Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) co-hosted the Taiwan-France Cultural Award ceremony in Paris on Monday, honoring three people who have enhanced cultural exchanges between Taiwan and Europe.
The winners were French sinologists Angel Pino and his wife, Isabelle Rabut, and Philippe Paquet, a Belgian expert on cross-strait issues.
The award was jointly set up in 1996 by the ministry’s predecessor, the former council for cultural affairs, and France’s Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.
In her address, Lung touted the cultural ideals shared by the two countries. Despite political changes since its inception in 1635, the French academy has maintained a core focus on “language, literature and culture,” Lung said.
Similarly, Taiwan is the place within the Chinese-speaking world that attaches the greatest importance to language, literature and culture, she said, which is why it was no coincidence that the works of Gao Xingjian (高行健), Chinese winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000, were published exclusively in Taiwan.
Lung described the award’s historical significance as “commitment to language, sincerity toward literature and faith in culture” along with the pursuit of core values.
She added that for more than six decades, from the Chinese Civil War to the Cold War, Taiwan has been like a tightrope walker, with culture the balancing pole carried by the country to keep its balance for survival. During that time, Taiwan has developed a bona fide civil society and a culture with attributes unique in the Chinese world, and it has generated an ideal blend of traditional Chinese culture and the values of modern democracy, she said.
However, for that culture to be recognized, it had to be made visible, said Xavier Darcos, the academy’s perpetual secretary.
The purpose of setting up the award was to enable France and Europe to learn more about Taiwan and its culture, and the establishment of the Taiwan Cultural Center and Taiwan-France Cultural Foundation also contributed to the cause.
“We are happy that the profile has finally come after 17 years,” Darcos said.
In introducing Pino and Rabut, Darcos praised them for adopting a progressive approach toward raising French awareness of Taiwanese history. For example, a biography of Soong Mayling (宋美齡), also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, authored by Paquet, analyzed in detail an important part of Taiwan’s history, he said.
The three winners pledged to dedicate themselves further to raising Taiwan’s profile in Europe.
Pino and Rabut, who are working on an anthology of Taiwanese short stories and novels, said a “Taiwanese literature fever” has developed in French higher-education circles, especially among doctoral students.
They said it was a trend they were happy about because of the rich themes and language found in Taiwanese writing.
Their only ambition, they said, is to “play the role of one of the original planters of Taiwanese literature seeds that are bound to bloom and bear fruit in France some day.”
Paquet said that winning the award has only strengthened his curiosity about Taiwan and he vowed to continue his research.
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
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
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