A high-speed ferry carrying 360 passengers departed yesterday from Taichung for Meizhou Island off the coast of China’s Fujian Province, making it the first Taiwanese passenger ferry to sail directly across the Taiwan Strait to a Chinese port.
The Ocean Lala, a 2,292-tonne ferry built in Singapore, was mostly carrying pilgrims connected to the Da Jia Jenn Lann Temple in Taichung County.
The pilgrims were escorting two statues of the goddess Matsu (媽祖) from Jenn Lann Temple to the original Matsu temple in Meizhou.
Known as the “Mecca for Matsu followers,” Meizhou has long been considered the “home” of Matsu — a young woman who legend says was deified after being born into a fisherman’s family in Meizhou and later sacrificing her life to save her father and brothers.
The annual procession to honor Matsu — the guardian of fishermen and sailors and the most popular folk deity in Taiwan — has been observed for more than a century. Normally starting from Jenn Lann Temple, it draws thousands of followers.
After ending their pilgrimage to Meizhou, the Matsu followers will return home by plane with the Matsu statues on their special palanquins, said Cheng Ming-kun (鄭銘坤), pilgrimage leader and a vice chairman of Jenn Lann Temple.
Jenn Lann Temple chairman and Independent Legislator Yen Ching-piao (顏清標), who was paroled on Thursday after having been in prison since August for illegal possession of firearms, saw off the pilgrims in Taichung.
The Ocean Lala was scheduled to return to Taichung Harbor at around 9pm yesterday carrying Chinese tourists, harbor authorities said.
Previously, under Taiwan’s expanded “small three links” formula, the ferry was forced to use Penghu — about 41km off the southwest coast — as a transit stop before continuing to China.
Direct passenger shipping links were opened after the second round of cross-strait talks held in Taipei on Nov. 4.
Although the company that owns the ferry obtained permission from Taiwanese authorities to make four charter trips between Taichung and Fujian early this year, China only gave the company the green light this month.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS