Chen An Temple in Yunlin County’s Jioucyong Township (九穹) on Thursday unveiled an effigy of a turtle made from sacks of garlic weighing 6 tonnes at the “birthday” celebrations for Shennong (神農大帝), the Chinese folk deity of herbal medicine and agriculture.
Shennong’s divine mandate is to ensure bountiful harvests and farmers’ safety, Chen An Temple director Hsu Ching-kuan (許清冠) said.
Garlic was used to make the effigy because of a divine order from Shennong in early January to buy garlic due to the crash in garlic prices, TC Reading Organization Yunlin branch director Chiu Shih-wen (邱世文) said.
Photo: Chan Shih-hung, Taipei Times
The temple also invited a renowned Linnei Township (林內) pastry maker to bake garlic cakes, which were distributed to the first 200 people who participated in the traditional palanquin crawling event, Hsu said.
Crawling under a palanquin bearing the statue of any deity is believed to be an act of devout worship that brings good luck.
The cake maker, known as A-chih (阿智), learned to make garlic cakes when he was 13 years old, Hsu said, adding that although it has been about five decades since he last made them, A-chih volunteered after learning of the temple’s event and gave a demonstration in front of the temple.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS