It may be hard to believe that the place where a giant picture of Pablo Picasso’s work Dream, composed of more than 50,000 pots of flowers, has been erected is in Wulaokeng (武荖坑), which suffered the brunt of mudslides triggered by Typhoon Parma last October.
Wulaokeng, located in Yilan County’s Dongshan Township (冬山), has been the venue for the annual Yilan Green Expo since 2001.
After Parma, many people thought that this year’s expo would have to be moved.
But Yilan County Commissioner Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) said yesterday that the exhibition would be held at the same location, but with an arrangement to make people rethink their relationship with nature.
“Instead of clearing the mudslides, we decided to leave them, and use pots of flowers to produce a large version of Picasso’s Dream,” Lin said at an event in Taipei to announce the Green Expo. “If you walk into the ‘picture,’ you will discover it is actually a labyrinth of flowers.”
Constructing the labyrinth on mudslide-covered ground was a way to inspire people to think about how human beings should interact with nature and face the challenges posed by global climate change as well as the devastating natural disasters related to climate change, he said.
“Although the mudslides caused damage, instead of trying to arbitrarily reverse the damage, we left it as it was. We believe nature has it own way of repairing the damage,” Lin said.
The Green Expo will also include an exhibition of medical herbs, a forest trekking route, an area with real-life presentation of Yilan’s recreational agriculture, a kangaroo farm and a performance hall.
The expo opens on Saturday and will run through May 7. It will be open from 9am to 6pm.
Taiwan would benefit from more integrated military strategies and deployments if the US and its allies treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “single theater of operations,” a Taiwanese military expert said yesterday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said he made the assessment after two Japanese military experts warned of emerging threats from China based on a drill conducted this month by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command. Japan Institute for National Fundamentals researcher Maki Nakagawa said the drill differed from the
‘WORSE THAN COMMUNISTS’: President William Lai has cracked down on his political enemies and has attempted to exterminate all opposition forces, the chairman said The legislature would motion for a presidential recall after May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday at a protest themed “against green communists and dictatorship” in Taipei. Taiwan is supposed to be a peaceful homeland where people are united, but President William Lai (賴清德) has been polarizing and tearing apart society since his inauguration, Chu said. Lai must show his commitment to his job, otherwise a referendum could be initiated to recall him, he said. Democracy means the rule of the people, not the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but Lai has failed to fulfill his
A rally held by opposition parties yesterday demonstrates that Taiwan is a democratic country, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that if opposition parties really want to fight dictatorship, they should fight it on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) held a protest with the theme “against green communists and dictatorship,” and was joined by the Taiwan People’s Party. Lai said the opposition parties are against what they called the “green communists,” but do not fight against the “Chinese communists,” adding that if they really want to fight dictatorship, they should go to the right place and face
A 79-year-old woman died today after being struck by a train at a level crossing in Taoyuan, police said. The woman, identified by her surname Wang (王), crossed the tracks even though the barriers were down in Jhongli District’s (中壢) Neili (內壢) area, the Taoyuan Branch of the Railway Police Bureau said. Surveillance footage showed that the railway barriers were lowered when Wang entered the crossing, but why she ventured onto the track remains under investigation, the police said. Police said they received a report of an incident at 6:41am involving local train No. 2133 that was heading from Keelung to Chiayi City. Investigators
RSS