Many visitors to Thailand are sure to visit the famous Mae Klong Railway Market to see the vendors hurriedly collect their wares from the tracks to get out of the way of an oncoming train. But did you know that Pingtung used to have a similar market? Historian Chiu Tsai-yen and Taiwan Film Culture Company teamed up to document this page in Taiwan’s history.
Business & Economy
The day’s larger theme was Taiwan’s maritime future. Cho said Taiwan’s technology sector and position in the Indo-Pacific have made it central to regional stability, adding that the country now has the confidence to “look at the world from Taiwan.” Taiwan, he said, should face the Pacific and the wider world rather than remain locked in a China-centered view.
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The first section that has reopened is a marked improvement on what was there before. The city is asking residents to bear with the inconveniences of construction from now through about June, when hopefully the entire sections on both sides of the river will reopen.
Chen has a backstory that would work well for a film. At 13, he left Taiwan for Vienna. His parents stayed behind as he entered a rigorous training system—the kind few young musicians today would be expected to endure. “My parents basically had no idea what I was doing,” Chen said. “In the first ten years, I only made two phone calls a year. Letters back and forth would take months,” he recalled.
Once buoyed by strong early polling and factional backing, legislator Lin Dai-hua’s (林岱樺), decline has reportedly left the DPP’s Kaohsiung network — known as the Chu faction (菊系), linked to former Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) — divided and unmotivated to unite behind a single candidate.
Mayor Chen said the city would expand contracted counseling institutions, provide funding for stress-management and emotional-support courses in schools, and use the employee assistance program to connect teachers with medical and mental-health resources. He also said the KH Education Bureau had been asked to identify problems reported by frontline educators and bring in cross-departmental resources, including psychologists, social workers, and medical institutions.
