CULTURE
Chinese play to rock Taipei
A rock musical based on a play by Chinese writer Gao Xingjian (高行健), the 2000 Nobel Laureate for Literature, will be staged in Taipei next month, one of the producers said on Sunday. The musical was adapted from A Tale of Shan Hai Jing (山海經傳), said National Taiwan Normal University. The play is based on ancient Chinese mythology and includes legends like that of Houyi (后羿), a hero who shot down nine suns; Kua Fu (夸父), a giant who tried to catch the sun; and Yu the Great (大禹), a ruler said to be able to control floods. Beijing opera star Chu Lu-hao (朱陸豪), soprano Ho Kang-ting (何康婷) and university students will be cast in the play, which is being co-produced by Gao and the university. The musical will be staged from June 28 to June 30 at the National Theater.
CULTURE
Arts show vows adventure
This year’s Taipei Arts Festival will take visitors on adventures through art, organizers said yesterday. The festival opens on Aug. 1 and is to be held until Sept. 8 in different venues around the city. Events include 10 dance, theater and circus performances from Taiwa and abroad, said the Taipei Culture Foundation, which is organizing the festival with the Taipei City Government. The festival aims to explore the adventurous nature of art, said Keng Yi-wei (耿一偉), the event’s artistic director. For example, one piece to be performed is a play featuring a robot and a humanoid robot among its actors, while another performance blends contemporary circus stunts with traditional Quebec music, Keng said. German actress Anne Tismer, German musician Moritz Gagern and Taiwanese novelist Jade Chen (陳玉慧) will also co-produce a contemporary opera inspired by Wagner.
ENVIRONMENT
No casualties in CPC fire
A fire broke out yesterday at a residue desulfurization unit operated by state-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan’s (CPC) refinery in Greater Kaohsiung, but there were no casualties, the city’s Environmental Protection Bureau said. A preliminary report indicated that hydrogen gas had been emitted after the fire broke out, the bureau said. It said the fire was caused by a fracture in a pipe in the residue desulfurization unit II. Nearby residents reported hearing explosions and smelling a pungent odor coming from the refinery. The fire began at 12:33pm and was extinguished at about 1:05pm by a team of 52 firefighters and 22 fire trucks. Operations at the refinery have been suspended pending investigations by the city’s fire department and labor affairs department.
DIPLOMACY
Changhua group tours Japan
Changhua County Commissioner Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) met with Gunma Prefecture Governor Masaaki Osawa during a visit to the prefecture in Japan on Friday. Heading a delegation of county officials and 70 elementary school students, Cho met with Osawa and a group of Japanese officials and schoolchildren at the prefecture government office as part of a mission to improve ties between the two areas. The children took pictures of each other and the mascots of Changhua County and Gunma Prefecture — a doll called Flying and a horse named Gunmachan, which stems from Gunma’s days as a horse breeding center. Cho said relations between Changhua and Gunma are close, as evidenced by Changhua’s exports of rice and grapes to Japan and the prefecture’s high-quality farm produce sold in Changhua County. The Changhua County group is on a five-day visit to Japan that began on Thursday last week.
SOCIETY
Organ donations encouraged
More than 8,000 people are waiting for organ transplants, but too few people are willing to donate organs in the event of an accident, the Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center said on Sunday. Only 198 people made organ donations last year, but those donations benefited 680 people, the center said. Although the survival rate for organ recipients in this nation is about the same as that in Europe and North America, medical institutions are facing a severe shortage of organs, the center said. It urged the public to register their willingness to donate organs on their national health insurance cards and help family members make decisions to donate at critical moments. The center was set up by the Department of Health in June 2002. It is dedicated to improving the rates of organ donation and transplantation success, building a fair, open and transparent sharing system, and shortening the organ transplantation waiting times for patients.
EDUCATION
Children take health course
One hundred Aboriginal children from six townships in Taitung and Pingtong counties were invited to participate in a two-day training program on personal hygiene, disease prevention and disaster control in Aboriginal villages located in mountainous areas and on offshore islands. The Department of Health has been sponsoring the program since 2005 and has trained 668 elementary-school students from Aboriginal communities to deliver the message and the acquired health knowledge back to their communities, department official Lin Szu-hai (林四海) said.
Staff writer, with CNA
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