The award-winning Taiwanese film Touch of the Light (逆光飛翔) received applause from a full house in Tokyo on Wednesday after a screening that was part of a government initiative to promote Taiwanese culture abroad.
The film was screened at the 500-seat Iino Hall and was followed by a piano performance by actor and musician Huang Yu-hsiang (黃裕翔).
Touch of the Light is about a blind pianist who leaves home to attend university, and a friendship that develops between him and a girl who dreams of becoming a dancer.
The film was inspired by Huang’s own life story and was selected as Taiwan’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 85th Academy Awards last year.
At the event, Huang shared with the audience his experiences in Japan last year, when he put on a series of performances for people affected by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.
He said he hoped that his music encouraged the people and gave them confidence.
Taiwan’s representative to Japan, Shen Ssu-tsun (沈斯淳), was among the guests at the event, which was jointly organized by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture and Japan’s Yomiuri NTV Culture Center as part of the “Spotlight Taiwan Project.”
As part of the project, the ministry collaborates with universities and institutes around the world to promote Taiwanese culture abroad.
In addition to film screenings and art shows planned to run from April to September, the ministry and the Japanese center is also organizing 20 lectures on topics including calligraphy, Taiwanese food and a presentation of exhibitions at the National Palace Museum.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods