Organizers of the Taipei International Book Exhibition yesterday held an online opening ceremony to launch the virtual pavilion of South Korea, the guest of honor at this year’s event.
Organized by the Ministry of Culture and the Taipei Book Fair Foundation, the 29th annual exhibition was scheduled to open yesterday at the Taipei World Trade Center and run until Sunday. However, citing changes in the domestic COVID-19 situation, the ministry on Wednesday last week announced that the exhibition would be an online-only event.
In a video message to viewers of the virtual ceremony, Minister of Culture Lee Yung-te (李永得) said that the decision to cancel the physical edition of the exhibition was an “extremely difficult” one.
With the cancelation of the physical book fair, many participating publishers have turned the events that they had planned into smaller gatherings to comply with disease prevention efforts, he said.
To reach readers around the world, the online book fair (tibeonline.tw) is available in Mandarin and English, foundation chairman Robert Lin (林訓民) said in his video remarks.
More than 1,000 new titles are showcased in the online Book Show section of the Web site, he said.
A highlight of the online book fair is its series of international literary salons, he said.
From today through Sunday, dozens of Taiwanese and international speakers — including Nobel Prize in literature winner Kazuo Ishiguro, author of the Twilight series Stephenie Meyer, South Korean illustrator Suzy Lee, Japanese novelist Keiichiro Hirano, National Book Award winner Ha Jin and Indian writer Amitav Ghosh — are to participate through pre-recorded videos or livestream events, the foundation said.
The theme of the online book fair is “Reading in the Time of a Pandemic.”
“Through reading, we may still cast a bright light upon the darkness caused” by the pandemic, Lin said in his video message. “We may enlighten the world via reading.”
South Korea is to meet with Taiwanese readers and publishers virtually through the Web site goh.sibf.or.kr, which presents select titles and picture books under the theme “XYZ,” Korean Publishers Association chairman Yoon Chul-ho said.
Organizers have also prepared talks on gender, generational and environmental topics, he said.
“Through the Taipei International Book Exhibition, I hope to bring more attention toward Korean literature amongst publishers and readers in Taiwan,” he said.
The ministry thanked the venues that have provided publishers with spaces to hold their events for free following the cancelation of the physical book fair.
It is to offer subsidies to help cover the costs that exhibitors have incurred in preparing for the fair, as well as plan a reading promotion program, it said.
Six professional forums — including the Frankfurt Publishers Training Program — are to be held as planned at the Taipei World Trade Center from yesterday to Friday, organizers said.
People who have registered to participate in the forums in person are welcome to attend, they said.
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
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods