Radio Taiwan International 
Date: 13 May, 2019
By: Natalie Tso

Taiwan is considered an aged society, as 14% of the population is over 65 years of age. By 2026, it’s going to be a super aged society with the population of people over 65 years old surpassing 21%. How can people live well in their later years? Let’s see what this report has to say.

This woman lifting weights is 71 years old. She’s training hard and she loves it. She says she has always been interested in weight training. She goes to the gym to train regularly, despite getting cancer.

By 2026, Taiwan is going to be a super-aged society. By 2034, half of the population will be over 50 years of age.

An internet poll of 3,000 people found that of those 40 and over, 54.5% were uneasy about growing old and nearly 21% (20.8%) were somewhat uneasy.    [FULL  STORY]

Voice of America
Date: May 13, 2019
By: Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR — Taiwan’s lawmakers must back the government’s draft same-sex law and make the self-ruled island the first place in Asia to allow such unions, LGBT+ campaigners said on Monday, ahead of a key vote in parliament this week.

Taiwan has until May 24 to legalize same-sex marriage after a 2017 ruling by the island’s top court. The court did not give specific guidance on how laws regulating such unions should be drawn up.

Parliament will vote on Friday on same-sex marriage but there are three bills that have been proposed – one by the government and two by lawmakers which LGBT+ groups have described as discriminatory.

“We won’t accept any more compromise because the (government’s) bill is already our bottom line,” said Jennifer Lu, the chief coordinator of Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan, an alliance of groups that support gay rights.

“If one of the two other bills is passed, we will launch another constitutional court challenge,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.    [FULL  STORY]

Ke said he spend three months carving the highly detailed Jade Emperor and his entourage out of taro for the Hong Kong competition

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/05/13
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Shu-Te University graduate student Ke Fu-feng (柯豐富) won the silver medal in the fruit and vegetable carving competition at the 2019 Hong Kong International Culinary Classic, which was held from May 7- 10.

According to Liberty Times, the work was 120 cm tall and 80 cm wide, weighing 80 kilograms. The work was carved out of taro and resembled art works commonly found in temples.
Ke has been interested in temple activities since he was a small boy, Liberty Times reported. Ke said he spent three months carving the Jade Emperor and his entourage out of taro.

In order to avoid the taro from becoming watery, the carving took place completely in an air-conditioned room, Liberty Times reported. After the carving was done, transporting the work to the competition site also posed a challenge. In the end, the work was cut into eight pieces and put into boxes.

Some parts of the work were sent as unaccompanied baggage, but more fragile parts were carefully carried on a flight by Ke, his father, and his teacher, the news outlet said.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/05/13
By: Jay Chou and Chi Jo-yao

Taipei, May 13 (CNA) Taiwanese a cappella group O-Kai Singers claimed third place in the small vocal group category at the Moscow Spring A Cappella Festival on Saturday.

The O-Kai Singers were one of 31 a cappella groups in the 2-4 member small vocal group competition and won 600,000 rubles (US$9,177) for coming third.

“We’re so happy to be here and would like to thank all the organizers, the jury and the amazing audience,” O-Kai’s bass vocalist HeyHey (嘿嘿) said when receiving the prize.

“There are so many wonderful groups getting together here. It really blows our mind,” HeyHey added.    [FULL  STORY]

SHOWING GOODWILL: The union is open to talks with airline management, and the ministry hopes an agreement is struck before voting on the strike ends

Taipei Times
Date: May 14, 2019
By: Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter

The Executive Yuan has established an ad hoc team to respond to fallout from a possible

strike by EVA Air flight attendants, Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai ( 王國材) said yesterday, adding that the ministry is seeking to resolve the dispute.

Members of the Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union yesterday started voting on a strike. The union is formed by flight attendants from EVA Air and China Airlines. The motion will pass if half of the union’s members and 80 percent of EVA Air employees vote to strike.

The dispute between EVA Air and its flight attendants was discussed at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee.

Democratic Progressive Party legislators Cheng Pao-Ching (鄭寶清) and Chen Ou-po (陳歐珀) as well as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恆) asked Wang how the ministry plans to respond to a strike.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/05/12
By: Chen Wei-ting, Hu Yu-li and Emerson Lim 

Taipei, May 12 (CNA) More than 5,000 people from the Taiwanese community in Japan and Japan’s own medical, political and business sectors have expressed support for Taiwan’s participation in the annual World Health Assembly (WHA).

Taiwanese communities in Kyushu and western Japan launched a signature campaign in March to support Taiwan’s efforts to break through China’s obstruction and participate in this year’s WHA, to be held in Geneva from May 20 to 28, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Though Taiwan failed as expected to get an invitation to the WHA this year for a third year in a row, leaders of Taiwanese and ethnic Chinese communities in Kyushu handed the petition to Taiwan Health Minister Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) during a banquet Saturday night.

At the banquet, one of Chen’s stops during a four-day visit to Kyushu, the health minister said after receiving the petition that Taiwan can be a partner in advancing global health and should not be left out of the global health network.    [FULL  STORY]

NO MORE BULLYING: The county government said it will raise awareness about facial equality, have it taught at schools and eliminate work prejudice based on appearance

Taipei Times
Date: May 13, 2019
By: Lin Yi-chang and Sherry Hsiao  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Chiayi County Government on Saturday signed a pledge to create a friendlier

environment for people with facial burns, birthmarks or disfigurement.

Chiayi County Commissioner Weng Chang-liang (翁章梁) signed the pledge on behalf of the county government.

At the event hosted by the Sunshine Foundation, Lu Yi-ju (呂易儒), a 16-year-old born with a nevus of Ota, and her mother, Hu Hui-chi (胡惠琪), talked about their experiences.

Lu was born with dark pigmentation around her temples, said Hu, who lives in Chiayi’s Shueishang Township (水上).    [FULL  STORY]

The library’s rare Chinese book collection includes 5,300 titles, 2,000 of which will ultimately be included in the online portal

By Meilan Solly
SMITHSONIAN.COM
MAY 10, 2019 3:30PM

A woodblock-printed set of 400 illustrations depicting the life and teachings of Gautama Buddha, painted silk scenes by Qing dynasty court artist Jiao Bingzhen, and 12 watercolors detailing indigenous life in Taiwan are among the 1,000 rare Chinese texts now available via the Library of Congress’ online catalogue.

All of the digitized texts—encompassing fields ranging from history to geography, philosophy, literature and classics—date to before 1796, the year after the end of the early Qing period. As the Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection portal explains, the majority of the titles date to the early Qing (spanning 1644 through 1795) or Ming (1368 to 1644) dynasties. Around 30 are even older, tracing their origins to the Song (960 to 1279) and Yuan (1279 to 1368) dynasties.

Some of the titles included in the collection are the only extant copies of their kind, meaning that the average researcher, student or history buff would never be able to study them in-person. The digitization effort, in the words of Qi Qiu, head of Scholarly Services at the Library’s Asian Division, “offer[s] users across the globe unprecedented access to the study of pre-modern China that would otherwise be off-limits due to physical distance or rarity of the items.”    [FULL  STORY]