Ma Han-chung (馬漢忠), a 15-year old Bunun Aborigine who has fought a 14-year battle against cancer, saw his dreams come true yesterday when an exhibition of his artwork opened in Taipei.
Ma, who was diagnosed with brain cancer at 11 months old, has long dreamed of becoming a writer and a poet and has documented his fight with the deadly disease through painting and writing poetry.
PHOTO: CHEN YI-YU, TAIPEI TIMES
Exhibition
The exhibition, which is sponsored by Chou Ta-kuan Cultural & Educational Foundation (周大觀文教基金會), opened yesterday at the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall (台灣民主紀念館).
The foundation is a charity organization dedicated to helping young cancer patients and other severely ill children.
The foundation’s chief executive, Chao Tsui-hui (趙翠慧), said at a press conference yesterday that the foundation had nicknamed Ma “smiling sunshine” because he remained optimistic even during the worst moments of his illness.
Poetry
Chao said the foundation would soon publish Ma’s poetry. Ma was also one of the recipients of the foundation’s Love of Life Awards (全球熱愛生命獎章) this year.
Ma said: “When sand gets into an oyster shell, it irritates the oyster at first, but the grain of sand eventually becomes a beautiful pearl. I think my cancer is similar to a grain of sand. Although it caused me a lot of emotional and physical pain, I had to overcome it and become stronger.”
He added that his parent’s positive outlook on life gave him the strength to fight the cancer.
The art exhibition runs through next Thursday and will also feature the calligraphy and poetry of the late Chou Ta-kuan (周大觀), in whose memory the foundation was created.
Born in Taitung to a Korean pastor father, Sun Chang-wu (孫昶吾), and Bunun Aboriginal mother, Ma Chiu-chin (馬秋琴), Ma has just passed the high school entrance exam and will attend National Taitung Senior High School.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the