What do mud wrestlers, beer guzzlers, vanilla herbal tea connoisseurs and off-key karaoke singers have in common?
Perhaps nothing, except the 2006 Shilin International Cultural Festival.
The Taipei Shilin District Office has teamed up with the National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC) and Garden Mall again this year to organize the festival, which will run to the end of this month.
In keeping with a six-year tradition, the annual festival caters to a dizzying array of unrelated categories of festival-goers.
Luckily, Shilin District officials insisted that the pony rides, tea-time, beer-drinking and belching contests will not be combined into a single event.
"Eleven events are scheduled, starting from [yesterday], including flower arranging and vanilla herbal-tea breaks at Garden Mall," a district official told the Taipei Times yesterday. The official declined to state her name, saying that she wasn't authorized to speak to the press.
She added that beer-drinking and mud-wrestling contests would be held on Oct. 21 in Tienmu Sports Park as part of the festival.
But just how international is the Shilin International Cultural Festival?
Yesterday's main attraction -- a 4-hour karaoke singing competition on the 10th floor of the district office -- was attended exclusively by middle-aged and elderly locals in their Sunday best and perhaps wasn't an ideal picture of international culture in Taiwan.
However, Chen Der-shin (陳德鑫), Chief District Secretary, said at the karaoke contest yesterday that the festival's global character would be more on display during the beer and mud-soaked revelry on Oct. 21.
"Contests in Tienmu on Oct. 21 are the main event, and that will be a very international celebration," Chen said, pointing at a poster of mud-caked Caucasians.
Chang Hao-wen (
"Shilin is unique in that we are home to the American, Japanese and European Schools, with over 8,000 foreigners living in this district. So, we wanted to have a festival that includes them," Chen said.
The district chief secretary also said that the autumn blossoming of Shilin's olive trees and the Double Ten holiday account for why the yearly festival is held in October.
For more information on the festival, call the Shilin District Office at (02) 2882-6200.
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
‘JOINT SWORD’: Whatever President Lai says in his Double Ten speech, China would use it as a pretext to launch ‘punishment’ drills for his ‘separatist’ views, an official said China is likely to launch military drills this week near Taiwan, using President William Lai’s (賴清德) upcoming national day speech as a pretext to pressure the nation to accept its sovereignty claims, Taiwanese officials said. China in May launched “punishment” drills around Taiwan shortly after Lai’s inauguration, in what Beijing said was a response to “separatist acts,” sending heavily armed warplanes and staging mock attacks as state media denounced newly inaugurated Lai. The May drills were dubbed “Joint Sword — 2024A” and drew concerns from capitals, including Washington. Lai is to deliver a key speech on Thursday in front of the Presidential Office
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,
RSS