Two of the 10 most searched for cultural landmarks on Google Maps by users around the world last year were in Taiwan, surpassing some prominent landmarks in France and South Korea, Google Taiwan said on Tuesday.
The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Songshan Cultural and Creative Park ranked sixth and seventh on the list of Google Maps’ most searched cultural landmarks in the world last year, it said.
The top five most searched cultural spots on Google Maps were the UK’s Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, Christ the Redeemer in Brazil and Belgium’s Royal Palace of Brussels.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Rounding out the top 10 after the two landmarks in Taiwan were France’s Louvre Pyramid and the Palais Ideal, and the Gyeongbokgung Palace in South Korea.
Ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which runs from today through Jan. 29, the company released a list of the most searched restaurants in Taiwan on Google Maps during last year’s Lunar New Year break.
Breakfast shops took the top spot from coffee shops, which finished third behind hot pot restaurants.
The Taichung High-Speed Rail Station and Taichung Railway Station were where Google Maps was used most during last year’s holiday, while the Zihnan Temple (紫南宮) in Nantou County was the most searched temple.
Google Flights data showed that Tokyo was the city most Taiwanese wanted to visit during this year’s break, it said.
Civil society groups yesterday protested outside the Legislative Yuan, decrying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) efforts to pass three major bills that they said would seriously harm Taiwan’s democracy, and called to oust KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁). It was the second night of the three-day “Bluebird wintertime action” protests in Taipei, with organizers announcing that 8,000 people attended. Organized by Taiwan Citizen Front, the Economic Democracy Union (EDU) and a coalition of civil groups, about 6,000 people began a demonstration in front of KMT party headquarters in Taipei on Wednesday, organizers said. For the third day, the organizers asked people to assemble
POOR IMPLEMENTATION: Teachers welcomed the suspension, saying that the scheme disrupted school schedules, quality of learning and the milk market A policy to offer free milk to all school-age children nationwide is to be suspended next year due to multiple problems arising from implementation of the policy, the Executive Yuan announced yesterday. The policy was designed to increase the calcium intake of school-age children in Taiwan by drinking milk, as more than 80 percent drink less than 240ml per day. The recommended amount is 480ml. It was also implemented to help Taiwanese dairy farmers counter competition from fresh milk produced in New Zealand, which is to be imported to Taiwan tariff-free next year when the Agreement Between New Zealand and
A woman who allegedly spiked the food and drinks of an Australian man with rat poison, leaving him in intensive care, has been charged with attempted murder, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. The woman, identified by her surname Yang (楊), is accused of repeatedly poisoning Alex Shorey over the course of several months last year to prevent the Australian man from leaving Taiwan, prosecutors said in a statement. Shorey was evacuated back to Australia on May 3 last year after being admitted to intensive care in Taiwan. According to prosecutors, Yang put bromadiolone, a rodenticide that prevents blood from
China is likely to focus on its economy over the next four years and not set a timetable for attempting to annex Taiwan, a researcher at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wrote in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday. In the article titled “Why China isn’t scared of Trump: US-Chinese tensions may rise, but his isolationism will help Beijing,” Chinese international studies researcher Yan Xuetong (閻學通) wrote that the US and China are unlikely to go to war over Taiwan in the next four years under US president-elect Donald Trump. While economic and military tensions between the US and China would