Once the most famous sightseeing spot in Taiwan, the observatory on top of the nation's third highest building, the Shin Kong Tower, will close down at the end of the year after posting losses over the past two years, a company official said yesterday.
The 12-year lease contract for the observatory, located on the 46th floor, or 200m up in the tower opposite the Taipei Main Station, will expire on Dec. 31.
Wu Chuan-chuan (吳娟娟), general manager of the Shin Kong Observatory, said the business started getting in the red two years ago and has posted losses of NT$6 million (US$179,100) this year alone.
"It's the best sightseeing spot. Perhaps people have forgotten about it, and perhaps we haven't done enough marketing and advertising," Wu said.
Opened in 1994, the observatory once drew over 6,000 people a day at its peak, but traffic has drastically declined to only 100 tourists on weekdays or more than 200 on weekends.
Shin Kong Tower's halo has been snatched by the much higher Taipei 101 Observatory, located on the 89th floor of the Taipei 101 building at a height of 382.2m.
Taipei 101 has become the new favorite with traffic surging to 5,000 to 8,000 people on holidays, said Michael Liu (劉家豪), assistant vice president of Taipei Financial Center Corp (台北金融大樓公司), manager of the skyscraper.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last