Pan Ying-chieh (潘英傑) and Wang Pan Mei-yu (王潘美玉) were honored for their poetry yesterday at a ceremony for outstanding literary works written in romanized Aboriginal languages — something they said they could not dream of five years ago.
“The treasure of a culture can only be found in its language, while the essence of the language is hidden in its literature,” Minister of Education Chen Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城) said at the ceremony. “The purpose of this competition is to preserve and promote Taiwan’s rich Aboriginal languages and cultures.”
Out of 107 works that were entered in the competition held by the Ministry of Education, a total of 49 pieces — poetry, short novels, essays and translations written in Amis, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, Puyuma, Rukai, Tsou, Sediq and Pazeh — were selected to receive the award.
Among them, Wang Pan and Pan’s works in Pazeh were the most eye-catching.
The Pazeh are an assimilated plains tribe that used to inhabit regions in Taichung, Changhua and Nantou counties before the Chinese migrated to Taiwan in larger numbers about 400 years ago.
Over the centuries, the Pazeh have gradually disappeared from those areas because of marriages with non-Aboriginals or cultural assimilation.
The great majority of Pazeh have adopted Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) as their native tongue.
However, about five years ago some Pazeh who did not want to see their language and culture become extinct began efforts to save the language.
“In the 1990s, many academics predicted that the Pazeh language would completely die out,” said Lai Kuan-yi (賴貫一), a linguist who played an important role in saving the Pazeh language. “It’s a miracle that they [the Pazehs] brought it back to life.”
“I knew I may be an Aborigine, but I didn’t know which tribe until someone told me about five years ago,” Pan, 60, said. “There’s only 94-year-old Pan Chin-yu [潘金玉] in Puli [埔里] — where I live — who is able to speak Pazeh, so I learned from her.”
Wang Pan, who is now 70 and also lives in Puli, began to learn Pazeh five years ago from Pan Chin-yu as well.
“Right now, there are about 200 regular students who attend Pazeh classes offered by Pan Chin-yu in Puli,” Lai said, adding that classes with fewer students also exist in Miaoli and Taichung.
AGGRESSION: China’s latest intrusions set a new benchmark for its ‘gray zone’ tactics and possibly a new pattern that it would attempt to normalize, a researcher said China’s latest military exercises represent a new challenge to Taiwan’s legal authority to demarcate its borders in the Taiwan Strait, a defense expert said, adding that the fleets in the latest exercises were likely the most powerful the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ever assembled. The PLA conducted military exercises from Sunday last week to 6am on Friday, which encompassed large swathes of the western Pacific, including the Taiwan Strait and waters off the Philippines and Guam, National Policy Foundation associate research fellow Chieh Chung (揭仲) said on Friday. The Ministry of National Defense said that it detected 70 warship and 162 aircraft
DOMESTIC MARKET: To protect the livelihoods of local egg farmers, the government adopted a new method for releasing imported eggs, the agriculture minister said More than 54 million imported eggs will be disposed, as their expiration date has passed, Minister of Agriculture Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday. Chen made the remarks at a news conference in Taipei, explaining the flow of imported eggs following recent controversies regarding the products. The ministry introduced a special egg import program to address a nationwide egg shortage earlier this year. However, controversies have risen in recent weeks. These included an accusation that the government helped some egg importing companies over others, eggs imported from Brazil that had an incorrect expiration date, and egg shipments from Brazil that were found
PACIFIC OCEAN: Defense experts have warned that the ‘Shandong,’ China’s second largest aircraft carrier, poses a serious threat to eastern Taiwan’s defenses The drills conducted by the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong in the Western Pacific last week were more aimed at showcasing China’s military capabilities to the US rather than toward Taiwan, a Taiwanese defense expert said yesterday. Lin Yin-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said the drills which involved dozens of warplanes sought to test China’s anti-access and area denial capabilities should the US and its allies attempt to interfere in a cross-strait conflict. Lin said that the latest Chinese drills coincided with a joint maritime exercise conducted by the US, South Korea
Thousands of bottles of Sriracha have been returned or destroyed after the discovery of excessive sulfur dioxide, a bleaching agent, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday. About 12,600 bottles totaling 9,991.8kg of the hot sauce imported from the US by Emporium Corp (河洛企業) were flagged at the border for containing illegal levels of sulfur dioxide, the FDA said in its regular border inspection announcement. Inspectors discovered 0.5g per kilogram of the common bleaching agent and preservative, higher than the 0.03g permitted, it said. As it is the first time within six months the product has been flagged, Sriracha products from
RSS