Taiwan and Honduras may be nearly 15,000km apart, but people in the two countries have been pulled together by their passion for pottery and their interest in developing a niche industry around the craft.
The long-distance collaboration began when senior Honduran officials visiting Taiwan in 2010 came away highly impressed by Yingge (鶯歌), a town in New Taipei City with a celebrated ceramics tradition that has made it a top tourist draw.
Yingge houses numerous shops and factories offering a dazzling range of ceramics, from vases and teapots to tableware, decorative fountains and works of art.
Following the visit of the Honduran officials, Taiwan and Honduras launched a two-year “one town, one product” project in 2011 to help artists in Valle de Angeles, a pottery center in southern Honduras, improve the quality and the production of their ceramics.
The Taipei-based Corporate Synergy Development Center, which operates similar one town, one product programs in communities around Taiwan, was commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to carry out the program, focusing on the development of a niche cultural and creative industry.
As part of the program, six artists from Valle de Angeles visited Taiwan in September last year to see firsthand Yingge’s thriving ceramics sector and learn more about advanced production techniques.
In addition to visiting veteran pottery artists, the Honduran artists visited ceramics tourism factory, Shu’s Pottery.
The decades-old company is typical of the evolution seen among Yingge companies. Starting as a producer of ceramic bowls and tiles, it had to reinvent itself when faced with stiff price competition for low-cost commodities and has since emerged a ceramics brand showcasing modern, innovative designs.
The Honduran artists came away from the visit with a clearer idea of how to develop a creative and culturally oriented pottery industry that brings added value to basic ceramic techniques.
Jorge Arturo Herrera Navarrez, a member of the association, said his group of artists realized that to achieve their vision of a niche industry, they needed to bring greater creativity and something unique to their works. They saw Yingge as a good model to emulate.
The Corporate Synergy Development Center, and the center’s consultant who was responsible for the project until the end of last year, Laurencio Chen, encouraged the artists to infuse their products with more Honduran cultural characteristics, while improving their firing techniques.
According to Chen, one approach has been to add images and characteristics associated with Mayan culture, as Honduras is one of the birthplaces of the Mayan civilization.
Another, he said, has been to make products with angelic themes to reflect the town’s name, which means “valley of angels.”
In addition, to help improve the quality of the pottery produced by the Honduran artisans, Taiwan sent automatic machinery and equipment to the town, including electric potters’ wheels and an electric kiln.
“The machinery and equipment have significantly increased the volume of items they can produce per day,” Chen said.
After two years of cooperation that also focused on marketing strategies, Chen said he was happy to see that the program had brought clear benefits to the community.
In recognition of the results, Honduras has asked the program to be extended for a third year until the end of this year.
The focus of this year’s program, which will be managed by Taiwan’s International Cooperation and Development Fund, is to establish a flagship complex showcasing the pottery sector in Valle de Angeles.
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