Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (李安) on Sunday attended a plaque-hanging ceremony in Tainan at his father’s, Lee Sheng (李昇), former home.
The New York-based director is in Taiwan to attend the 55th Golden Horse Awards on Saturday.
Ang Lee, who has previously served on the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival jury, is chairing its executive committee for the first time this year.
Photo: Hung Jui-chin, Taipei Times
After arriving in Taiwan, he headed straight to Tainan, where he was greeted by his 92-year-old mother, Yang Ssu-chuang (楊思莊).
At the ceremony, which was hosted by the Tainan City Government, Ang Lee was joined by his two sisters, his brother, Khan Lee (李崗), who is also a director, and Acting Tainan Mayor Li Men-yen (李孟諺).
His father, an educator, was strict, but he also loved his students, Ang Lee said, adding that his father had told him before his passing in 2004 that while he was part of a “lost generation” who moved to Taiwan from China, he had found a place to settle down.
His father wanted to be buried at sea so that he could see Tainan, but could also look into the distance at China, he said.
Lee Sheng was a knowledgeable and experienced educator, Li said.
He taught many students who later became successful, and at home, his parenting style, which was both strict and attentive, gave rise to two famous directors, Li said.
Lee Sheng, who is listed as a historical figure in the field of academia and education by the city government, moved to Taiwan with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government in 1949.
He served as the principal of National Taitung Girls’ Senior High School, National Tainan Second Senior High School and Tainan First Senior High School, the president of the predecessor of National Hualien University of Education and the chairman of the China Youth Corps’ Hualien County branch, among other roles.
Shortly after becoming the principal of Tainan First Senior High School in 1969, Lee Sheng relaxed the school’s hair regulations, the Tainan Cultural Affairs Bureau said.
In about 1977, when the school was promoting blood donation, it discovered that half of the students who had donated blood had been infected with hepatitis B, the bureau said.
Concerned by the finding, Lee Sheng began searching for the cause of the infection and suspected that the food that the students were buying from outside was not sanitary, it said, adding that he then built a cafeteria at the school to ensure food safety and improve the students’ health.
Sunday’s event was the 22nd plaque-hanging ceremony that the city government has hosted for a local historical figure.
To date, the city has recognized 108 historical figures across various professions.
At the request of family members, Lee Sheng’s former residence is not to be open to the public.
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
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
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