“Go Japan!” and “Wishing for Japan’s revival!” were among the good wishes written on colorful paper cranes strung together that swayed gently in the breeze in Ximending’s (西門町) historic Red House Theater in Taipei yesterday, part of a nine-hour campaign to show Taiwan’s continuing support for tsunami-devastated Japan.
The campaign aimed to fold three sets of 1,000 origami cranes and string them together.
“There is a Japanese legend that says for every 1,000 cranes made, a wish is granted. We hope Japan can recover soon,” said Cooky Ueda, the initiator behind the event organized by the 311 Tohoku Kanto Earthquake Aid Japanese Benefit Group.
Photo: CNA
Ueda said that Taiwan has already donated tens of billions of Japanese yen (hundreds of millions of US dollars) to the disaster areas, “now we want to send these handmade paper cranes that carry our good spirit and feelings” to the refugees and schools in those disaster areas.
Patiently teaching children how to fold paper cranes, a Japanese volunteer at the event, Mutsumi Emoto, said growing up in Hiroshima, they would fold paper cranes at school every year as prayers for the victims of the atomic bomb, so the paper cranes this time also represent prayers for the deceased in the earthquake and tsunami in March.
“I’ve studied in Taiwan and have often been helped by Taiwanese people, but now also many Japanese people think Taiwanese people are very gentle because Taiwan raised a lot of relief funds for Japan and made a great impression,” Emoto said.
A charity concert was also staged yesterday to raise relief funds, which will be donated to Ashinaga, an association in Japan for the education and emotional support of orphans.
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:
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