The number of eco-burials in Taiwan passed 10,000 for the first time in 2018, Ministry of the Interior data showed.
The ministry defines an eco-burial as the burial of ashes under a tree or in flower beds or having them scattered in the sea instead of interring them in graves, setting tombstones or storing them in a columbarium.
The number of eco-burials in 2018 was 6.6 times the number in 2009, the ministry said.
In 2018, 1,549 eco-burials were conducted outside of public cemeteries, an increase of 102 cases, or 7.05 percent, from 2017, it said.
A total of 9,329 tree burials were recorded in public cemeteries in 2018, an increase of 3,096, or 50 percent, from the previous year, the ministry said.
A total of 169,667 cremations were conducted last year, an increase of 31.2 percent from 129,363 cremations in 2009, it said.
The number of people choosing cremation as the preferred method of body disposal has increased from 90.14 percent in 2009 to 98.24 percent in 2018, placing Taiwan just behind Japan worldwide in terms of cremation ratio.
With the increasing prevalence of cremations, the number of public cemeteries has also been decreasing, falling about 1 percent from 2017 to 2018, the ministry said.
The number of people interring family members in public cemeteries has also dropped, it said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift