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.
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
TRAVEL CONFERENCE: Representatives from the two countries exchanged views on how to increase tourist numbers, with one identifying individual travel as a trend Taiwan and South Korea aim to increase the number of tourists traveling between the two countries to 3 million, government and tourism industry representatives said at a conference in Hsinchu City yesterday. The annual event was attended by Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Yen-po (陳彥伯); Tourism Bureau Director-General Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰); Taiwan Visitors Association chairwoman Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭); South Korean Representative to Taiwan Chung Byung-won; Yoon Ji-sook, an official at the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism; and Korea Association of Travel Agents chairman Oh Chang-hee. Global tourism is expected to soon rebound to between 55 and
The Taichung District Court yesterday sentenced to nine years in prison an unlicensed judo coach who caused the death of a seven-year-old student after slamming him onto the ground more than a dozen times. In its decision against the coach, a man surnamed Ho (何), the court cited his lack of remorse for using excessive force against an inadequately trained child and his failure to reconcile with the parents for his role in their son’s death. Speaking on behalf of the boy’s mother, Taichung City Councilor Jacky Chen (陳清龍) said the family would appeal to a higher court. Prosecutors said that Ho on
DAMAGE CONTROL: The KMT in a statement called the Taiwan Strait ‘international waters,’ after Alexander Huang said China had the right to claim it as internal waters Lawmakers and experts yesterday accused the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) envoy to the US Alexander Huang (黃介正) of acting as China’s stooge, after he said that Beijing has the right to claim waters beyond its maritime territory as its exclusive economic zone and that the US has no legal basis to assert that the Taiwan Strait is an “international waterway.” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said in an online post that most of the world considers the Strait an international waterway, adding that this is important for safeguarding Taiwan. “We have seen US warships transiting through the Taiwan Strait.
RSS