Frozen red bean pastry sets made by female inmates at the Pingtung Detention Center are to go on sale in November, the center said on Saturday.
Developed through a partnership between the center and the Wandan Farmers’ Association, the pastries would give the women a way forward as they prepare to be released, the center said.
The association helped the center hire celebrity chef James Cheng (吳秉承) to develop red bean pastries that could be frozen and sold at supermarkets and hired songwriter Hsu Chang-te (許常德) to help with promotion, the center said.
Photo: CNA
Hsu wrote a song for a television advertisement, which was filmed inside the detention center.
It is the first advertisement to be filmed inside a corrections facility in Taiwan, association secretary-general Chang Chih-lie (張枝烈) said.
At the product unveiling on Saturday, the women invited visitors to sample their Red Bean NI-branded heart-shaped pastries.
They also unveiled handmade red bean and rose soap among other red bean products.
The pastries’ shape represents their sense of being fortunate, said the women, who are to be released in three months.
An inmate surnamed Su (蘇) said she looked forward to leaving the center and setting up a food cart to sell her own pastries.
“Our corrections officer told us that after we set up our own food carts, we should do one good deed each day and check in on Facebook,” another inmate surnamed Lai (賴) said.
The advice gave her a plan, Lai said.
The pastries were an innovative product, as they can be frozen and reheated without losing their flavor, warden Lee Chin-kuo (李進國) said.
The center would help the women find ideal places to set up food carts, Lee said, adding that it hoped they would leave their hometowns and build new lives.
The center would also work with a social organization to help the women borrow start-up money, estimated at NT$150,000 each, he said.
The center and the association thanked the Ministry of Justice for providing the funds to develop the products.
They also thanked Hsu for his work on the project and his sincerity in helping the women.
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