“Green” burials have become more popular, especially in Taipei and New Taipei City, city officials say.
Since 2003, the Taipei City Government has been promoting various kinds of “green” burials, such as tree, flower and sea burials, in which incense is not burned and steles are not erected, Taipei Mortuary Services Office Director Huang Wen-ting (黃雯婷) said.
Such burials have become more popular in recent years, accounting for 15.28 percent of all burials in the city, the highest rate in the nation, he said.
To encourage people to choose “natural” burials, the city government also provides incentives, such as awarding NT$10,000 to NT$20,000 for shifting family cremains from columbarium towers to natural burial sites, without having to pay for additional rituals, Huang said.
The New Taipei City Government in 2005 started a “green” burial zone at Sihshihfen (四 十份) public cemetery in Sindian District (新店) and plans to make sea burials available next year.
Memorial parks were opened in the city’s Jinshan District (金山) in 2007 and in Sanjhih District (三芝) in 2013.
As of June, 5,296 tree burials were conducted at the Jinshan park, while the park in Sanjhih has seen 790 burials.
The Sanjhih park has many cherry trees and is the burial site for figures such as Master Sheng Yen (聖嚴法師) and former vice president Lee Yuan-tsu (李元簇), Mortuary Services Office Director Yang Yi-lin (楊薏霖) said.
Pingtung County Department of Civil Affairs Director Cheng Wen-hua (鄭文華) said the county has established “green” burial zones in Jiouru (九如), Linluo (麟洛) and Linbian (林邊) townships, while another opened in Pingtung City this year.
Fewer than 60 people had “green” burials when the county adopted the practice in 2015, but the number more than doubled to 122 last year, Cheng said.
“Green” burials were least common in Miaoli and Changhua counties, Ministry of the Interior data showed.
Miaoli’s Jhunan Township (竹南) office founded Memorial Park (憶園) more than 10 years ago, offering many forms of burial, but no one applied during its first five years of operation, Department of Civil Affairs Director Peng Chi-shan (彭基山) said.
Nonetheless, more people have turned to eco-burials, even Hsinchu residents who have come to the county for free rituals, he said, adding that there have been 174 tree burials and 18 ash-scattering ceremonies at the park this year.
Changhua County’s first tree burial occurred in 2015, one of 15 that year, Department of Civil Affairs Deputy Director Chiu Ching-mo (邱錦模) said.
Last year, the number increased to 39, while 38 tree burials have been carried out so far this year, Chiu said.
Additional reporting by Tsai Yung-chien, Peng Chien-li and Chang Tsung-chiu
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