The southwestern coast will soon be dotted with the work of local artists as Pingtung County prepares to launch its seventh annual Pingtung Arts Festival next month.
"The festival is a symbol of Pingtung County's evolution throughout the years," Council of Cultural Affairs Chairwoman Weng Chin-chu (
Weng said traditionally, most people associate Pingtung with farmland and fishing villages. In the past, the area was plagued by organized crime, she said.
The festival is an example of how art can transform a place and its people, Weng said.
True to its theme -- "A 50km art journey" -- this year's festival will not focus on Kenting Beach as its main attraction, but rather spread out 27 pieces of art work along 50km of coastline, stretching from Fangliao Township (
Instead of confining the artwork to one location, festival organizers said they wanted to break free of arts festival norms by "permeating the region with art."
Festival curator Lin Youn-lien (
Lin said the festival's concept was to promote exceptional art made from local materials such as wax apple tree branches and kukui nuts.
After the festival, the sculptures will be dismantled and all materials will be "returned to Mother Nature," he said.
"We want to let people know that art is everywhere. Even a simple tree branch that most people see as garbage can be magnificently beautiful," he said.
The festival will begin next Friday and will last through Nov. 11. All events are free.
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