Official invited to festival

Tainan Mayor Hsu Tien-tsai (許添財) yesterday invited Hirado City, in Japan's Nagasaki Prefecture, to organize a mission to attend the Koxinga (國姓爺)Festival in Tainan next year. He extended the invitation while meeting with Hiromasa Ao, president of the Japan-Taiwan Economic Association, and Chiu Ya-yen, an adviser to the association. During the meeting, Ao told Hsu that Hirado has recently reconstructed a Koxinga Memorial Hall and expressed hope that cultural exchanges between Hirado and Tainan can be further strengthened. Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), who was born to a Japanese mother in Hirado in 1624, was an anti-Manchu resistance leader after the fall of the Ming Dynasty who led his followers to Taiwan and ousted the Dutch from the island, building his military and administrative base in the southern city of Tainan.