More than a dozen folk art groups from different countries are to congregate in Greater Tainan next month to attend the Nanying International Folklore Festival, a biennial event that celebrates its eighth edition this year.
The festival is set to open with an afternoon parade on Oct. 6, with performers and troupes from home and abroad performing on the streets of Sinying District (新營).
According to Cultural Affairs Bureau of Tainan City Government, the event organizer, the origin of the word nanying (南瀛) can be traced back to the Warring States Period in ancient China. The term yingzhou (瀛洲) first appeared during this period to indicate a mythical island in the Bohai Sea, a part of the Yellow Sea on the coast of Northeastern China.
As the Han-Chinese migrated southward, the words yingzhou and nanying became the names for Quanzhou (泉州) and Zhangzhou (漳州) in China’s Fujian Province during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the bureau’s researcher Lee Ming-yu (李明育) said.
“The inhabitants in Quanzhou and Zhangzhou referred to themselves as people of ying. As a large number of people immigrated to Taiwan from the these two regions during the Qing Dynasty, Taiwan became known as Nanying, Lee said.
The festival is to highlight cultural diversity and folk traditions from different corners of the world.
From Russia, the State Chuvash Academic Song and Dance Ensemble has preserved and promoted folk heritage of the Chuvash people since its establishmeny in 1924.
The Bulgarian troupe Sofia-6 was founded in 1976 by choreographer Nestor Nestorov in the hope of passing down traditional music and dance. Over the years, the troupe has trained more than 1480 performers and toured regularly around the world.
Closer to home, Miyabi Daiko has celebrated the art of taiko drumming for the past 20 years. Meanwhile, award-winning Sanggar Ayudha is to bring traditional Indonesian dance to the festival’s audience.
To further facilitate cultural exchanges, the organizer has arranged homestays with local families for the foreign performers. Elementary and high schools in Tainan as well as community-based art groups are also encouraged to visit the festival to share their experiences.
This year, 26 host families, 45 schools and nine local dance troupes have signed up to welcome the visiting guests.
The festival is set to take place between Oct. 6 and Oct. 14 at two main venues, Nanying Green Heart Park and Tainan Municipal Cultural Center, as well as at various locations across the greater Tainan areas. The event’s Web site, nyiff.tnc.gov.tw, is currently under construction, but should be ready by the end of next week, the bureau said.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
PROXIMITY: Prague is closer to Dresden than Berlin is, so Taiwanese firms are expected to take advantage of the Czech capital’s location, the Executive Yuan official said Taiwan plans to boost cooperation with the Czech Republic in semiconductor development due to Prague’s pivotal role in the European IC industry, Executive Yuan Secretary-General Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said. With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) building a wafer fab in the German city of Dresden, a Germany-Czech Republic-Poland “silicon triangle” is forming, Kung said in a media interview on the weekend after returning from a visit to Prague. “Prague is closer to Dresden than Berlin is, so Taiwanese firms are expected to take advantage of the Czech capital’s location,” he said. “Taiwan and Prague have already launched direct flights and it is
RSS