Japanese railway enthusiast Hideki Fujii has visited Taiwan more than 50 times out of admiration for the Taiwan Railways Administration’s (TRA) repair and maintenance of Japanese steam locomotives, he said.
Fujii, 48, said that his first encounter with Japanese trains in Taiwan was four years ago, when he rode a CT273 locomotive through the Huadong Valley (花東縱谷).
The locomotive on Saturday made the first of three trips scheduled this year between Hualien’s Yuli Railway Station and Taitung Railway Station, with the other two trips planned for Saturday and July 7.
Fujii was on last Saturday’s trip and said he would return to Taiwan on July 7 to ride it again.
“My next trip will be to follow the train [by car],” he said, adding that he plans to photograph the locomotive as it passes through the valley, including as it crosses the Kecheng Iron Bridge (客城鐵橋).
“I cannot take pictures of the train while riding it,” he said.
Fujii, an office worker from Tokyo, said he spends his spare time following locomotives, especially the model C571 locomotive that runs on West Japan Railway Co’s Yamaguchi Line, which connects Yamaguchi and Masuda on western Honshu.
It is good to see the administration put so much effort into maintaining trains from the Japanese colonial era, he said, adding that the trains are historically important.
The CT273 is a “sister train” of the C571 and is symbolic of the friendship between the two countries, Fujii said.
“The first time I visited Taiwan, I fell in love with it. The people are unconditionally helpful toward visitors,” he said, adding that he visits the nation whenever a railway-related event is held.
Hualien station master Wu Ching-tien (吳金添) said hearing about Fujii made him proud of his work for the railways.
Wu has since spoken with Fujii and taken pictures with him, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching