Ringing a bell and daubing red paint on the eyes of dragon boats, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday presided over the eye-painting ceremony at Keelung River to raise the curtain on the Dragon Boat Festival that starts next Sunday.
The eye-painting ceremony is a ritual to "open the eyes" and bring the dragon boats to life before the annual Taipei International Dragon Boat Race, which this year will feature 125 dragon boat teams from around the world. The event, which will be held at Dajia Riverside Park (大佳河濱公園), ends on June 19.
Addressing the ceremony, Hau said that aside from enjoying the exciting dragon boat races, Taipei residents should learn more about traditional holidays.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
"The Dragon Boat Festival provides a great chance for us to have fun with our families and to understand the meaning of traditional holidays," he said.
Before presiding over the ceremony, Hau and more than 100 parents and their children took hand-crafted dragon boats made with recycled materials to the streets and paraded around Qu Yuan Temple (屈原宮), accompanied by clowns and drummers.
The dragon boat festival, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month each year, commemorates the attempt to rescue the patriotic Chinese poet Qu Yuan (
Unable to save him, people threw zongzi (粽子), glutinous rice wrapped in corn leaves, into the water so that the fish would eat the rice rather than the body of their hero.
Today, people still follow the tradition by eating zongzi and participating in dragon boat races in honor of Qu Yuan's spirit.
The Taipei City Sports Office said that the three-day festival will also feature various activities, including a DIY traditional art workshop, parent-child games and a "Standing Eggs" activity at 12pm on June 19, where the legend, which claims that everything can stand at noon on that specific day, will be put to the test.
More information is available at www.dragonboat.nihs.tp.edu.tw/en/en_index.htm
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS