More than 10,000 descendants of Yeh Chun-jih (葉春日) — a man who migrated to Taiwan in the 17th century — yesterday visited Yongsing Borough (永興) in Taoyuan’s Sinwu District (新屋) to worship their common ancestor on Tomb Sweeping Day.
The Yeh family’s ancestral ceremony has been passed down for 283 years to more than 15 generations and yesterday’s ceremony was attended by descendants from Taiwan, Southeast Asian nations, Brazil and the US, Yongsing Borough Warden Yeh Kuo-chieh (葉國傑) said.
It was the first time that some younger family members had participated in the ceremony and seen the strength of the ancestral lineage, Yeh Kuo-chieh said, adding that the ceremony helps children appreciate the significance of funeral rites and their common ancestry.
Photo: Lee Jung-ping, Taipei Times
The city government set up a temporary parking lot for the crowd and conducted traffic control, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) said.
The city plans to build a parking lot near Yeh Chun-jih’s tomb to make transportation to and from the area more convenient, Cheng added.
Yeh Chun-jih arrived in Taiwan by sea with his son, Yeh Te-feng (葉特鳳), and settled in Sinwu District’s Danioulan area (大牛欄), Cheng said, adding that Yeh Te-feng had five sons; Ta-jung (大榮), Ta-hua (大華), Ta-fu (大富), Ta-kuei (大貴) and Ta-chun (大春).
Photo: Lee Jung-ping, Taipei Times
In Hoklo and Hakka, chun (春) is homonymic to yu (餘, surplus), he said.
Yeh Te-feng’s sons’ names are meant to remind future generations to have a surplus of health, time, virtue and wealth, in addition to their pursuit for money and power, Cheng said.
The careful attention that Taiwanese pay to the funeral rites of their ancestors can best be seen in the Yeh Chun-jih family ceremony, he said.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work