The Ministry of Culture on Saturday said that it has designated the Hanben Culture (漢本遺跡) site in Yilan County as the nation’s eighth national historical site.
The ministry’s historical site reviewing committee made the decision and also agreed to add Blehun, an Atayal word, to the site’s name to indicate its cultural significance for the Atayal community.
The Hanben site in Nanao Township (南澳鄉) was discovered in 2012 by workers on the Suhua Highway improvement project between Yilan and Hualien counties.
After the discovery, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications asked Academia Sinica to conduct an archeological study on the Hanben site, excavating a number of relics, including iron, jade, ceramic and stone items, as well as stone coffins that contained human remains.
Academia Sinica said the relics dated back 1,600 years, indicating that the people who lived in the area had developed technology for harnessing high temperatures.
The relics also showed that people of the Hanben culture used to gather in a special area to hold unique funeral rituals, adding that the relics serve as a reference for the Aboriginal culture of the time.
The Yilan County Government in March declared the Hanben site to be a county historical site and in May it filed an application with the Ministry of Culture to designate the location as a national historical site.
Since the Hanben site is close to the construction site of the highway improvement project, the culture ministry has asked the construction team and Academia Sinca’s archeological team to protect the site, but not to hamper the progress of the highway improvement work.
The culture ministry’s Bureau of Cultural Heritage is to submit the decision to declare the Hanben site as a national historical site to Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) for approval before making an official announcement of the designation.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS