• 2013-04-20

In the afternoon of the 20th of April took place the “Joy of Reading” parade. This event marked a special record for the April 23rd World Book & Copyright Day. NCL Director-general Tseng Shu-Hsien mentioned that April 23rd of each year has been designated by UNESCO as the World Book and Copyright Day or simply World Book Day. It is a day to encourage and advocate reading. This year, the NCL specially organized this parade bringing together reading activities which usually and ordinarily spread out in particular counties and cities nation-wide as well as ceaselessly diffusing the enthusiasm of reading, duplicating it more to the public. In this way, the public can experience that reading is an integral and indispensable for a good and happy life. Education Minister, Chiang Wei-Ling participated in the activity and in his launching speech remarked that reading is one of the foundations of education. Since the year 2009, the Ministry of Education has offered subsidies to local public libraries to renovate reading environment, space design, enrich and upgrade equipments as well as vigorously promote all kinds of reading activities, attract the public to make use of library resources, and cultivate reading habits, educate the reading climate of the public. The participation in the parade is spontaneous. Participants came from schools across the country, libraries, reading clubs, story-telling troupe and others. There were more than a thousand respondents. The parade started off from Sun Yet Sen Memorial Hall until Taipei City Hall east gate plaza. The marchers included the main characters and costumed animals from the movie, “The Life of Pi”, “Alice in Wonderland” “Peter Pan” and other personages from children’s fairy tales. The attraction was the book jacket personages. These were made by the public using cardboard boxes or other materials to portray their favorite books. It became a good advertisement to promote good books. There were also creative marchers who handed out guavas with the slogan, “Eating Guavas help digestion, reading good books promote improvement”. Furthermore, the organizers arranged for a performing arts group to create the festive atmosphere of the parade. There was also the mobile library of NCL and Foundations. Trend Education Foundation invited famous artists like Hsieh Chun-te, Wang Meng-Chao, Huang Kuo-Chen and others who designed a literary float with the theme: “ A Tribute to the Master”, NCL used environmentally-friendly materials in making the float: “Alice in Wonderland. All contributed to the bustling Eastern area a scholarly atmosphere. In Spain, the World Book Day had a romantic legend called “ Rose and Books”. On the last day of the parade, fifty pairs of father-daughter, mother-son, lovers, husband-wife, friends give a book and roses to each other to conclude the event. Besides the parade, a poetry concert was held at the plaza of Taipei City Hall east gate. One of the organizers, the Trend Education Foundation invited Yin Cheng-Yang, Chen Ming-Chang, Chen Yong-Long, Taipei Ciy Philharmonic Chamber Music to perform. Famous poets personally came to recite their works. The program received a boisterous applause from the crowd.