Chi Chia-Wei Awarded the Presidential Cultural Award
- Taiwan’s marriage equality pioneer Chi Chia-Wei will be one of the five recipients of the 9th Presidential Cultural Award. The five awards are established to highlight artistic and cultural activities’ influence on society.
- The committee awarded Chi the “Social Reformation Award” for his efforts to push for marriage equality, which eventually led to the landmark ruling on May 24th. In an interview Chi expressed his joy over winning the award, but emphasized that he hopes the government can officially legislate marriage equality as soon as possible.
- His news came one day after the trial court’s ruling that a household registration office’s refusal to register same-sex married couples was unconstitutional, but still deferred actual amending the procedures to the legislature.
Legislator Proposed to Make English the Second Official Language
- DPP Legislator Wu Su-Yao proposed to Premier Lai on Friday that she hopes to initiate the plan of making English Taiwan’s second official language, after Wu revealed that Taiwan ranks behind China and South Korea in the latest global report on English proficiency test scores.
- Premier Lai promised that he would urge the Ministry of Education to form a committee on this proposed initiative, and Minister of Education Pan Wen-Chung said while his ministry will be fully committed to this initiative, he suggested that there should be further consideration over whether to make English one of the “official language.”
Taiwanese Michelin Chef Plans to Return to Taiwan
- The chef Andre Chiang announced that his two-Michelin star restaurant in Singapore, Restaurant ANDRE, would be closed on February 14th, 2018.
- He hopes to return to Taiwan and pass his knowledge and experiences down to a younger generation of chefs in Taiwan and China. In an interview he said that as someone from Taiwan, he feels the responsibility to help define Taiwanese cuisine.
(Feature photo by William Yang)
William is a journalist for Deutsche Welle, and was News Director at Ketagalan Media. He holds a Master of Journalism degree from Temple University, and he also contributes to major international media outlets including Quartz and BuzzFeed. He is based in Taipei.
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