President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) met screenwriter, producer and director Ang Lee (李安) at the Presidential Office yesterday and presented him with a medal for his filmmaking achievements.
Accepting the Order of Brilliant Star with Special Grand Cordon from the president, Lee expressed gratitude for the honor and said it was his personal honor to help boost the development of Taiwan’s film industry.
“For me, receiving the honor of the medal is like the arts and cultural industry being upgraded in Taiwan. I am accepting this honor on behalf of the whole industry,” he said.
Photo: CNA
He is the first person from the arts and culture industry to receive such a medal.
Lee received the Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon in 2006 from former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who told him at the time that the grand cordon was the highest honor any individual from the arts and cultural industry could receive.
Lee yesterday reiterated his gratitude for the support and cooperation he had from the Greater Taichung Government during the shooting of Life of Pi, and said the film would not have been made without the collaboration of local film industry professionals.
“Competing for the Oscars is tiring and difficult, and I did it because I wanted to go up on the stage and express my gratitude to Taiwan,” he said.
He said he was concerned about the lack of infrastructure and efficiency in Taiwan’s film industry and said he hoped his experience would motivate young filmmakers and others to work harder and present great films to the world.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS