As the nine-day Hakka specialty exposition that began in December last year and ended in January in Taipei proved to be a success, the Council for Hakka Affairs (CHA) yesterday announced that it would bring the exposition to Taichung and Kaohsiung next month, hoping to attract an equal number of visitors there.
“The Hakka specialty exposition [that ended] earlier this year was a great success,” CHA Minister Huang Yu-chen (黃玉振) told a news conference in Taipei. “It attracted more than 180,000 visitors in nine days, and created approximately NT$300 million in value for the more than 100 businesses that took part.”
The exposition featured merchandise from more than 100 businesses subsidized by the CHA, including specialty handicraft items and food.
Since the exposition in Taipei was such a success, Huang said, many people in central and southern Taiwan have been urging the council to take the exposition to other parts of the country.
In response, the council said yesterday that it plans to hold Hakka specialty expositions in the Kaohsiung Business Exhibition Center at No. 274 Jhongjheng Four Rd, Yencheng District, Kaohsiung, from Saturday to Oct. 10, and in the -Taichung Creative and Culture Center at No. 362 Fusing Rd Sec 3, South District, Taichung, from Nov. 6 to Nov. 14.
The council also released a new Hakka theme song written by award-winning Hakka musician Liu Shao-hsi (劉劭希) and songwriter Vincent Fant (方文山).
Although the song is a rock song, Liu said he incorporated elements of traditional Hakka mountain songs, “so I’d call the genre ‘new mountain song.’”
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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
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The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift