Strains of rock and folk music could be heard in Shihlin District yesterday as the Taipei European School (TES) kicked off its first Eurofest.
The festival at the school on Wenlin Road ran from 11am to 7pm, with students and community members enjoying live music and a variety of foods and drinks.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
Eurofest 2004 was organized by the European Chamber of Commerce Taipei (ECCT), TES and International Community Radio Taipei (ICRT) to raise funds for the school's new Wenlin campus.
"The school almost got shut down last year. The government was planning to build a road through the current Wenlin campus, so the school was unable to renew its lease," said Jim Boyce, ECCT director of communications.
Thanks to negotiations between government and school authorities, TES was promised a new home on land connected to its current campus.
School representatives say that construction of the new campus will begin next January and will be a two-year process. In the meantime, TES students in the primary grades will continue to have classes at the old Wenlin Road school.
"We had a couple of back-up plans, but we're extremely happy with the current arrangement," said the school's CEO, John Nixon.
Nixon said that the government realized that TES fills an important niche in Taiwan's educational environment for families moved here by European companies.
TES parents at the festival explained the importance of the school to European workers and companies.
"A key issue for Europeans working in Taiwan with families is school environment. Although a lot of that is the school itself, it also depends on government and community support. This event is good because it is an effort to build that support," said Reiner John, an Infineon employee from Germany with two teenagers in the school.
"It is important for European companies in Taiwan to be able to tell their employees that they can send their children to a school with a European system," explained Maria, his wife and Infineon colleague.
Besides raising funds, the festival also brings the local and international communities together and increases awareness of the school and its needs, Nixon said.
"It's been fun to just listen to the music and eat. I don't feel like I know more about the European community or culture, though," said Chin-yi, a local college student who learned about the event in a newspaper.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Celebrations marking Double Ten National Day are to begin in Taipei today before culminating in a fireworks display in Yunlin County on the night of Thursday next week. To start the celebrations, a concert is to be held at the Taipei Dome at 4pm today, featuring a lineup of award-winning singers, including Jody Chiang (江蕙), Samingad (紀曉君) and Huang Fei (黃妃), Taipei tourism bureau official Chueh Yu-ling (闕玉玲) told a news conference yesterday. School choirs, including the Pqwasan na Taoshan Choir and Hngzyang na Matui & Nahuy Children’s Choir, and the Ministry of National Defense Symphony Orchestra, flag presentation unit and choirs,
China is attempting to subsume Taiwanese culture under Chinese culture by promulgating legislation on preserving documents on ties between the Minnan region and Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday. China on Tuesday enforced the Fujian Province Minnan and Taiwan Document Protection Act to counter Taiwanese cultural independence with historical evidence that would root out misleading claims, Chinese-language media outlet Straits Today reported yesterday. The act is “China’s first ad hoc local regulations in the cultural field that involve Taiwan and is a concrete step toward implementing the integrated development demonstration zone,” Fujian Provincial Archives deputy director Ma Jun-fan (馬俊凡) said. The documents
RSS