Poet Tsai Chi-lan (蔡奇蘭) on Wednesday passed away at the age of 81, the Ministry of Culture said in a statement yesterday.
Expressing his deep sorrow and condolences, Minister of Culture Li Yuan (李遠) said that Tsai was a key representative of Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) literature in southern Taiwan and an important advocate of the Hoklo movement.
Tsai’s work, imbued with a profound sense of place, historical memory and the spirit of Hoklo, would continue to inspire future generations and remain an enduring part of Taiwan’s literary history, Li said.
Photo courtesy of professor Chiung Wi-vun
Throughout his life, Tsai wrote about Taiwan’s land, history and people, while nurturing the Hoklo literary community, leaving behind a rich and invaluable cultural legacy, he said.
Tsai was born on Sept. 9, 1944, in Tainan’s Annan District (安南), the ministry said.
Writing under the pen name Luerhmen Fisher (鹿耳門漁夫), he created works in his mother tongue at a time when Hoklo literature faced a generational gap, it said.
He elevated the traditional “seven-character verse” (七字仔), rooted in folk ballads, into an epic form encompassing historical narrative, depictions of the land and a strong sense of national identity, exerting a profound influence, the ministry said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS