An 85-year-old Taoyuan resident was honored on Friday with a Filial Piety Award for looking after his elder brother’s centenarian wife to repay the kindness she showed in raising her brother-in-law when he was young.
Chou Ting-li (周鼎立), the oldest of the 30 winners of this year’s Filial Piety Award, was brought to Jiangxi Province by his elder brother and his wife when he was 11 years old because the family’s hometown in China was plagued by drought and pestilence.
He later came to Taiwan with the army unit in which he was serving.
Chou said all of the clothes he wore during his childhood were sewn by his sister-in-law, who is now 100 years old and has been suffering from dementia for eight years.
Chou said his sister-in-law’s physical condition has worsened as she has gotten older, and he moved to Taoyuan from Greater Tainan to live with her and also hired a full-time caregiver to attend to her.
Despite his age, Chou said he was still healthy and felt like he was in his 30s or 40s.
The youngest recipient of the award this year was 14-year-old Wang Chi-lung (王志龍) from Changhua County. Wang’s father survived a heart attack in 2009, but his recovery did not go well and he had to have his right foot amputated.
Since then, Wang has become his father’s “right foot,” helping push his father’s wheelchair when they visit doctor, emptying and cleaning his father’s chamber pot and bathing him.
This year was also the first time one of the award recipients was a foreign spouse of a Taiwanese national.
Pan Yu-lien (潘玉蓮), an Indonesian native, has been the primary income earner for her family since her husband became paralyzed after a severe illness. Despite the challenge, she has not brushed aside her responsibility, instead assimilating herself into Taiwanese society and looking after her parents-in-law and raising her children.
The 30 awards went to 19 male and 11 female recipients, with 11 winners aged 20 or younger and five aged 60 or older, according to Ministry of the Interior data.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
Almost a quarter of volunteer soldiers who signed up from 2021 to last year have sought early discharge, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said in a report. The report said that 12,884 of 52,674 people who volunteered in the period had sought an early exit from the military, returning NT$895.96 million (US$28.86 million) to the government. In 2021, there was a 105.34 percent rise in the volunteer recruitment rate, but the number has steadily declined since then, missing recruitment targets, the Chinese-language United Daily News said, citing the report. In 2021, only 521 volunteers dropped out of the military, the report said, citing
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck Kaohsiung at 1pm today, the Central Weather Administration said. The epicenter was in Jiasian District (甲仙), 72.1km north-northeast of Kaohsiung City Hall, at a depth of 7.8km, agency data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effects of a temblor, was highest in Kaohsiung and Tainan, where it measured a 4 on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale. It also measured a 3 in parts of Chiayi City, as well as Pingtung, Yunlin and Hualien counties, data showed.
Nearly 5 million people have signed up to receive the government’s NT$10,000 (US$322) universal cash handout since registration opened on Wednesday last week, with deposits expected to begin tomorrow, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. After a staggered sign-up last week — based on the final digit of the applicant’s national ID or Alien Resident Certificate number — online registration is open to all eligible Taiwanese nationals, foreign permanent residents and spouses of Taiwanese nationals. Banks are expected to start issuing deposits from 6pm today, the ministry said. Those who completed registration by yesterday are expected to receive their NT$10,000 tomorrow, National Treasury
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