ART
Yo-yo Ma to visit Kaohsiung
World-renowned Grammy-winning cellist Yo-yo Ma (馬友友) next month is to give a concert at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts with his longtime collaborator, pianist Kathryn Stott, the concert’s promoter Management of New Arts said in a statement on Wednesday. The duo is to perform classics including the Cello Sonata in D minor, Op. 40 by Dmitri Shostakovich and the Cello Sonata in A major by Cesar Franck, it said. These classics are important to Ma as vehicles of dialogue and a way to communicate emotions, the promoter said. The concert is to take place on Nov. 4, it said.
SOCIETY
Plant closed after deaths
The Taoyuan Department of Labor has ordered work to be suspended at a US chemical plant that closed down recently, after two workers died on Thursday while dismantling equipment. The case is being investigated for possible contravention of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (職業安全衛生法), the department said. The incident happened at about 9am when three men identified by their last names Chen (陳), Liang (梁) and Liu (劉) were working to tear down an industrial furnace at Chemours, which closed its plant in Guanyin District (觀音) on Aug. 1 after laying off 259 workers. Chen and Liang were inside the furnace when debris from its inner walls fell, hitting them on the head, the department said. At the time, Liu was standing on top of a ladder and removing the insulation bricks on top of the furnace. Chen, 57, and Liang, 58, were later pronounced dead at a hospital, local authorities said. The three men were working for a local company which was contracted by Chemours to dismantle the furnace’s inner insulation.
ENVIRONMENT
Birds arrive in Tainan
The annual black-faced spoonbill season is to start on Oct. 28, as the bird species start migrating to Taiwan for the winter, the Tainan Ecological Conservation Institute said on Wednesday. A series of events would be held in Tainan’s Cigu District (七股) in the hope of raising awareness about habitat conservation, institute director Chiu Jen-wu (邱仁武) said. The migratory birds fly to Taiwan every year around September for winter and stay until April or May the following year, before they head back to their breeding areas in Northeast Asia. The first black-faced spoonbills this year arrived in Taiwan early last month at the Cigu Black-faced Spoonbill Conservation Area, and as the weather has become cooler since the Mid-Autumn Festival, the number of birds in Tainan and Chiayi has since increased rapidly, Chiu said. As of Wednesday, 235 of the endangered species had arrived in Tainan, with 147 spotted in the reserve, he added.
TRANSPORTATION
Kinmen taxi fares to rise
Taxi fares in Kinmen County are to increase from January for the first time since 2011, the local government announced on Thursday. The Kinmen County Government said it approved the increase proposed by the association of local taxi drivers due to the ballooning cost of running business. The new fee charging system would go into effect on Jan. 1 and see fares rise faster than before in two ways. Each journey is to charge an additional NT$5 for every 200m after the first kilometer and for every accumulated two minutes during which the taxi travels slower than 5kph.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
Taiwan on Friday said a New Zealand hamburger restaurant has apologized for a racist remark to a Taiwanese customer after reports that it had first apologized to China sparked outrage in Taiwan. An image posted on Threads by a Taiwanese who ate at Fergburger in Queenstown showed that their receipt dated Sunday last week included the words “Ching Chang,” a racial slur. The Chinese Consulate-General in Christchurch in a statement on Thursday said it had received and accepted an apology from the restaurant over the incident. The comment triggered an online furor among Taiwanese who saw it as an insult to the
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