The outbreak of COVID-19 has disrupted cultural life nationwide as health authorities advise against indoor gatherings of more than 100 people and urge social distancing.
Several performances have been canceled since March 19, including the Taiwan International Festival of Arts. The event, hosted by the National Performing Arts Center, has been an annual showcase for local and global artists for more than a decade.
To curb the spread of COVID-19, the Central Epidemic Command Center on March 25 announced an advisory against indoor gatherings of more than 100 people and outdoor events involving more than 500 attendees.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Philharmonic Chorus
The advice led the Ministry of Culture to suspend events that were to be held at its venues or by affiliated groups, including the performing arts center.
The National Theater and Concert Hall in Taipei, the National Taichung Theater in central Taiwan and the National Kaohsiung Center of Arts (Weiwuying) have either canceled performances by foreign artists or postponed those by local performers.
The National Theater and Concert Hall said that a couple of privately organized performances are still scheduled to go ahead this month, but it has stopped offering guided tours.
Restaurants and shops at the venue late last month reduced service hours in response to the outbreak.
National Taichung Theater is keeping its public area open, but all performances scheduled for this month have been canceled or postponed.
The venue, a tourist hotspot designed by Japanese architect Toyo Ito, still provides guided tours, but to smaller groups.
Weiwuying has also canceled all indoor performances for this month. It continues to offer guided tours, but the number of people in tours has dropped, often to fewer than 10.
Weiwuying said it would continue to host a series of free monthly outdoor dance events.
However, a ballroom dance-themed program on Wednesday last week was changed to a single-person format to avoid physical contact between participants. The next event is scheduled for May 6.
Four Taiwanese groups selected to present their works at Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer would instead participate in next year’s festival after event organizers on Wednesday last week canceled all events scheduled for August.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS