Countering the craze for piggy bank donation boxes among Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday handed out 5,000 talismans to the public as his re-election campaign opened its regional campaign headquarters in Nantou County.
“Only when Taiwan has peace will the people be happy,” Ma said.
“We should hide our wealth among the people and create opportunities for the people to become more affluent, not just send out piggy banks to raise money from the people,” he added, referencing the DPP’s “three little pigs” campaign that has called on the public to fill piggy banks to support the presidential campaign of DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Photo: CNA
The amulets handed out contained the words, “Taiwan Peace.”
Ma said he got the idea for the amulets when the mother of a fruit farmer, whose house he stayed at on Friday night as part of his home-stay tour, gave him a peace amulet, saying that it was a gift from her friends.
Although the price for one talisman is about NT$3, it is what the amulet symbolizes — peace — that is most important, Ma said.
Ma said his administration has already created opportunities for Taiwanese to become more affluent, saying that since allowing Chinese tourists to visit, the number of tourists in Nantou increased 13 fold, helping to raise the average income per household from among the nation’s top 20 to the top 10.
On the issue of cross-strait relations, Ma said that in light of warmer relations with China, the international community was perceiving Taiwan differently than from past administrations and that he would continue to work hard for peace and the happiness of the nation’s people.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000