Radio Taiwan International 
Date: 27 May, 2019
By: Jake Chen

A large number of people have rushed to buy tickets to return home next week, and for good reason: the Dragon Boat Festival. The holiday falls on June 7 this year, and is a popular time for people to return home and spend time with family members.

When online train ticket sales began on Thursday morning, close to 60,000 people rushed to get their tickets within the first minute alone. By 9 am, all tickets on the popular train routes were sold out.

The annual Dragon Boat Festival falls on June 7 this year, and people are making sure they can travel home to spend time with their family, in keeping with tradition.

The travel wave means this is one of the more stressful times for the Taiwan Railways Administration’s (TRA) online ticketing system. A senior TRA official says the updated system handled a larger number of online buyers than last year.    [FULL  STORY]

Yahoo News
Date: May 27, 2019

TAIPEI, Taiwan–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

The Mandarin Chinese-language centers of Taiwan’s universities are working together with the tourism industry to offer innovative tours that combine local cultural adventures with language learning, in which visitors will enjoy a trip to Taiwan that’s more than just sightseeing. Here are some examples:    [FULL  STORY]

Even though it’s hard work and volunteers have to pay NT$6,000 activity fee, registration for this activity is full every year

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/05/27
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Participation in the volunteer job to repair and maintain Jiaming Lake National Trail (嘉明湖國家步道)) situated 3,000 meters above sea level on the southern ridge of Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range has been in great demand every year, Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Sunday.

“The registration [for this year] is already full,” Taitung Forest District Office official Lin Mung-yi (林孟怡) said, adding that even though it’s hard work and volunteers have to pay NT$6,000 activity fee, registration for this activity is full every year.

Lin said 230 people registered for 18 vacancies this year.

As volunteers have to carry tools and personal equipment and work in an environment 2,800 to 3,000 meters above sea level, they must be physically fit, Lin said, according to the report. After careful screening, 18 people with ages ranging from 18 to 50 plus were selected for the job.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/05/27
By: Wang Hung-kuo and Ko Lin 

Taipei, May 27 (CNA) A driver who ran out of gas on a freeway in New Taipei died after he was struck twice by passing vehicles after running to the middle of the freeway to seek help, police said Monday.

The incident took place in the early hours of Monday morning on the southbound section of the Wuyang Elevated Freeway that connects Wugu District in New Taipei and Yangmei in Taoyuan.

According to police, the driver stopped on the freeway shoulder after running out of gas but then inexplicably ran to the middle of the roadway, into oncoming traffic, hoping to get help.

The victim’s wife, who remained in the passenger seat, told police after the incident that her husband wanted to try and stop a passing vehicle to borrow some gas, after placing an emergency triangle behind his car.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: May 28, 2019 
By: Huang Liang-chieh and William Hetherington  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Drain covers on four streets in Kaohsiung’s Desheng Borough (德生) have been decorated

with images of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), prompting accusations that Desheng Warden Wu San-hsiung (吳三雄) was “sucking up.”

The Kaohsiung City Government on May 4 said it hoped that likenesses of the mayor on city documents would use the image promoted by the Kaohsiung Bureau of Information.

Wu denied that replacing the covers with ones featuring the bureau’s image of Han was done to please the mayor.

Residents said that the new covers, which have smaller openings to allow space for graphics, would inhibit drainage during torrential rainfall.

One resident said they wondered whether Wu, a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member, felt compelled to “suck up” to Han to secure funds for borough projects.    [FULL  STORY]

CNN
Date: May 25, 2019

Taiwan LGBTQ rights activists held a wedding banquet with more than 1,000 participants on Saturday, May 25, 2019, to celebrate some of the first legally recognized same-sex marriages on the island. The event included a joint wedding for about 20 couples and stage performances, including a drag act. The venue was so packed that people who couldn’t get in gathered around the venue with picnic blankets to show their support.
[FULL  STORY]

Intensity registered 4 in the Hualien County township of Fuli

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/05/25
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A magnitude 4.2 quake jolted the counties of Taitung and Hualien on Taiwan’s east coast Saturday (May 25) afternoon, the Central Weather Bureau reported.

The temblor struck at 2:27 p.m., at a location 56 kilometers northeast of the Taitung County Government building, 19.6 kilometers under the surface.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/05/25
By: Shine Chen, Shen Peng-ta and Chi Jo-yao

Wu Renhua (吳仁華), a scholar and witness to the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989
Taipei, May 25 (CNA) “The enemy is too powerful and many of us have already retreated,” Wu Renhua (吳仁華), a scholar and witness to the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, said on the eve of its 30th anniversary.

Thirty years ago during the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, Wu was a young lecturer at China University of Political Science and Law and was one of the million protesters.

This made him a witness of the bloody crackdown China’s government ordered the military to carry out between June 3-4 that year, commonly known as the June Fourth Incident.

AP photo

Thirty-years later, Wu still struggles with the horrors of that night, but instead of trying to forget what happened, he has spent the past three de

cades painstakingly trying to reconstruct the incident and sorting out what the facts, lies and false rumors are.    [FULL  STORY]

A new documentary will aim to preserve the dying art of dragon boat building.

Radio Taiwan Internatinal
Date: 24 May, 2019
By: John Van Trieste

The Dragon Boat Festival is approaching, and in Taiwan that means boat races on the

river. These days, the dragon boats are mostly mass-produced, but that wasn’t always the case.

Even today, a few old masters are still making dragon boats the old-fashioned way. Now, one of these master boat builders is set to feature in a new documentary film that will preserve the art of the dragon boat for posterity.

When Liu Ching-cheng was 18, he was initiated into the craft of building dragon boats.

For three generations before him, his family had earned a living making row boats like these. The dragon boats in particular were lavishly carved and painted works of art, fitting centerpieces for the early summer Dragon Boat Festival.

Liu’s generation was to be the last of the family’s boat builders. At 78, he is still making boats the old-fashioned way, but mass-produced alternatives have largely replaced boats like his. Meanwhile, Liu’s son has said he won’t be taking up the old family trade.
[FULL  STORY]