Debuting on Friday last week across the nation, the Penghu County Government hopes the movie All You Need is Love (落跑吧愛情), with 98 percent of the film shot in the county, taking in the scenery of Qimei Island (七美), fishing villages and the required romance movie scene — sunset on a beach — can kickstart a dismal tourism season.
Penghu County Commissioner Chen Kuang-fu (陳光復) attended the premiere on Thursday last week in Taipei, before accompanying Penghu County Bureau of Education Director Hsu Wen-liang (許文喨) and Tourism Bureau Director Chen Mei-ling (陳美齡) to a screening at Zhongxing Theater in Penghu on Friday last week.
Owners of hostels in the county and Chuo Ying-chuan (卓英全) of the Ministry of Justice bought tickets for 248 students in Penghu’s Baisha (白沙) and Siyu (西嶼) townships to view the movie.
Photo: Liu Yu-ching, Taipei Times
“Penghu’s natural scenery is world class, and the clear seawater, clean beaches, tasty and fresh seafood, all serve to augment tourists’ enjoyment of the local scenery,” Chen Kuang-fu said.
He said that with the movie screening in Taiwan, China and Malaysia, among other nations, “if the box-office sales are high, it would mean more people have seen what Penghu County looks like,” adding that such an experience could motivate them to visit Penghu.
The movie, the first directed by pop star Richie Jen (任賢齊), stars Taiwanese actress Shu Qi (舒淇).
The plot revolves around a romance between A-wu (阿武), the son of a local hostel owner, and Yeh Fenfen (葉紛紛), the heiress to a fortune in China’s Shanxi Province.
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