A traditional arts festival opens tomorrow at the Center for Traditional Arts in Yilan County and will run through Oct. 10, a center official said yesterday.
The theme of this year’s Asia-Pacific Traditional Arts Festival is “Fascinating North Asia.” The event will feature a variety of traditional arts, such as khoomei, or throat-singing, in addition to olonkho, the epic poetry of the Turkic-speaking Sakha people, folk dances and other artforms, said Ko Chin-liang (柯基良) , the center’s director.
Olonkho, which depicts the faith of the Sakha, is listed by UNESCO as an intangible cultural asset of humanity, as is Mongolia’s khoomei and its traditional musical instrument known as the matouquin or horse-head fiddle, Ko said.
“This is the first time we have invited groups and artists from the five countries in this area to Taiwan,” Ko said.
Invited artists are coming from several countries in the Russian Federation, including Russia, the Sakha Republic; the Buryatia Republic and the Tuva Republic, as well as Mongolia.
Many of the performers and artists are visiting Taiwan for the first time. One invitee is Bulat Zhambalov, a silversmith who has brought more than 100 pieces to display at the festival.
“I want to show the beauty of my artifacts to new friends here,” he said.
Mongolian craftsman Bayanjargal Bayanduuren, who works with felt, has also brought more than 20 pieces that show the workmanship, diversity and craft of the nomadic peoples and of modern Mongolia.
In other cultural news, the 10th annual Taipei Hot Spring Festival opened yesterday with the Taipei City Government inviting the public to soak up the benefits of the city’s famous hot springs by taking advantage of steep discounts available during the two-month festival.
The festival will include two carnivals held near the Xinbeitou MRT Station Plaza that will feature more than 17 activities including live music performances, traditional handicraft classes, tarot card readings and tea-tastings.
The first carnivals opened yesterday and will run through Sunday, while the second will take place from Oct. 29 to Oct. 31, the city’s Department of Information and Tourism said.
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
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,
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