A sculptor has carved a bust of Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) to thank him for his devotion to preventing COVID-19’s spread in Taiwan.
Chen has worked tirelessly without respite on the front line in the fight to contain the disease and safeguard Taiwan, 60-year-old sculptor Huang Tien-fu (黃添富) said, adding that it took him a week to make the 27cm bust.
Chen’s commitment to his task is evident by his daily news conferences at the Central Epidemic Command Center to update the public about the disease’s spread, including reports on individual infections, Huang said.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong Taipei Times
Chen has never been absent from these news conferences or sessions at the Legislative Yuan to update lawmakers, Huang said, adding that he was moved by Chen’s dedication and wanted to cheer him on.
“The minister has been doing a very good job. The public is aware of this,” Huang said.
Chen is effective and calm, and he is good at articulating things, Huang said, adding that Chen always answers people’s questions.
Huang, who has over the past 30 years dedicated himself to sculpting Buddhist statues, said that he had not made a bust or statute of a human likeness in years.
However, the underlying skills remain the same, Huang said, adding that he was able to craft Chen’s likeness from pictures he found online.
After finishing the bust, he shared it online, where the response has been positive, Huang said, adding that people told him it looked life-like and was an accurate rendering of Chen.
“I started off just wanting to do this to express my feelings, and I had no idea I would get this encouragement,” Huang said. “I am truly honored. It seems that it was the right thing to do.”
The most challenging part of sculpting a bust is the sides of the face, while accurately depicting the nose, eyelid placement, cheek width and position of the ears are also difficult, he said.
“Without looking at a person in real life, you do not know what the back of their head or sides of the face look like,” Huang said, adding that he asked a reporter friend to photograph the sides of Chen’s face during a news conference.
As he initially hoped to finish the bust within a week, Huang said he made it with a less time-consuming process using fiber-reinforced plastic, but added that he plans to recreate the work with copper.
He plans to send the bust to Chen, Huang said, adding that he also plans to sculpt President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌).
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying