Although Taiwan is a democracy, changes in mentality and education are necessary to normalize the nation, panelists at a forum on national issues concluded yesterday.
"If Taiwan is a house, then we can say that its roof has been renovated through democratization, but its pillars are still old and rotten," Michelle Wang (王美琇), vice chairwoman of the Taiwan Northern Society, told the forum hosted by the New Century Foundation.
"If we don't fix the pillars, the house will eventually collapse," she said.
One of the nation's "pillars" is education, Wang later said.
Wang said a "greater China" ideology still permeated the education system, adding that a Taiwan-centric focus was imperative for normalizing Taiwan.
"After all, if the public has `abnormal' ideas, how can we have a `normal' country?" Wang asked.
Another panelist, Yang Ching-chu (楊青矗), agreed and suggested concrete measures. The first step, Yang said, is to preserve traditional Taiwanese culture.
Yang said he had published a collection of 300 Taiwanese poems including translated classical Aboriginal poems and poetry written in classical Chinese by Taiwanese poets.
Yang said such a book helps promote Taiwan's unique culture.
Hoklo, Hakka and Aboriginal languages should be languages of instruction in schools where those languages are spoken by the majority of students, he said, adding that government employees should be required to speak local languages.
Yang said it was important to teach Taiwanese history from a Taiwanese perspective.
"We must teach our children Taiwan's history from a Taiwanese point of view and make Taiwanese history the main subject in history classes," Yang told the forum.
Taiwanese must shake off a mentality that Chinese culture is superior to Taiwanese culture, he said.
"Of course there are good things about Chinese culture, but is Chinese culture superior, is it as important as some people claim?" Yang asked.
"The majority of subjects taught at universities today -- economics, law, business administration -- are from the West," Yang said, adding that most modern apparel such as shirts and shoes follow Western style, while cars and airplanes are Western inventions.
Lee Min-yung (
"Look at Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, we should strive to make Taiwan a small but beautiful and peaceful country like those," he said.
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
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
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