Aboriginal pastor and actor Nolay Piho has focused in recent years on building a school for Atayal children in Yilan County’s Fushan (福山) community instead of pursuing acting jobs.
According to the Chinese-language China Times, Piho, 55, has turned down five roles in the past two years, including a Chinese television drama role alongside Taiwanese actor Yu Da-ching (游大慶) that offered NT$15 million (US$478,774) for 15 days of filming.
His agent said that he could use the money to hire workers for the school that he was building.
However, Piho chose to stay in the community and build the school himself.
“I am not comfortable giving the job to others,” he said.
Piho is Atayal Aboriginal and was a carpenter before becoming a pastor and an actor.
He is best known for playing tribal chief Mouna Rudo in the film Seediq Bale.
He is leading the effort to build a school in Fushan with Atayal members of the community, and has been funding the project from his pastor’s salary of NT$25,000 per month, the China Times reported.
In response to media queries on when he would return to acting, Piho said: “If by next year the tribal classroom curriculum and the congregation are good to go, and there are good roles available, I will consider it.”
Piho said that he had been an alcoholic in his youth during a period of depression and that he became ill because of his drinking, adding that helping steer young people toward the right path was what motivated him to become a pastor.
He said his work to promote education has encountered many setbacks, but he continues to be hopeful, adding: “It is tough, but until my life is at an end, I will give my best to finish the job.”
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