The Kaohsiung City Government on Saturday drew criticism from city residents for its use of a photograph of Taiwanese TV talk show host Li Jing (利菁) on the cover of a monthly publication.
“At first glance, I almost mistook the publication for an erotic photo album, because Li is nearly naked, with only a thin piece of cloth on her body,” said Liao Chun-hua (廖春花), warden of Nansing Borough (南興) in Fengshan District (鳳山).
The publication should feature policies, development projects and tourism in the city, rather than an image of Li covered in sheer fabric, which is irrelevant and inappropriate, Liao said.
Photo: Copied by Chen Wen-chan, Taipei Times
Neither the magazine nor the celebrities who had been chosen to promote city tourism over the past few months represent local culture, New Power Party Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Jie (黃捷) said.
Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) has failed to promote culture in the city since he took office in December 2018, and turned it into a “cultural desert,” Huang said.
She cited the Megaport Festival as an example, saying that the organizer of the popular annual music festival scrapped the event in September last year due to pressure from Han’s administration.
The Kaohsiung Lantern Festival, held near the Love River, has been mocked for resembling a Buddhist assembly due to the design and presentation of religious lanterns, she said.
However, the Pingtung Lantern Festival, which also displayed religious figures, won public praise rather than criticism, because the presentation was “fine and exquisite,” she said.
This shows the city government’s lax attitude toward culture and creativity, Huang said, adding that culturally rich Kaohsiung has more to offer as long as the city government values the traditions and local culture.
Kaohsiung Information Bureau Director-General Lincoln Ting (丁樂群) said that while aesthetics is subjective and diversified, featuring celebrities is one way to promote the city, especially when the theme of that issue was water, which echoes the image of Kaohsiung as a port city.
However, the city government would reflect on constructive criticism from the public, he added.
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