The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MOFA) annual International Youth Ambassador Exchange Program, a platform through which young people help promote the nation’s cultural diversity to a global audience, has come under fire after some of its participants failed to follow the traditional Aboriginal way of wearing costumes and performing ceremonial dances.
Participants in the exchange program, which was launched in 2009, are university students who have to take a series of training courses before they can be sent abroad to promote the nation’s cultures.
However, photographs and videos showing participants putting on flawed performances of traditional Aboriginal dances while clad in unconventional costumes have prompted fierce criticism from netizens and Aborigines.
“When performing the ceremonial dances, dancers should place their right hands beneath the left hands of people on their right, while placing their left hands above the right hands of people on their left. However, while some of these so-called young ambassadors did the opposite, others placed both of their hands beneath those of others,’” a netizen wrote.
Addressing the costumes, another netizen wrote: “Some of the costumes these students wore did not belong to any of the nation’s Aboriginal tribes. There were female students who were clad in the traditional clothing for men, or ridiculously wore the costumes with black stockings.”
Association for Taiwan Indigenous Peoples’ Policies Chairman Oto Micya said Aborigines’ traditional dances were closely associated with rituals and that their dance positions and costumes were not just for show.
“Such dressing and dancing mistakes could be attributed to people’s shallow, instead of profound, understanding of the Aboriginal cultures. Seeing [their flawed performances] only made us think that [our cultures] have been taken advantage of,” he said.
Ministry spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) said that while the ministry had launched the exchange program, it had entrusted a private organization to oversee its participant selection process.
“Each group of young ambassadors are allowed to submit ideas for performances,” Kao said.
Independent Legislator May Chin (高金素梅), an Aborigine said the students represented Taiwan and that if they wrongly portrayed Aboriginal cultures, the mission to promote the nation’s cultural diversity would be nothing but an empty gesture.
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
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,
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