Hakka has been made an official national language after the Legislative Yuan yesterday passed amendments to the Hakka Basic Act (客家基本法).
According to the amendment, townships in which Hakka people make up at least one-third of the population are to be designated key developmental areas for Hakka culture by the Hakka Affairs Council, and Hakka is to be used as one of the main languages for communication.
Such areas should strive to bolster the teaching and speaking of Hakka, as well as the preservation of Hakka culture and related industries, the amendment said.
Townships in which Hakka people comprise half the population should make the language their primary method of communication, with relevant regulations to be determined by the council, the amendment said.
A minimum percentage of civil servants in such areas would be required to take Hakka-language examinations, and those who pass would be given an official accolade and exam results would be considered when awarding promotions, the amendment said.
All levels of government should reward exceptional efforts in promoting Hakka language and culture with recognition and awards, the amendment said.
The government is to establish a “Hakka-language research and development foundation,” which would be tasked with research, development, certification and promotion of Hakka nationwide, the amendment added.
The foundation is to establish an archive on Hakka language and should cooperate with local governments, it said.
A Hakka public broadcasting foundation, which would produce national radio and TV programs on Hakka affairs and other matters, should be founded, it said, adding that the government should offer subsidies to broadcasters that create programs in Hakka or on Hakka culture.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chung Kung-shao (鍾孔炤), a Hakka, yesterday said that the act exists not to encourage confrontation, but so that all groups would have their own subjective existence in Taiwan.
All ethnic groups can continue to live in Taiwan together in blissful harmony, he added.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator John Wu (吳志揚), also a Hakka, said that governmental action regarding Hakka people and the continuation of their culture still fell short of expectations, despite the council and the act.
Wu said he had proposed the amendment and hoped its passage would help preserve Hakka culture and serve Hakka people.
Hakka is a word of Cantonese origin, meaning “guest” (客家). Some genealogies and other records indicate that many of the ancestors of Hakka people were from the northern plains in China and that they moved south in a series of migrations, including to Taiwan.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater