After an 18-day voyage from Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) to Taiwan, the Si Mangavang — the largest canoe to be built by the Tao Aborigines on Orchid Island in a century — completed its 800km journey yesterday and arrived at its final destination in Dajia Riverside Park in Taipei City.
The 18-man Si Mangavang means “Port Calls” in Tao.
Sharing the pride of completing the 18-day sea journey, Orchid Island Township Mayor Chiang Tuo-li (江多利) said the voyage — which began on June 29 when the boat left the island and sailed through the Kuroshio current, a strong Pacific Ocean current — was blessed by good weather conditions.
He dismissed criticism that the construction of the canoe and the planning of the journey did not follow the traditions of the Tao, and said Tao tribal elders had participated in the preparation process.
“We held tribal meetings and reached a consensus on the event … It is important that we pass on our culture to the next generations and share it with the public,” he said.
The journey, which was funded by the Ministry of the Interior, also sparked claims about the event being used by the government as a tool for President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election campaign.
Brushing aside the claims, Ma and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) both attended the arrival ceremony yesterday and promised to promote Aboriginal cultures.
Ma joined the oarsmen in doing a “war dance” to celebrate the completion of the journey and said the government would put more effort into preserving the “sea culture” of Orchid Island.
“The canoes and the journey highlighted the adventurous spirit of the Tao tribe and its beautiful culture. We should all respect and appreciate the cultures of the Aborigines, and hopefully the journey will become a future tradition,” he said.
The vessel will be on display at the Taipei City Hall from today to Oct. 15.
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