The National Central Library next month is scheduled to host a two-day carnival in Taipei as part of the annual Taiwan Reading Festival and feature books presented by Taiwan’s diplomatic allies for the first time, the library said yesterday.
The first day of the carnival at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park on Dec. 3 is to have music performances, arts and crafts, storytelling presented by the embassies of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Belize, the library said at a press conference.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Ambassador to Taiwan Andrea Bowman said that her country’s booths at the carnival are to feature three trained Vincentian teachers of English based in Taiwan reading aloud books by Vincentian authors.
Photo: Rachel lin, Taipei Times
They would use “excerpts from the books to say something about Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and to entice the children as well, so we are going to have hands-on children’s activities,” Bowman said.
“We’re going to have the children engage with the text in various ways, maybe drawing, getting ideas and magic from reading,” she said.
Saint Kitts and Nevis Ambassador to Taiwan Donya Francis said his embassy’s booth would feature English books written by leading authors in his country to give Taiwanese a clearer understanding of the Caribbean country, and its culture and heritage.
“I can tell you I have traveled to many places, not by plane and not by boat, but by reading books. So I want people to take a trip to our country via reading books, and embrace this new world and open a promising future,” Francis said.
Belize Ambassador to Taiwan Candice Pitts said that when Taiwanese children visit her embassy’s booth, they would also be taken on a journey to her country through literature.
The books “introduce them to our national symbols, our national trees, our national birds, our national animals, our national anthem and our national flag,” Pitts said.
“They have a way of comparing and juxtaposing those national items to those of Taiwan, so it’s a very interesting learning experience for them,” Pitts said.
The carnival is to continue through Dec. 4 in areas surrounding the library with talks by iconic actors and authors, including Taiwanese actress Brigitte Lin (林青霞) and Taiwanese writer Pai Hsien-yung (白先勇), library director-general Tseng Shu-hsien (曾淑賢) said.
The Taiwan Reading Festival, which is typically held on the first weekend of December, had 50,000 to 70,000 visitors last year, and Tseng said it could draw as many as 100,000 visitors this year.
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
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
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