Hundreds of Taiwanese rallied yesterday to press Taipei's claim over the disputed East China Sea islands, which are also claimed by Beijing and Tokyo. Nearly 1,000 people marched through the town of Toucheng, in Ilan county in the island's northeast, clutching banners and flags. Several demonstrators wore T-shirts with slogans, such as "Safeguarding the Diaoyus", using the Chinese name for the islands known as Senkaku in Japan. Taiwan has placed the Japanese-controlled islands under the administration of the Toucheng municipal government. The protest came after dozens of Taiwanese fishing boats from Ilan county last week entered territorial waters around the disputed islands. Japanese coastguard ships sprayed water at the fishing vessels, prompting a fleet of Taiwanese coastguard vessels to direct their own high-pressure hoses at the Japanese ships. Agence France-Presse
Master of traditional Chinese culture Nan Huaijin died in Suzhou , Jiangsu , on Saturday at the age of 94. He was famous for his enthusiasm for promoting traditional Chinese culture, through his simple books on Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, which were translated into eight languages. Li Bochun , director of Beijing's Chinese Cultural Renaissance Institute, said no one had been able to top Nan's achievements in spreading traditional Chinese culture, but questioned his inability to specialise further. "Master Nan Huaijin touched on a lot of branches of Chinese culture," Li said, "but he didn't have a thorough understanding of any one. His research was not deep enough. He didn't write a single book that could influence the academic study of any subject." Born in Yueqing , a small city administered by Wenzhou in Zhejiang , in 1918, Nan studied arts and sociology before joining the Kuomintang army when the second Sino-Japanese war began in 1937. In the early 1940s, Nan devoted himself to studying Buddhism, before moving to Taiwan in 1949 when the Kuomintang force retreated there after losing the civil war. In 1985, Nan moved to the United States, then three years later he relocated to Hong Kong. In the late 1990s he returned to the mainland. Over the past decade he focused on educating young children about Chinese. Alice Yan