A presidential citation will be awarded posthumously to poet Chou Meng-tieh (周夢蝶) in recognition of his contributions to Taiwan’s literary scene, the Ministry of Culture said yesterday.
The ministry said the citation will be given on Tuesday during a memorial service for the renowned poet and writer, who died on May 1 in New Taipei City of complications from pneumonia at the age of 92.
The ministry had requested the honor for Chou when it learned of his death.
Born Chou Chi-shu (周起述) in China’s Henan Province in 1921, Chou joined the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) China Youth Corps during the Chinese Civil War and came to Taiwan in 1948 with the party, leaving behind his wife, three children and his mother.
He began publishing his poetry in the Central Daily News and Young Soldier Daily in 1952, three years before he left the military.
He began selling poetry and books in front of the Cafe Astoria Taipei in 1959, the same year that he published his first collection of poems, Gu Du Guo (孤獨國, Lonely Land), which became one of his most important works.
Chou wrote more than 400 poems, which were deeply influenced by Buddhist thought and have a meditative quality to them. They often touched on the subjects of time, life and death.
He never remarried and became known for living a restrained, low-key life
He was named the first literature laureate of the National Culture and Arts Foundation in 1997.
Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) has praised him as “a legendary page in Taiwan’s cultural history.”
Presidential citations are awarded to citizens who have made extraordinary contributions to the nation.
Previous recipients include the singer Fong Fei-fei (鳳飛飛), musician Lee Tai-hsiang (李泰祥) and theater director and actor Hugh Lee (李國修).
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