A government-led project to preserve local knowledge and provide open access to cultural material officially launched its Web site yesterday to mark this year’s Taiwan Culture Day, the Ministry of Culture announced on Friday.
The Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank (https://memory.culture.tw) curates people’s recollections and historic documentation in words, images, artifacts, audiovisual assets and other media to reconstruct Taiwan’s historical eras, the ministry said in a statement, adding that the memories are collected and introduced to the world on the Web site.
The project, initiated in 2017, records the diverse cultures present in Taiwan so that future generations can access the information and materials saved in the memory bank, Vice Minister of Culture Lee Lien-chuan (李連權) said on Friday.
A database of more than 2.7 million items has been amassed from various government agencies and institutions, he added.
For example, the National Research Institute of Chinese Medicine has been collecting records and oral knowledge associated with traditional healing practices and herbal remedies, while an initiative supported by the Taoyuan City government has collected stories from retired veterans by sending a minivan to military dependents’ villages across the city, Lee said.
The platform uses a Creative Commons license, a public copyright license that enables the distribution of otherwise copyrighted work under certain conditions.
Taiwan Culture Day, which is celebrated every year on Oct. 17, commemorates Taiwanese democracy pioneer Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水), who established the Taiwanese Culture Association on Oct. 17, 1921, setting off a cultural enlightenment movement.
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off Taitung County at 1:09pm today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 53km northeast of Taitung County Hall at a depth of 12.5km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Taitung County and Hualien County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Nantou County, Chiayi County, Yunlin County, Kaohsiung and Tainan, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage following the quake.
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
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