Several cities and counties are coming up with "creative" solutions to deal with air pollution with the approach of Ghost Month, the seventh month of the lunar calendar when local people burn a great deal of paper "ghost money," a tradition that creates even more smog and pollution than usual.
Kaohsiung City's "burn paper money collectively" drive is now entering its fourth year. It will again cooperate with Kaohsiung County and Pingtung County to promote collective burning.
Kaohsiung City environmental protection officials said that more local citizens have come to accept the new idea, adding that the paper burned under the program increased to 219 tonnes last year from only 50 tonnes in the first year of the drive in 2003. It is estimated that 2,413 kg of hanging particles and 26,538 kg of carbon monoxide were cut last year.
The officials also said that a "doing good deeds to replace burning paper ghost money" program received an enthusiastic response in the first year following its launch last year and that they plan to expand the program this year.
Local people are urged to donate the money they would use to buy paper to charitable organizations instead.
The Taichung City Government also decided to provide a free service to do the burning for the public.
Those people who need the service can send their paper money to district offices and the environmental protection bureau will collect, transport and burn it.
The seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar is called Ghost Month as the superstitious believe ghosts and spirits come out from the "lower world" to visit earth. This year's Ghost Month falls between July 25 and Aug. 23.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS