Through late carpenter Yang Yun- yuan’s (楊雲源) collection of commemorative stamps dating back to the Taiwan Exposition in 1935, author Chen Jou-ching (陳柔縉) gives an idea of what life was like during the Japanese colonial era in her new book, A Carpenter and His Taiwan Exposition (一個木匠和他的台灣博覽會).
During the exposition, which lasted from Oct. 10 to Nov. 28, 1935, Yang visited each of the venues, as well as local vendors, to gather stamps that had been created to commemorate the event.
Over the course of the exposition, he collected more than 300 stamps in his notebook and stored them in a box along with other objects he had preserved from the Japanese colonial era.
Photo courtesy of Rye Field Publishing Co
Chen, who specializes in writing about the Japanese colonial era, learned about Yang’s notebook after a friend introduced her to Yang’s family.
Over nearly 400 pages, Chen describes the origins and significance of each of the stamps in Yang’s collection.
Chen had originally only planned on exploring which venue or vendor the stamps came from and writing a simple description about each of them, but after further consideration she decided that if she was going to begin the project, then the content should be more in-depth, she said, adding that she spent two years on the project.
Chen not only outlines where each stamp came from, but also discusses the social and cultural experiences of Taiwanese who lived during the Japanese colonial era.
When designing the commemorative stamps, Japanese artists often used images such as coconut trees, tropical fruit, Aborigines and temples to attract Japanese visitors to Taiwan, she said.
When designing commemorative stamps and materials to promote tourism today, Taiwanese are “using our own angle” to promote Taiwan, she said.
Modern stamp designs lack an international perspective that offers self-reflection, she added.
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