The Ministry of Culture has designated two traditional Aboriginal weaving techniques as intangible cultural heritage and is to draft plans for their preservation.
The two techniques — gaya tminun of the Seediq and ni tenunan tu benina of the Kavalan — are to be protected under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法), the ministry said in a statement on Monday.
According to Article 92 of the act, the government must draft plans to preserve designated intangible cultural heritage and document, and teach or take measures to preserve and conserve cultural heritage that is on the verge of disappearing.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Culture via CNA
It was the first time the traditional craftsmanship of the Seediq and Kavalan — two of Taiwan’s 16 officially recognized Aboriginal communities — has been designated as cultural heritage.
The ministry praised gaya tminun as the embodiment of the Seediq’s weaving culture.
“Fabrics represent the crystallization of culture shared by Seediq women over the past several hundred and even 1,000 years,” the ministry said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Culture via CNA
The ministry also named Chang Feng-ying of the Seediq as the keeper of gaya tminun, and Yen Yu-ying (嚴玉英) the keeper of ni tenunan tu benina.
Chang inherited the weaving technique from her mother and grandmother, and she mastered the most challenging technique, called puniri, that is used to create formal dresses, it said.
Chang is recognized by her community as the most talented and skillful weaver, and she has devoted herself to passing on weaving techniques to others so that the skills and knowledge of puniri can spread, the ministry said.
The ministry described ni tenunan tu benina, which uses banana leaves and mainly consists of a plain weave, as representative of the craftsmanship of the Kavalan.
The technique is “an important cultural feature of a tribal renaissance movement,” and plays a significant role in creating cohesion within Aboriginal groups and in promoting their identity, it said.
The ministry praised Yen as the weaver who is most familiar with all the necessary skills and tools used for weaving with banana leaves, as well as the traditional ritual, called paspaw, performed to pray for blessings from ancestors’ spirits to allow the weaving to proceed without problems.
Yen’s craftsmanship “offers a ray of hope for the preservation of her tribe’s nearly extinct weaving knowledge and culture,” the ministry said.
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
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
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