Beef noodles on wheels
To compete with street vendors selling coffee or breakfast from their vans, the organizer of the 2005 Beef Noodle Festival adopted the idea of doing business on the move by refitting a van into a vehicle that can serve beef soup. Starting today through Thursday, the van, loaded with four thermos flasks, will put up posters featuring the 2005 Beef Noodle Festival while cruising the thoroughfares of Taipei City, giving away beef soup for free during the day. It will be stationed in the Living Mall and the square in front of the Taipei City Hall after 5pm.
■ Community
Volunteers clean up
Over 70,000 volunteers from 320 organizations around Taiwan, equipped with brooms, tongs and garbage bags, joined the largest "clean up the island" campaign in five years that yesterday simultaneously kicked off at 1,598 spots around the nation. Groups of volunteer workers picked up waste along the Keelung River in Taipei City and sorted it for recycling. A team of around 30 college students in northern Taiwan caught the most attention as all its members roller-skated along the bicycle track along the river at the Pailing Riverbank Park (百齡河濱公園), showing of dazzling skating skills while performing the public service. The campaign was run from Paisha Bay (白沙灣) in Taipei County in the north to Kenting National Park (墾丁國家公園) in the south, Tungying (東引) on the outlying island of Matsu (馬祖) in the west and Lungtung (龍洞) in the east, according to the organizers.
■ Diplomacy
Soong no messenger
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has never asked opposition People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to pass on any messages to Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), a Presidential Office spokesman said over the weekend. James Huang (黃志芳) a Presidential Office deputy secretary-general, made the remarks after James Keith, a US State Department senior adviser, said that Soong met Hu and other Chinese leaders in Beijing on May 12 this year and passed on the message that Chen was willing to engage in dialogue with Beijing, using a flexible formulation about what constitutes "one China." Huang said that he didn't know where the US State Department got its information from and that the State Department has not contacted the Presidential Office regarding the matter. One thing is certain, however, and that is that Chen has never asked Soong to give any messages to the Chinese leadership, Huang said.
■ Politics
No apologies, Hsieh says
Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday said that a demand by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers that he apologize for errors in the Kaohsiung MRT project is like forcing him to admit something he did not do. An apology should come from the bottom of the heart, Hsieh said. In this case, the premier said that even if he apologizes, it will not mean anything because the responsibility is not his. In addition, the KMT lawmakers accused him of making a variety of wrong decisions during his term as Kaohsiung City mayor, because they watched related TV reports that said Hsieh should take the responsibility for the project's shortcomings. This is just unfair and ridiculous, he said. Meanwhile, the KMT caucus yesterday said that the DPP should take the responsibility for the premier being banned for merely carrying out his administrative briefing.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday voiced dissatisfaction with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans- Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), whose latest meeting, concluded earlier the same day, appeared not to address the country’s application. In a statement, MOFA said the CPTPP commission had "once again failed to fairly process Taiwan’s application," attributing the inaction to the bloc’s "succumbing to political pressure," without elaborating. Taiwan submitted its CPTPP application under the name "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu" on Sept. 22, 2021 -- less than a week after China
THE GOOD WORD: More than 100 colleges on both sides of the Pacific will work together to bring students to Taiwan so they can learn Mandarin where it is spoken A total of 102 universities from Taiwan and the US are collaborating in a push to promote Taiwan as the first-choice place to learn Mandarin, with seven Mandarin learning centers stood up in the US to train and support teachers, the Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET) said. At the annual convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages held over the weekend in New Orleans, Louisiana, a Taiwan Pavilion was jointly run by 17 representative teams from the FICHET, the Overseas Community Affairs Council, the Steering Committee for the Test of Proficiency-Huayu, the
A home-style restaurant opened by a Taiwanese woman in Quezon City in Metro Manila has been featured in the first-ever Michelin Guide honoring exceptional restaurants in the Philippines. The restaurant, Fong Wei Wu (豐味屋), was one of 74 eateries to receive a “Michelin Selected” honor in the guide, while one restaurant received two Michelin stars, eight received one star and 25 were awarded a “Bib Gourmand.” The guide, which was limited to restaurants in Metro Manila and Cebu, was published on Oct. 30. In an interview, Feng Wei Wu’s owner and chef, Linda, said that as a restaurateur in her 60s, receiving an
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
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