A group of relatives of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers who fell in the 1949 battle of Gunningtou on Kinmen are to visit the outlying island on Dec. 3 to commemorate their dead for the first time.
They are to travel by ferry from Xiamen in Chinese-controlled Fujian Province.
The participants plan to attend a ceremony at a temple in Jinning Township (金寧) on Kinmen to honor the war dead and pay homage to loved ones who were killed in the battle 65 years ago.
The gathering is the brainchild of Song Jiejun (宋杰軍) and Song Xiaofeng (宋曉峰), the son and daughter of a senior PLA officer who took part in the battle.
They have also created a Chinese-language Web site dedicated to the support of PLA soldiers.
The Songs visited Kinmen in 2009 and 2011, touring the sites of six battlefields where PLA soldiers and Republic of China (ROC) troops fought fiercely in 1949.
The brother and sister took back soil to lay on the foundation of a monument in Jinan, Shandong Province, built in 2012 to commemorate PLA soldiers killed in the battle.
The battle began on Oct. 24, 1949, when tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers in Fujian Province invaded Kinmen, which was controlled by the ROC.
A three-day battle commenced in which about 6,000 PLA soldiers died and were buried on Kinmen. About 3,900 were taken prisoner.
The ROC recorded about 3,000 deaths of its soldiers.
The battle gave a boost to the ROC government, which fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War with the Chinese Communist Party.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is
RSS