Starting this month, the official welcome ceremony given to foreign leaders, including a military review, will be moved to the front of the Presidential Office.
The Presidential Office will make an official announcement about the shift today or tomorrow.
President Kessai Hesa Note of the Marshall Islands is scheduled to be the first foreign leader to be welcomed in front of the Presidential Office on Monday.
For the past 11 years, such ceremonies have been held in the plaza of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
David Lee (
"It is purely for convenience and respect because it is a more appropriate thing to do," Lee said. "Many countries hold their official welcomes at either the airport or the Presidential Office. We used to have it at the Sungshan Airport, but it is too far away from the Presidential Office."
About two weeks ago, the Presidential Office replaced the marble placard inscribed with the characters for Chiehshou Hall (
The Japanese-built building had been renamed Chiehshou Hall in 1947 to celebrate the 60th birthday of the dictator Chiang Kai-shek (
The new sign reads simply "Presidential Office" (
The Presidential Office said that the change reflected not only the real sense of the building's name but had constitutional meaning.
Lee dismissed speculation that moving the site of the welcoming ceremony was an attempt to distance the government from anything associated with Chiang.
"I really don't want the public to mix up the two things," he said, adding that he had never heard that the Presidential Office wanted to change the name of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
In February, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chai Trong-rong (
Chai launched the drive after the 228 Incident Memorial Foundation released a report saying that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) should be held responsible for the 1947 massacre because its leaders at the time -- Chiang and Chen Yi (
Chai said that the government should consider relocating the exhibits housed at the museum beneath the memorial hall to Tzuhu (
Chai also proposed changing the names of roads and buildings that were named after Chiang and removing statues of the former dictator around the country.
Another option has been proposed by KMT Legislator Huang Teh-fu (
Huang said his proposal would also deal with the call by some for a memorial hall to commemorate Chiang's son, former president Chiang Ching-kuo (
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