Fulfilling a promise she made to return after January’s presidential election, president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday visited Nan Yao Temple in Changhua County to take part in a departure ceremony for a statue of the goddess Matsu as it began a pilgrimage to Chiayi.
Tsai said she attended the ceremony to express her gratitude for the goddess’ blessing.
Among shouts of “hello, president” by thousands of people who crowded the more than 200-year-old temple, Tsai arrived early in the morning to take part in the ceremony, with the statute headed for Feng Tian Temple in Chiayi County’s Singang Township (新港).
Photo: Tang Shih-ming, Taipei Times
Presenting incense and other offerings to the goddess, Tsai, as well as Changhua County Commissioner Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷), Changhua Mayor Chiu Chien-fu (邱建富), who is also Nan Yao Temple chairman, and other dignitaries, moved the statue of Matsu onto a palanquin and carried it out of the temple.
“I am glad to be back at Nan Yao Temple today. I made a promise to Matsu last year when I visited Nan Yao Temple that I would return if I won the presidential election to give my thanks to the people as well as for Matsu’s blessing,” Tsai told the crowd. “I would like to ask Matsu for her continued blessing for a smooth governance of the nation, so that people may live better, that the nation may be prosperous and that Taiwan may progress.”
Tsai said the 10 Matsu support groups affiliated with Nan Yao Temple to help organize religious events that cover 450 communities in Changhua County, Taichung and Nantou County could serve as an inspiration for the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) idea of “regional governance.”
“Devotees of Nan Yao Temple have started ‘regional governance’ much earlier than the DPP. It all started 300 years ago,” Tsai said, adding that she is confident that regional governance would be successful in central Taiwan.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching