A plaque from Taiwan’s former embassy in Wellington that disappeared more than 40 years ago has been recovered by Representative to New Zealand Elliot Charng (常以立).
The plaque had been missing since the Republic of China (ROC) and New Zealand broke off diplomatic relations in 1972.
After the severance of official ties, the plaque was removed from the ROC embassy building in Wellington and was not seen for decades until a Taiwanese man discovered it at a flea market in Motueka on New Zealand’s South Island in 1997.
Photo: CNA
Chen Chia-chuan (陳家全) taught at National Taiwan University for more than 10 years before moving to New Zealand in 1996. He operates a bed-and-breakfast farmhouse in Motueka and a stall selling paper-made handicrafts at the flea market.
Chen said a friend told him about a plaque bearing Chinese characters being sold at another stall in the market, sparking his curiosity. After visiting the stall, he found that it was the missing embassy plaque.
The seller asked for NZ$20 (US$6.60, based on the exchange rate at the time).
Chen said that although he could have bargained, he felt embarrassed to do so given the intangible value of the object.
After buying the plaque, Chen had it installed at the bed-and-breakfast. The farmhouse became known among overseas Chinese visitors as the “ROC embassy,” and Chen was referred to as “Ambassador Chen.”
Many people offered to buy the tablet, while others suggested that Chen put it up for sale online, but he decided to hold on to it.
After Charng assumed his post as the director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Wellington in 2011, he heard about the plaque during a business trip to Christchurch, but could not find out where it was or who owned it.
He filed the information away in his mind, and it was not until he met Chen during a visit to the town of Nelson near Motueka that he entertained the idea of recovering the plaque.
Two weeks after the encounter, Charng asked Chen if he could give up the plaque so that it could be returned to Taiwan.
“I thought about it for a long time,” Chen said. “If it was just going to be stored in a warehouse, then it would be better off here with me. However, Charng told me it was his duty and responsibility to take back the plaque.”
Chen relented and turned the item over to Charng.
After reporting the situation to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Charng visited Chen again and assured Chen and his wife that the ministry would treasure the “diplomatic relic” and keep it safe as an asset of his office.
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