Every March for the past four years, hundreds of people have been gathering in a park near Taipei Main Station, taking bags of colored cornstarch and throwing them at everyone and everything in sight for the Holi festival. This year’s Holi festival, which will be held on Saturday, moves to a different and larger location, but it is still the same celebration of love, frolicking and color.
“The colorful festival helps to bridge social gaps and renew relationships. Once people are covered with different colors on their body, all evil habits of society like racism and discrimination vanish,” said Mayur Srivastava, the man behind the celebrations as well as numerous Indian restaurants in Taipei.
NEW TRADITION
Photo courtesy of Mayur Srivastava
Srivastava said he was forced to break with tradition and use “organic watercolor and paints” instead of colored cornstarch powder due to the tragedy at the Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) last summer, in which 508 people were injured when the powder dispensed into the crowd exploded into flames.
“Since the Water park tragedy, any form of color powder has been banned in Taiwan,” Srivastava said.
The Holi festival is moving to the Airforce Innovation Base this year, which will allow space for more vendors. There will also be other activities for the whole family instead of just throwing color on people.
Srivastava said that his favorite part of all the Holi festivals in Taipei is that it gives social sanction to people to have fun and does not recognize any restrictions. He said that if anybody stares or give strange expressions to people with color on their hair, face or bodies, all they have to do is answer, “Bura na mano Holi hai, which translates to please don’t mind because it’s Holi today,” Srivastava said.
Srivastava strongly recommends that all participants and observers wear clothes and shoes that can be.
Feb. 17 to Feb. 23 “Japanese city is bombed,” screamed the banner in bold capital letters spanning the front page of the US daily New Castle News on Feb. 24, 1938. This was big news across the globe, as Japan had not been bombarded since Western forces attacked Shimonoseki in 1864. “Numerous Japanese citizens were killed and injured today when eight Chinese planes bombed Taihoku, capital of Formosa, and other nearby cities in the first Chinese air raid anywhere in the Japanese empire,” the subhead clarified. The target was the Matsuyama Airfield (today’s Songshan Airport in Taipei), which
China has begun recruiting for a planetary defense force after risk assessments determined that an asteroid could conceivably hit Earth in 2032. Job ads posted online by China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) this week, sought young loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection. The recruitment drive comes amid increasing focus on an asteroid with a low — but growing — likelihood of hitting earth in seven years. The 2024 YR4 asteroid is at the top of the European and US space agencies’ risk lists, and last week analysts increased their probability
For decades, Taiwan Railway trains were built and serviced at the Taipei Railway Workshop, originally built on a flat piece of land far from the city center. As the city grew up around it, however, space became limited, flooding became more commonplace and the noise and air pollution from the workshop started to affect more and more people. Between 2011 and 2013, the workshop was moved to Taoyuan and the Taipei location was retired. Work on preserving this cultural asset began immediately and we now have a unique opportunity to see the birth of a museum. The Preparatory Office of National
On Jan. 17, Beijing announced that it would allow residents of Shanghai and Fujian Province to visit Taiwan. The two sides are still working out the details. President William Lai (賴清德) has been promoting cross-strait tourism, perhaps to soften the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) attitudes, perhaps as a sop to international and local opinion leaders. Likely the latter, since many observers understand that the twin drivers of cross-strait tourism — the belief that Chinese tourists will bring money into Taiwan, and the belief that tourism will create better relations — are both false. CHINESE TOURISM PIPE DREAM Back in July