The devastation wrought by Typhoon Morakot has spurred people from all walks of life to ask what they can do to help.
Dancers are no different and yesterday two dance groups announced plans to raise funds for victims.
Ballet dancer Wang Tzer-shing (王澤馨) is the organizer behind the 2009 International Ballet Star Gala at the National Theater next Saturday. She has 14 dancers from around the world arriving in Taipei, starting tomorrow, and they contacted her as soon as news of the disaster spread.
“The dancers wrote to me immediately to ask how things were in Taiwan. They all want to do something. In a short amount of time they came up with the idea of donating items like point shoes, something ballet fans would like to buy,” Wang said in a telephone interview.
“I contacted the Taiwan Red Cross and asked them to send someone to the performance, so that people will know the money is going to the Red Cross right away,” she said.
There will be tables set up in the National Theater lobby the night of the show with signed point shoes, photographs and other items donated by the dancers for sale, as well as a collection box if people just want to make a donation.
Famed dancer Sheu Fang-yi’s (?y) company, LAFA (拉芳), has decided to donate a performance, with all the proceeds going to help the people of Jialan Village (嘉蘭), Jinfeng Township (金峰), in Taitung County.
The company has a personal connection with the area — it is the home town of choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava (Bula, 布拉瑞揚), Sheu’s partner.
“My family are all safe, but their homes are all gone, so they are staying in different places. We didn’t find out until last night that my elder brother was alive,” Bula said. “I’m from the same village as [Aboriginal folksinger] Kimbo (胡德夫). Everyone is family in a small village. We want to let the people there know ‘you are not alone.’”
Company manager Nellie Liu (劉菡元) said the company decided to add an extra show of Ode to Joy (快樂頌) on Sunday evening, Sept. 6, at the Taipei Cultural Center, Wenshan Branch (台北市立社會教育館文山分館), where they will be performing as part of the Taipei Arts Festival.
After the shows the company will travel to Taitung to volunteer.
Meanwhile, although school hasn’t even resumed yet, Ian Chang, president of the Taipei American School (TAS) Student Government, was yesterday busy mobilizing forces to do something about the catastrophe in southern Taiwan.
On Wednesday, Chang convened 40 members of the student senate and launched an appeal to students and parents to help.
About 48 hours later, four truckloads, or about 600 boxes, of emergency material — blankets, sleeping bags, instant noodles, toiletries, sanitary equipment and scouring powder — had been gathered and was ready to be shipped south. All donations came from parents, the community and schools.
By 5pm yesterday, the 600 boxes were on their way to Kaohsiung American School, whose superintendent will personally take the donations to Namasiya Township (那瑪夏) , Kaohsiung County.
Donors ranged from small children bringing a couple of blankets or stuffed animals, to parents, who brought truckloads of items.
While the corporate sector did not participate in the TAS relief program, Chang told the Taipei Times that many TAS parents are in senior positions at big corporations, and many of them made sure that their firms donated toward relief efforts.
Chang said yesterday’s effort was just a short-term initiative, adding that plans are being made for TAS to foster schools destroyed in the south and help with reconstruction.
TAS has a long tradition of helping out in poor countries, Chang said.
“However, it’s not often that we get to help out at home,” he added.
Meanwhile, Taiwan TV stations were scheduled to hold a concert last night to raise funds for typhoon victims.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods