Some of the songs auditioned by the Council of Cultural Affairs for the Republic of China’s (ROC) 100th anniversary might actually be praising the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said yesterday.
In preparation for the 100th anniversary celebrations, the council has held auditions for a new song to commemorate the founding of the ROC. One of the requirements is that the composer be an ROC citizen.
However, three songs posted online for Internet voting were written by people who are believed to be Chinese, Chen said, adding that the council’s evaluation process was “sloppy.”
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The first of the three songs in question, Everyone’s Chinese, was written by Chen Chih-kuang (陳志光). The song advocates the unification of Taiwan and China, Chen Ting-fei said.
Chen Chih-kuang said the song was inspired by a trip to China, adding that it was an exploration of a diversified culture and melding of ethnicities.
From the viewpoint of Atayal Aborigines, the people on both sides of the Strait share the same roots, Chen Chih-kuang said.
Photo from Dog G’s blog
“Don’t politicize it too much,” Chen Chih-kuang said.
The second song, Beautiful Future by Su Yung-sheng (蘇永勝), and the third, Thank you, by Yan Pang of the Va tribe — of Yunnan Province — are both suspected to come from citizens of the PRC.
Rufus Chen (陳功儒), general manager of Kwan Kwan Marketing Corp, the corporation in charge of the polling, said participants had to submit their ROC social ID number or their ROC passport number to be able to submit their creation.
He said initial checks had found that Chen Chih-kuang was an Atayal ROC national and therefore eligible to participate.
However, the other two participants appeared to have faked their ROC citizenship, he said, adding that efforts were being made to determine the participants’ true nationalities.
“They will be charged with forgery if they do not have ROC citizenship,” Rufus Chen said.
The auditions sparked another controversy when Dog G’s (大支) Changing Taiwan failed to make it into the top five songs.
Often seen performing at pan-green rallies, Dog G’s song was No. 1 in the Internet polling, with more than 10,000 votes.
Fans said the council’s scoring system was unfair.
In response, the council said it didn’t have any “black box operations” and that Internet polling only accounted for 30 percent of total scoring, while other evaluations accounted for the remaining 70 percent.
“We welcome any participant with questions concerning scoring to call us and we’ll ask the judges on your behalf,” the council said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching