ENTERTAINMENT
Lou, Chen dominate awards
Chinese director Lou Ye’s (婁燁) drama Blind Massage (推拿) and Chinese actor Chen Jianbin (陳建斌) emerged as the biggest winners at the 51st Golden Horse Awards in Taipei on Saturday. The Chinese-French film entered the competition with seven nominations and came out with six wins, scooping up the prizes for best feature film, best adapted screenplay, best film editing, best cinematography, best sound effects and best new performer. It only lost the best director category, which went to Hong Kong’s Ann Hui (許鞍華). Chen rewrote Golden Horse history by becoming the first person to win the awards for best lead actor, best supporting actor and best new director all in one night. Chinese director Diao Yinan’s (刁亦男) thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice (白日焰火), which had eight nominations, won the award for best art direction. Best lead actress went to Chen Shiang-chyi (陳湘琪) for her role in the drama Exit (迴光奏鳴曲). She was the only Taiwanese nominee to take home a major award.
SOCEITY
‘Dead’ nonagenarian revives
A 95-year-old Yunlin County woman apparently came back from the dead after her family played her recitations of a Buddhist sutra, Chinese-language media reported on Friday. Yang Chang Yueh-yun (楊張月雲) was pronounced dead from multiple organ failure on Nov. 14 after being hospitalized for more than 10 days, her son, Yang Shun-wen (楊順文), said. Her body was then taken home, where a funeral parlor had set up a mourning area. Recordings of recitations of a Buddhist sutra were played, in keeping with Taiwanese Buddhist tradition. On Nov. 15 Yang Shun-wen’s cousin decided to put earphones on her aunt’s head and played a different sutra, the family said. After about five minutes, Yang Chang shocked relatives by starting to clap her hands and recite the sutra, the family said.
SOCEITY
Taipei rates as ‘inspiring’
Taipei was ranked 38th among the world’s 50 most inspiring cities selected by the American magazine GOOD for its “2014 Good City Index,” down from 36th last year. The index, now in its second year, is made based on the “possibility” of a city, GOOD said. While some people would “think a city’s true worth lies in the cost of its housing, or the growth of its population, or the fiscal outlook of its property developers,” the magazine believes that “a city’s heartbeat is best measured in ‘possibility’ — the pervading sense that though a place may be far from perfect, its citizens are taking a bold stake in its future through a mixture of creativity, hustle, and civic engagement,” GOOD said on its Web site. Hong Kong topped the list. The other top five cities are Johannesburg, Mexico City, Delhi and Nairobi.
SOCIETY
Matchmaking help popular
The majority of single people in Taiwan are interested in meeting marriage partners though matchmaking services, with teachers, flight attendants and civil servants among those most eager to participate, an online survey has found. The poll by IT Bridalnetwork of Taiwan found that more than 70 percent of unmarried white-collar workers have gone on group dates organized by matchmaking services. IT Bridalnetwork is a joint venture between Taiwanese dating service Sunfun Info Co and Japan-based IBJ. It said that since its opening in May, about 40 percent of the more than 2,000 people who have participated in its group dates have succeeded in starting relationships.
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