A festival of 13 monthly rotating exhibitions, performances, lectures and hands-on activities showcasing the richness and diversity of Taiwanese Aboriginal cultures opened yesterday in Taipei.
The festival, organized by the Taipei City Government's Indigenous Peoples Commission, is being held at the Ketagalan Culture Center in Beitou District (
The center is named after an Aboriginal tribe that once inhabited the Taipei metropolitan area.
PHOTO: CNA
The festival opened yesterday with the mayasvi ritual, the Tsou people's key ritual that honors the war god, organizers said.
The Tsou largely inhabit the Alishan (
"Each month, the festival will feature the culture of one of the nation's 13 officially recognized Aboriginal tribes," commission chairwoman Drngi Alin (Yang Hsin-yi,
In addition to dance and music, visitors will be able to watch depictions of Aboriginal myths by a theater troupe, attend lectures on Aboriginal cultural themes by specialists and make Aboriginal handicrafts, the organizers said in a press release.
"In the past, we used to organize one-day cultural events like the harvest festival," Drngi said, "but that wasn't enough."
She said that the richness and diversity of Aboriginal cultures cannot be properly covered in one day.
"Through this event, we hope that people -- Aborigines and non-Aborigines alike -- will have a better understanding of each tribe's culture and social structure," Drngi said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said he hoped that events like this could promote tourism in Taipei.
"Aboriginal cultures are important elements of Taipei's culture," Hau said, dressed in the outfit of a Tsou warrior. "We can promote tourism with events such as this."
The festival runs through March next year at the Ketagalan Culture Center at No. 3-1 Zhongshan Rd, Beitou District (
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