Minister of Culture Hung Meng-chi (洪孟啟) on Monday promised the Taitung County Government that the ministry would assist in efforts to have the Basiandong Historical Site (caves of eight deities, 八仙洞遺址) listed as a potential world heritage site.
Basiandong, on cliffs facing the Pacific Ocean in Changbin Township (長濱), is made up of dozens of natural sea caves that are the result of erosion carving out softer rock.
They are scattered among 150m-tall cliffs that were pushed up due to the upward motion of the Earth’s crust in the area.
Photo: Huang Ming-tang, Taipei Times
In 1968, geologists and archeologists discovered in the caves evidence of a Paleolithic pottery culture — which was later named the Changbin Culture — the Taitung Bureau of Cultural Heritage said.
Basiandong is the oldest prehistoric site to have been found in Taiwan, with researchers saying it dates back to 30,000 years ago, and it has been designated a national heritage site.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Liu Chao-hao (劉櫂豪) said at the legislature that Basiandong has the potential to become a world heritage site.
Liu asked the ministry to help facilitate the process by adding the site to a list of 18 potential world heritage sites in Taiwan, which includes Fort San Domingo in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水).
If Basiandong is added to the list, it will be the third potential world heritage site in the county, after the Peinan Archeological Site in Beinan Township (卑南) — the largest-known ancient stone coffin burial ground in the Pacific Rim area — and Orchid Island (蘭嶼, also known as Lanyu).
The government is continuing to promote Taiwan’s cultural and natural assets to earn “world heritage” status, which refers to sites, groups of buildings, monuments and natural environments of outstanding universal value listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the bureau said.
The Taitung County Government has to submit an application to the bureau for review as the first step in its bid to get Basiandong on the UNESCO list.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000
RSS