Holding placards reading "I yield seats because I am young," some 20 boy scouts and girl scouts yesterday urged Taipei's youth to respect the disadvantaged and yield seats to people who need them on the city's MRT system and buses.
"Please support our courtesy campaign and yield seats to those in need on the MRT," fifth-grader Hsieh Jie-lin (
The courtesy campaign was held by Taipei City Community Scouts to highlight the Taipei City Department of Education's new "Traffic Courtesy Week."
The department hopes to promote increased courtesy on the capital's public transportation.
The initiative came after the Taipei City Disabled Group Protection Committee voiced frustration at a meeting last week, saying that many youths declined to give up reserved spots on MRT trains to disabled, elderly and pregnant women.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (
Throwing his support behind the campaign, Taipei Municipal Zhongzheng High School Principal Liu Cheng-ming (劉正鳴), who is also a boy scout leader, said that more than 200 boy and girl scout troops in the city would choose MRT stations or bus stops to campaign at this year.
"Yielding seats should be a good habit and an attitude in daily life. We hope this campaign will remind people to be more caring and respectful of each other," he said.
As a regular MRT commuter, Chien Li-hua (
"I think it's necessary to educate young people about courtesy because many do not have enough respect for the elderly and the disabled," she 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:
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