The success of the movie Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (彩虹戰士:賽德克巴萊) has spurred interest in tourism to the east coast where there are more than 40 Amis Aboriginal communities, the Tourism Bureau said.
Even though the movie is about the Sediq tribe in central Taiwan that revolted against Japanese rule in 1930, the story has revived interest in the nation’s Aboriginal cultures, the bureau’s administrative office for the East Coast National Scenic Area said recently.
In an effort to take advantage of the buzz and promote tourism in the less developed eastern part of the country, the office said it is sending staff members to spend time with the tribes, experience their culture and come up with fresh tourism ideas.
“We would like to take this opportunity to rethink our approach and make the rural tours more appealing to modern travelers,” east coast office deputy director Lin Wei-ling said.
For example, in a brainstorming session with the Marongarong tribe in Taitung County, Lin said she and a tribe member, Akila, realized they could minimize disruption to the tribe’s way of life by providing tourists with bicycles to explore the area.
As for sleeping arrangements, “if visitors find it difficult to sleep on our hard bamboo beds, then we can provide them with a spring mattress,” Akila said after the session.
The partnership between the tourism authorities and Aboriginal communities seemed ideal, according to Omi Wilang, -secretary-general of the Indigenous Peoples Action Coalition of Taiwan, which is devoted to protecting Aboriginal rights.
However, he cautioned that the effects of commercial activity and increased tourism would have to be carefully monitored to minimize any negative effects.
“The last thing we want is to invite business conglomerates to exploit the virgin land,” he said. “We also don’t want to see a small tribal area hosting five or six entertainment facilities such as karaoke clubs.”
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS