The Taipei Bonsai Show opened at the Shilin Official Residence Park (士林官邸公園) on Friday and is to run through Sept 15.
Bonsai — the practice of cultivation and shaping small trees growing in a container — is different from poetry and painting, as it is a living piece of art, the Taipei Department of Public Works said.
The department said it invited bonsai artists from across the nation to produce pieces for the exhibition and it received more than 60.
Photo: Lin Chia-yu, Taipei Times
Many of the pieces are rare or long-living trees, such as the broad-leaved podocarpus, the black pine and the orange jessamine, it said, adding that the pieces have a combined age of more than 1,000 years.
Bonsai artist Amy Liang (梁悅美) said that the work that she put into growing the trees helped her fight off depression.
“There was no medication then to help treat the condition,” Liang said at the opening ceremony, adding that it was her father who pointed her toward bonsai after he read in medical journals that plants could help with psychological conditions.
Photo: Hsieh Wu-hsiung, Taipei Times
She became so engrossed in learning about bonsai that depression has not been an issue since then, she said.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that the value of bonsai lies in the patience and perseverance it develops.
The Taoyuan Land Art Festival, which also opened on Friday, is to run through Sept. 22.
The festival is at the Danan Forest Park (大湳森林公園), with ancillary exhibits at the Taoyuan Municipal Children’s Art Museum, the West Hill Pond Ecopark, the Lakeside Park and the Jhongda Park, the Taoyuan City Government said.
Pieces have been made by Taiwanese and artists from Australia, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the US, China, Singapore and France, it said, adding that the festival also features other displays, talks, an international forum, 40 light shows and 155 artistic performances by domestic and foreign workshops and troupes.
The Bade (八德) Police Precinct said that it would deploy personnel to help ease traffic congestion around festival sites, as it coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival.
People should use public transport as much as possible to attend events in the area, the police said.
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