The Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional festival cultural of the East Asian, in order to let the new residents in Taiwan understand Taiwanese traditional culture, National immigration Agency (NIA), the Ministry of the Interior held the Dragon Boat Festival activity (粽望所歸.慶端午) at the Taoyuan Women's Hall in Taoyuan City (桃園市桃園婦女會館) at 2 p.m. on June 1, 2019. In addition to the wonderful dance performances brought by the new resident sisters, new residents and children also experienced different cultures and joined “Thai sweet zongzi wrapping DIY” activity and under the guidance of the teacher.
The event kicked off with the dance performance from new residents' sisters. The scene was thunderous and cheering for the wonderful dance.
The garlic family mascot of Audiovisual Communication Foundation was invited to the scene to have fun with new residents and children. Many children saw a cute garlic mascot and excitedly ran to the front to grab some photo with them.
The garlic family mascot also led the children in the event to dance with enthusiasm. The simple, funny and eager dance made children laugh and happy.
In order to make the new residents and children experience the fun of wrapping zongzi, the organizer specially invited the Thai teacher Huang Yi-zhen (黃怡貞) from Thai chef Association to teach new residents and children how to wrap Thai sweet zongzi. Huang Yizhen said that the Thai sweet zongzi wrapping method is simple. First of all, steam sticky rice, then mix it with coconut milk and wrap with hardy banana. In particular, the Thai sticky rice is cylindrical, which is quite different from Taiwanese salt zongzi. Many children were the first time to wrap zongzi, they were so busy and excited. Under the guidance of the teacher, they finally could wrap zongzi. They said that they would take zongzi home to their families and share how to wrap zongzi.
If you still couldn’t wrap zongzi, it doesn't matter! The organizer invited the new residents of the “Taiwan New Resident Mengya Association” (台灣新住民萌芽協會) to assist in wrapping of Vietnamese and Taiwanese zongzi, let new residents and children to test various kind of zongzi.
Taiwanese people also like to play the egg game during the Dragon Boat Festival. This event, new residents are also arranged to paint eggs. New residents and children grabbed paintbrushes and paint the eggs. The eggs were painted in a colorful appearance. Some children accidentally put the paint on their face, and their mother smiled and wiped it off, let the event was full of warmth.
In this event, the organizer also prepared a cutie gifts, new residents just took an event’s photo and upload it on “Taiwan我來了” page. After the event, the staff member has finished reviewing, they could receive the gift.
Lin Ze-qian (林澤謙), the director of National Immigration Agency's secretary office said that new residents have injected multicultural charm into Taiwan and hope that the new residents and their families can experience Taiwan's traditional culture through this event. In recent years, NIA has been cooperating with local governments and NGOs to organize more activities to help new residents integrate into society and become Taiwanese people.
In addition, Director Lin also expressed his special thanks to the Taoyuan City Government for promoting the new residents' care and counseling measures, let new residents of Taoyuan City can live with peace of mind.
Director Lin further stated that the “Global News for New Immigrants” not only provides Taiwan's latest news, but also provides Vietnamese, Indonesian, English and Thai language news, audio-visual news and columns etc. so that new residents won’t miss important news and smoothly integrate into Taiwanese society. And also welcome everyone to join the facebook fan page “Taiwan我來了”, the page often hold a lottery activity.
