The Israeli and German representative offices in Taiwan have expressed shock and regret at an Italian restaurant in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) serving a dish named “Long Live Nazi spaghetti (納粹萬歲麵),” saying it showed how some Taiwanese lack understanding about history and the Nazi slaughter of Jews and other minorities.
The restaurant owner, Tsao Ya-hsin, was quoted by cable news channel TVBS on Sunday as saying that she named the dish to get customers’ attention, but that she did not wish to specifically place emphasis on the word “Nazi.”
Tsao added that she named the dish so because it contains German sausages.
Photo: David Chang
Asked about their first impressions on hearing the word “Nazi,” members of the public told TVBS said they associate it with the Holocaust, the genocide of approximately 11 million people, including 6 million Jews, by the German military under the command of Adolf Hitler and his collaborators.
This was not the first time a local eatery escaped the bounds of taste. In 2000, a theme restaurant in Taipei caused controversy by displaying several photographs of Nazi concentration camps on the walls. The restaurant owner later pleaded ignorance and removed the images.
In October 2011, President Chain Store Corp, which runs the 7-Eleven convenience stores, removed products featuring an Adolf Hitler-style cartoon figure following complaints.
Mark Lee, a Taiwanese blogger who gained fame with the online comic strips that ridicule corporate bosses using tongue-in-cheek humor, said at the time that the caricature was indeed inspired by Hitler, but added that it was by no means meant to endorse or promote Hitler’s views or Nazi ideology.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
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