The Dajia Matsu Pilgrimage is to run from Thursday to Saturday next week after it was delayed by nearly three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizers said yesterday.
The largest annual religious procession in Taiwan, organized by the Jenn Lann Temple (鎮瀾宮) in Taichung’s Dajia District (大甲), was originally scheduled to take place from March 19 to 28, but was postponed after temple chairman Yen Ching-piao (顏清標) consulted with health professionals about infection risks.
As the outbreak in Taiwan has stabilized and some restrictions have been lifted, the temple decided to start the procession late on Thursday, vice chairman Cheng Ming-kun (鄭銘坤) said.
Organizers would limit procession workers to 800 people, whose names would be recorded and their temperatures checked daily, Cheng told a news conference.
Participants must wear masks at all times, said Cheng, who also called for Matsu followers to watch the procession online rather than in person, and urged those with fevers not to attend.
The temple canceled an outdoor banquet that typically marks the beginning of the celebration, which was attended by more than 10,000 people last year, Cheng said.
The temple was planning to consult with the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) about the pilgrimage, he added.
Deputy Minister of the Interior Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥), who is deputy head of the center, said that the temple’s plans follow CECC regulations.
Chen also echoed Cheng’s calls for people to follow the procession online and to maintain proper hygiene if they attend in person.
The procession celebrates the birthday of the sea goddess Matsu and features the Matsu statue of the Jenn Lann Temple, which worshipers carry on a palanquin on their shoulders throughout central Taiwan.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gather along the more than 340km route that extends through Taichung, as well as Changhua, Yunlin and Chiayi counties.
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
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
COGNITIVE WARFARE: Allegations that the documents were proof that the former US envoy tried to smuggle alcohol were designed to manipulate public opinion Leaked documents related to customs clearance procedures for vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) that have been circulating on the Internet appear to be an attempt to manipulate public opinion against the government, a source said on Sunday. A post on online platform Baoliao Commune (爆料公社) on Sunday showed documents it said were evidence that Hsiao had smuggled alcohol through customs with the assistance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and said that the documents were part of a 4GB data dump of confidential material acquired by hackers. In a rebuttal, the source said that they were not confidential documents, but rather