There is the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, or horse ? But to Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS) Lee Han-long (
His latest photographic collection, Dancing with Pigs, which contains more than 200 photographs of pigs that were selected from his collection of more than 20,000, will hit the stores just before the Year of the Pig ends.
As section chief of the Pig Performance Test Station at the Animal Technology Institute of Taiwan's (ATIT) animal resources division, Lee knows all about pigs, having worked with them for more than three decades.
Growing up in the countryside in the 1950s, Lee tended pigs for his mother.
He has already exhibited his work on various occasions over the past few years, he said.
"My passion for photography started in 1979, when I started working for ATIT. I was trying to kill time, started reading photography books and taking pictures of the pigs that surrounded me," he said.
Lee's first piece of photography was taken when he was a sophomore in high school, when he took a black-and-white picture of one of the pigs his family owned, he said.
The piece is included in Dancing with Pigs and is titled Wrinkles on Mother's Face, he said, adding that the picture documented the hard work and perseverance of his mother.
"Pigs are an inseparable part of Taiwanese lives. When I was little, keeping pigs was the way we earned our living," said Lee, a Hakka. "But at the time I never expected it to continue being true as I started working myself."
Asked what motivated him to publish his album, the pig fanatic said: "I wish to present to society a side of pigs that people don't normally see."
The album documents pigs with "various expressions" -- happy, angry, sad and ecstatic -- and under various circumstances, from nursing piglets to scientists producing genetically-engineered piglets, Lee said.
"Contrary to popular perception, pigs are clean, smart, affectionate and are very good friends to humans," he said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai