Taiwanese film director Ang Lee (李安) is one of five winners of this year’s Presidential Culture Awards, the General Association of Chinese Culture said yesterday.
The Presidential Culture Awards, held every two years, are given in five categories: arts and culture, community building, humanitarian dedication, creativity and innovation, and public advocacy.
Lee is to receive the award for arts and culture, the organizer said in a statement.
The awards were created in 2001 to recognize individuals and groups for their contributions to Taiwanese culture.
A ceremony is scheduled for next month and each winner would be awarded NT$1 million (US$36,114), the association added.
Lee is the only Mandarin-speaking director to have won recognition from three major international film awards bodies — an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a BAFTA from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and a Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — the culture association said.
Lee said through an assistant that he was grateful to the association for its recognition and would continue his work.
The humanitarian dedication award is to go to Chen Rong-chi (陳榮基), a doctor who advocates hospice and palliative care.
Chen has proposed that physicians be trained to prevent and ease suffering for people with serious illnesses or who need end-of-life care to die with dignity.
HRC Dance Studio chief executive officer Chen Bo-jin (陳柏均), also known as Bboy Bojin, is to receive the creativity and innovation award.
Having won numerous awards in break dancing, Chen Bo-jin helped boost Taiwan’s international visibility by promoting the inclusion of break dancing — also called breaking, b-boying or b-girling, an athletic style of street dance — at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, the statement said.
In addition, he created an online learning app called “Swipe,” which allows people to use action recognition and artificial intelligence to participate in street dance classes.
The Dr Chen Wen-chen Memorial Foundation was named as the recipient of the public advocacy award for contributions to promoting freedom, democracy and human rights in Taiwan, the statement said.
The Thousand Miles Trail Association was named the winner of the community building award for its longstanding advocacy for the protection of Taiwan’s mountain and sea landscapes, as well as its cultural and natural characteristics, the statement said.
The winners were selected following three rounds of evaluation over the past six months by a panel headed by Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the general convener of the organizing committee.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is aware that Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong has weakened any possible sentiment for a “one country, two systems” arrangement for Taiwan, and has instructed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) politburo member Wang Huning (王滬寧) to develop new ways of defining cross-strait relations, Japanese news magazine Nikkei Asia reported on Thursday. A former professor of international politics at Fu Dan University, Wang is expected to develop a dialogue that could serve as the foundation for cross-strait unification, and Xi plans to use the framework to support a fourth term as president, Nikkei Asia quoted an anonymous source
CHAMPION TREES: The team used light detection and ranging imaging to locate the tree, and found that it measured a height of 84.1m and had a girth of 8.5m A team committed to finding the tallest trees in the nation yesterday said that an 84.1m tall Taiwania cryptomerioides tree had been named the tallest tree in Taiwan and East Asia. The Taiwan Champion Trees, a team consisting of researchers from the Council of Agriculture’s Taiwan Forestry Research Institute and National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), in June last year used light detection and ranging (LiDAR) imaging to find the giant tree, numbered 55214, upstream of the Daan River (大安溪). A 20-member expedition team led by Rebecca Hsu (徐嘉君), an assistant researcher at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, set out to find the
SELF-RELIANCE: Taiwan would struggle to receive aid in the event of an invasion, so it must prepare to ‘hold its own’ for the first 70 days of a war, a defense expert said Taiwan should strengthen infrastructure, stock up on reserves and step up efforts to encourage Taiwanese to fight against an enemy, legislators and experts said on Tuesday last week. The comments sought to summarize what the nation should learn from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has exceeded 300 days, since Feb. 24 last year. Institute of National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said that the war in Ukraine highlighted the importance of being ready for war. Taiwan’s development of an “asymmetrical warfare” doctrine and extending mandatory conscription to one year is a good start to preparation of defense against a
The Tourism Bureau plans to offer incentives to attract international tourists as the nation plans to gradually lift all travel restrictions to contain COVID-19, Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said yesterday. The incentives would be funded by surplus national tax revenue from last year, Wang said. The funding could be appropriated after the legislature passes draft special statutes governing the use of the surplus tax revenue in the upcoming legislative session, he said. Of the NT$450 billion (US$14.97 billion) in surplus tax revenue, the government plans to spend NT$100 billion on seven categories of projects to bolster Taiwan’s