Netizens reacted angrily after finding that a new attraction in Keelung has been damaged by overeager and careless visitors.
Visitors to the Chung Cheng Park were pleasantly surprised earlier this month when they discovered graffiti of “Totoro,” a popular character in the Japanese cartoon My Neighbor Totoro, on a wall by Shoushan Road.
The work became an overnight sensation, attracting large numbers of visitors.
Photo: Lin Hsin-han, Taipei Times
However, in recent days, some netizens reported that visitors have reduced an entire area of flowers and greenery in front of the Totoro painting to a small heap of trampled vegetation.
The discovery quickly sparked outrage as many Internet users raised the question: “Why can’t visitors just appreciate and photograph the artwork from afar?”
A Facebook post aimed at raising public awareness of the egregious deed has received quite a number of “likes” and “share,” with many laying the blame on Keelung residents.
A netizen based in Keelung countered the criticisms by saying “most of the tourists come from other municipalities.”
“Many of us who live nearby [the graffiti] have not been there yet,” the netizen wrote.
“It is everyone’s responsibility to conserve beautiful sights and the environment,” another netizen wrote.
“Pointing fingers at people from certain municipalities is not the sensible way,” the netizen wrote.
Commenting on the matter, Keelung Department of Public Works Director-General Lee Tung-cheng (李銅城) said the popularity of the graffiti has drawn huge crowds of visitors to the site and that access to the artwork has become very difficult during and after showers since the meadows were worn out.
The department plans to pave trails leading to the site, and grow the grass back to beautify its surroundings, he said.
Huang Yi-wei (黃毅維), head of the department’s public utilities unit, said that illegal parking around the park has been rampant recently in the wake of the graffiti’s popularity, causing much inconvenience to tourist buses.
He reminded visitors to the site to heed traffic rules or risk paying a fine.
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