A Greater Kaohsiung butcher is urging the public to join her in a quest to understand more about the human body by socializing in the nude at events such as afternoon tea.
Ruan Ren-chu, who owns a butcher stand in a traditional market, said the idea came to her during an artists’ workshop that she attended in Taipei a few months ago.
Her initial plan was for participants to strip naked and sit around a table sipping tea and discussing topics such as nudity and gender discrimination for two hours.
However, the response to the idea has been tentative so far, with only three women showing up for the first tea party in Greater Kaohsiung last week.
“Nudity is still a taboo in our society,” 53-year-old Ruan said. “People are afraid to talk about it, and almost anything that has to do with the body is considered dirty.”
For example, she said, most females in Taiwan have never even seen their own genitals.
“How can you even expect to clean yourself properly if you have never looked at your genitals,” she said.
Ruan, a self-styled artist, is not an unfamiliar figure in Taiwan. Her protests and bold, controversial actions have often drawn media attention.
In April, she staged a nude demonstration in Taitung, calling for the legalization of nude beaches.
Two months later, she posed as a nude model at a public event in Greater Kaohsiung at which children were present.
“I know I’m attracting a lot of negative attention, but there has to be someone on the frontlines, pulling society forward,” she said.
However, the publicity has not been all negative. Ruan is now the subject of a documentary called Curious Body, which is being subsidized by the National Culture and Arts Foundation.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,