Hakka Affairs Council Minister Lee Yung-de (李永得) on Friday performed a traditional worship ceremony to mark the beginning of the annual Hakka Tung Blossom Festival.
Although several of the festival’s large-scale activities have been canceled or postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tung trees in Hakka villages have still blossomed beautifully, he said at the ceremony, in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼).
There are more than 70 tung flower paths in Taiwan, in places such as Taoyuan, Taichung, and Hsinchu and Miaoli counties, he said, inviting people to walk the trails and experience the scenery and nature, while reminding them to avoid crowds and keep a distance of more than 1m from others.
Photo copied by Peng Chien-lee, Taipei Times
Following the worship ceremony, Lee visited the Taiwan Hakka Museum, where the council has organized a public art installation on display until May 24.
The installation, titled “Snow in Summer” (夏雪), was created by artist Yu Wen-fu (游文富), the council said.
Yu used 100,000 pink and white-colored bamboo sticks to “interpret the impressive scene” of tung flowers falling to the ground, it said.
“His work is the most graceful presentation of Hakka culture, land and vigor of life,” it added.
Lee also visited the former residence of the late Hakka composer Tu Min-heng (涂敏恆) in Miaoli’s Dahu Township (大湖).
Lee hopes that local representatives work with Tu’s family to turn the residence into a memorial museum for the composer, the council said.
Although the council has canceled festival-related gatherings amid the pandemic, it has compiled a list of places to view tung flowers at its Web site, http://tung.hakka.gov.tw, where people can search for flower-spotting sites, methods of transportation and see the weather forecast, it said.
Due to the pandemic, a musical organized by the council that had been scheduled to run at the Taiwan Hakka Museum from Saturday to Sunday has been delayed, it said.
A marathon originally scheduled to be held in Hsinchu County on Sunday as part of the festival was also postponed, the festival’s Web site showed.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS