Taiwan Today
Date: July 5, 2016
Culture Minister Cheng Li-chiun conferred to nine individuals and one musical group certificates
MOC Minister Cheng Li-chiun (seated, center) joins the recipients of this year’s national living treasure honors at Taichung Cultural Innovation Industrial Park July 2 in central Taiwan. (Courtesy of MOC)
honoring them as Taiwan’s top traditional arts and cultural heritage preservationists, also known as national living treasures, during a Ministry of Culture-staged ceremony at Taichung Cultural Innovation Industrial Park July 2 in central Taiwan.
The park, a renovation and revitalization of an old winery, embodies one of the five pillars of new MOC Minister Cheng’s cultural policy: Linking and Redisplaying the Historic Memory Between the Land and its People. Without these national living treasures quietly working hard to carry forward tradition and passing traditional arts and skills to the next generation, they will eventually disappear one day and become history, according to the MOC.
Addressing the ceremony, Cheng said, “Traditional arts, originally started from daily living, gradually become a way of witnessing history, thus a culture representing an era.
“Due to its special location and the arrival of immigrants, Taiwan’s traditional arts have formed a unique cultural style well worth being preserved and carried over generation by generation.”