Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday presented the 39th National Cultural Award to budaixi (布袋戲) puppeteer Chen Hsi-huang (陳錫煌) and percussionist Ju Tzong-ching (朱宗慶).
Since 1981, the Executive Yuan has annually presented the award to individuals in creative industries who have contributed to the promotion of Taiwan’s culture, the Ministry of Culture said in a statement.
The award is the nation’s highest cultural honor and recognizes the lifetime achievements of its recipients, it said, adding that the award comes with a NT$1 million (US$33,873) prize.
Photo: CNA
In a description of this year’s honorees, the ministry said that Chen was born in 1931 into a family of glove puppetry performers.
A nationally recognized master of the traditional art, Chen has decades of experience performing abroad, it said.
Taichung native Ju was honored for his achievements with the Ju Percussion Group (朱宗慶打擊樂團), which he cofounded in 1986, it said.
Photo: CNA
The Golden Melody Award and the National Award for Arts, presented by the National Culture and Arts Foundation, are among the many accolades that Ju has received throughout his career, it said.
At a ceremony at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei, director Yang Li-chou (楊力州), whose documentary on Chen, Father (紅盒子), was released in 2018, said that Chen is “not just the best at performing budaixi in Taiwan, but also the best in the world.”
In his acceptance speech, Chen, thanked budaixi audiences across the nation.
Three generations of artists
associated with the Ju Percussion Group performed at the ceremony.
“There are more people in Taiwan who know Ju than Beethoven,” composer Lai Deh-ho (賴德和) quoted former head of the Council for Cultural Affairs Chiu Kun-liang (邱坤良) as saying about Ju.
In his acceptance speech, Ju said that when he was young, most people believed percussion was a profession with “no future.”
He thanked his parents for trusting him and allowing him to explore percussion.
Ju said he would donate his prize money to the Taipei National University of the Arts’ music department.
Describing Chen and Ju as “precious intangible cultural assets,” Minister of Culture Lee Yung-te (李永得) said the ministry would continue supporting performing arts to protect their cultural heritage.
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