In an effort to upgrade morticians' skills and demystify their work, the Taipei City Government sponsored a make-up contest for morticians using real corpses.
During the contest which took place on Friday, the morticians were judged for their preparation work, make-up skill, work attitude and finish-up work.
Seven of the 15 contestants won "outstanding" awards.
The judges were keen on details like how the morticians cleaned the corpses' faces, closed their eyelids or mouths, applied face powder, did their hair and sterilized their own fingers and tools afterwards.
"Work attitude" included an assessment of whether the morticians were respectful towards the corpses.
Hsueh Cheng-tai (薛成泰), director of Taipei City Government's Social Affairs Bureau, praised the contest for having raised "the level of Taiwan's funeral service."
"Dying and the dead are a taboo subject in Chinese society. But like the living, the dead also want to present their best side to the world. So this make-up contest is very meaningful," he said.
Morticians earn a good salary -- about NT$ 50,000 (US$1,500) per month, but the work is frowned upon by many who think it is unclean and could bring bad luck to the mortician.
But Hsieh Pei-hua (
"I was lucky because the corpse I handled was in good condition. Some corpses assigned to other contestants were semi-decomposed with eyes sunken and mouths open," she said.
"After this contest, I now realize I need to receive further training and improve my skills. Maybe I should go abroad," she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the