The Taiwan Culture in Europe 2025 initiative has successfully showcased Taiwan’s freedom, openness and diversity through cultural events in Europe, a senior Taiwanese diplomat has said.
The initiative, launched this year by the Ministry of Culture and National Palace Museum, has held more than 70 art festivals, music fairs, and dancing and singing performances in 26 European countries, said Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department of European Affairs.
Among the highlights of the months-long project were the palace museum’s “100 Treasures, 100 Stories: Treasures from the National Palace Museum” exhibition in the Czech Republic, marking the first overseas showing of its most iconic artifact, the Jadeite Cabbage, since 2014.
Photo: CNA
The museum, known for its collection that offers a comprehensive record of Chinese history spanning thousands of years, held a separate exhibition in Paris last month, exploring the cultural and historical significance of dragons across Asia.
“The goal of the year-round campaign is to link Taiwan and Europe further via culture and art,” Huang said on Tuesday last week, adding that culture is “a shared language that transcends borders.”
“The essence of Taiwanese culture is its openness, diversity, depth, and vitality,” he said.
Only by embracing democracy, freedom, and human rights has Taiwan been able to give birth to such a creative and diversified culture, he added.
An exemplar of Taiwan’s cultural fusion is artist Xie Sheng-min (謝省民), who the foreign ministry invited to stage a woodblock printmaking exhibition in the country’s only diplomatic ally in Europe, the Holy See, in September.
Raised in a Catholic family, Xie grew up near the famous Chaotian Temple, dedicated to the Taoist goddess Matsu, in Yunlin County’s Beigang Township (北港).
His works are a combination of Taiwanese religious beliefs and Catholicism, exemplifying the spirit of peace and freedom, Huang said.
Another example is the
U-Theatre performing arts group, whose shows are known for their combination of theater arts and drumming, with a dash of traditional Japanese culture, according to Huang.
Under the foreign ministry campaign, the troupe performed in Italy in September.
Huang said this cultural diplomacy not only brought Taiwan and Europe closer, but helped pave the way for Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) to visit several European countries, including the Czech Republic, Italy and Austria.
Taiwan’s foreign ministers rarely make public visits to countries that do not have official diplomatic ties with the nation.
Looking ahead, Huang said that one of the highlights for next year’s program would be an exchange between Taiwanese hand puppet groups and their European counterparts.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS