Pigeon racing traces its roots to Europe, but Taiwanese have made it their own.
Every year, dozens of racing associations wager tens of millions of NT dollars on birds entered in grueling five-race competitions, while owners of the winners take home huge purses.
It has become such a big business that there are now pigeon hospitals catering to injured competitors with state-of-the-art techniques. And there are birdnappers who ransom the birds.
PHOTO: WALLY SANTANA, AP
Several times a year owners send their birds winging from one end of the island to the other, or flying from platforms at sea to Keelung 300km away.
Competitors are less than a year old and are chosen only after undergoing a rigorous training regime that emphasizes sticking to designated routes and building strength and perseverance.
The stakes are huge. Yeh Cheng-shen, chairman of the Taipei County Pigeon Racing Association and a participant in the sport for 54 of his 68 years, said he won NT$10 million (US$303,000) in a recent five-race meet. He estimated that meet's total pot at more than NT$2 billion.
"There's only one reason why pigeon racing is so popular in Taiwan -- gambling," he says.
Yeh, who estimates the value of his own racing flock in hundreds of thousands of NT dollars, says owners sustain significant losses during the races.
"Three thousand birds started our recent fall meet," he says. "Only 20 or 30 returned at the end of the event."
Yeh says most of the dropouts lose their way along the route, but some are trapped by criminals eager to exact ransoms.
"Gangsters erect these huge nets in valleys and other places the birds have to cross. Then they call the owner and offer to return the bird for what seems like a pretty reasonable price -- about NT$3,000," he says.
With the growth of racing, well-maintained bird hospitals have spread across the country.
The oldest is Taipei's Versele-Laga, established in 1985 by its current director, Li Jaw-yang, a graduate of Taiwan National University.
Li says about half of his clinic's patients are pigeons, nearly all of which are racers.
"Some are suffering from parasites, the kind of malady that any bird is prone to," he says. "But by far the most frequent problem involves injuries they sustain while racing. It's a very difficult sport."
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS