Praising the aesthetics of Taiwan’s Hakka villages, the Hakka Affairs Council has said it hopes to preserve what it called the “unique DNA” of the Hakka.
To promote that mission, the council sponsored a traveling exhibition of 73 specially commissioned works by 53 artists, titled “Discovering the Beauty of Hakka Villages’ DNA.”
The show is now on display at Liouduei Hakka Culture Park in Pingtung County, after earlier stops in Hualien and Miaoli counties.
The show’s five themes portray the scenery and daily life in Hakka villages, council Deputy Minister Fan Tso-ming (范佐銘) said.
“The buildings, the culture [they represent] will gradually fade away, and the brush and palette will be the medium by which I record their existence. I will keep on painting until I can paint no longer,” said Tseng Wen-chung (曾文忠), an 84-year-old painter who created works for the show.
Tseng said he has been painting for more than six decades, and in his 22 years of traveling the world, he visited all five continents and more than 50 countries.
However, he still favors the scenery of Hakka villages, he said, adding that he preserved some of the most precious memories of his hometown, the now Meinong District (美濃) in Kaohsiung, on canvas.
The park’s management invited Chang Chung-chin (張重金), Chung Shun-wen (鍾舜文), Huang Tzu-huan (黃子鐶) and Yeh Ting-chun (葉亭君) to hold two talks during the exposition, including one that focuses on using comics to portray the 300-year history of the Liouduei area — including songs, scenic views and food.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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