An American teacher has left a gift in the form of a mural on the front wall of the Kinmen elementary school where he has been teaching English.
Adrian Brandon, who studied art and architecture at Pitzer College in California, said he invited more than 50 third-to sixth graders at Anlan Elementary School to participate in the project. The students knew Kinmen better than he did and the inspiration for the mural came solely from them, he said.
The mural shows two hands, each covered in colorful images that are representative of Kinmen. including a baseball player, athletes in a race, oysters, an artillery shell, lanterns against a night sky and the Republic of China flag.
Brandon said the images were drawn from paintings that the students did on paper of Kinmen, including birds, horses, Kinmen’s iconic Wing Lion God and the locally distilled kaoliang liquor.
He said he had kindergartners make handprints on the wall to ensure that they would never forget the school.
Asked why he chose palms for the mural, Brandon said hands symbolize love and for many infants they represent the process of feeding, so the painting symbolized Kinmen’s cradling and nourishment of its children.
Brandon described Kinmen as a unique island with friendly people who welcomed him, which he said made him want to leave a symbol of his good memories there. His contract finishes next month.
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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