A gathering of senior citizens in Tainan’s Siaying District (下營) sat at tables on Wednesday, silvery brows furrowed in concentration as they wrote or drew in booklets reminiscent of elementary-school students’ workbooks.
The event was organized by the Chien Ying Cultural and Arts Foundation to encourage seniors to get out of their homes and interact with each other, in the hopes of not only offering them something to do and finding company, but also to bring back fond memories of their years as students.
Recognizing that some participants may not have had the opportunity to attend school during their formative years, the foundation also offered the option of drawing their life’s story during the event.
Foundation chairperson Feng Yu-lin (馮玉麟) said the intent of the event, one in a series of five, was to introduce older people to the joys of writing.
The foundation has asked writers Chiang Tian-lu (姜天陸), Li Yu-fang (利玉芳) and Tseng Ming-chuan (曾明泉) to head the classes, Feng said, adding that witty local orators Hung Ching-ho (洪清和) and Tseng Chia-lin (曾嘉林) were also invited to the classes to enliven the atmosphere.
About 30 people participated in the event, the oldest being 85-year-old Chiang Chin-kui (姜金貴) and the 82-year-olds Chiang Chin-lien (姜金連) and Wu Shen Hsi (吳沈喜), the foundation said.
Chiang Chin-kui, who completed what was the equivalent of elementary-school education during the Japanese colonial years, said that writing about their lives or local stories brought back memories of handing in their workbooks.
Other participants who were illiterate said that although they did not know how to write, the event was not about writing, but about enjoying one another’s company.
The foundation said that it was also planning exhibitions, arts and culture camps for children, writing competitions and a publication ceremony for literary critic and historian Huang Ching-yuan’s (黃清淵) most recent works.
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:
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